Re: Rules with old messages (Ent X)

[Paul Berkowitz]

Title: Re: Rules with old messages (Ent X)

On 5/4/04 11:23 AM, "Carlo Anselmi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
> I was wondering if there is a way to automatically move already
> received/sent messages (older than a certain amount of days) into another
> folder.
> According to the help, rules work with new messages only (as soon as they
> are received), after that you have to apply a rule manually.
>
> I know how to set up the rule I'd like but I don't know how to apply it over
> old messages.

To apply it to old messages, go to the Inbox (or wherever the messages are currently living), select one message to get the right focus, press cmd-A to Select All, then in Message menu select Apply Rules/That Rule. (In the Rules list, disable the rule by unchecking "Enable" box, so it won't run automatically on download. Make sure the criteria for the rule include "Date received is greater than 30 days" or whatever.)

That's very quick and easy but does depend on you're remembering to do this every so often. If you wanted to make it completely automatic, you'd have to forget about a rule and instead create a script to be run by a schedule every 1 day. An example of such a script would be:

set cutoff to ((current date) - (30 * days))
tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
    move (every message of folder "Inbox" whose time received is less than cutoff) to folder "Filed"
end tell


Save this script in Script Editor as a Script (the default) to the Entourage Script Menu Items folder in Microsoft User Data folder in ~/Documents. In Tools/Schedules, make a new schedule to Run AppleScript every 1 day and navigate to this script by pressing Script... button.

Change the '30' to whatever you want. Change the names of the folders as desired. If it's a subfolder you'd have to say

    folder "Filed" of folder "Whatever"

and so on. If the messages arrive in an IMAP folder this won't work  'move' doesn't work for IMAP (although if you want to move the messages from an IMAP folder to a local folder there are workarounds). Write back if IMAP is involved.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.



--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

PLEASE always state which version of Entourage you are using - 2001 or X. It's often impossible to answer your questions otherwise.