Rule Disappears

My SpamSieve Rule keeps disappearing from Apple Mail Rules. I fix it, and it works for awhile, then spam stops filtering, and I look in Rules and the rule has disappeared. I am running the latest edition of Apple Mail and macOS High Sierra 10.13.5

This can happen because of a file permissions problem on your Mac or because of an iCloud syncing malfunction. In order for me to help you fix the problem, please use the “Save Diagnostic Report” command in the Help menu and send me the report file, as described here.

Thanks for sending the report. I do not see any file permissions problems or errors reported, but I note that:

  1. Mail hasn’t saved any rule changes since January 12. That’s the modification date on the file /Users/wcolvin/Library/Mail/V5/SyncedRules.plist
    . 1. The iCloud rules file (/Users/wcolvin/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/MailData/ubiquitous_SyncedRules.plist
    ) hasn’t been modified since July 2016.

I’m not sure there’s an easy way to fix this in a way that preserves your existing rules. I would suggest that you start out by quitting Mail and then moving both of those files to the Desktop. You can always copy them back in the event that you need to restore the current setup. My hope is that moving these files will allow Mail to start saving changes that you make to the rules. We can at least test this theory first before figuring out how to merge in your old rules.

Will try
I’ll give this a try … it’ll be awhile before I can get to it though. The rule just disappeared again, and I replaced and unaffected. I’ll let you know what happens, but it’ll be awhile. Thanks!