Why can't email clients create rules for moving dates like "yesterday"?

Question

I've never seen an email client that I could easily create a rule to do something like "Move messages from yesterday to a folder?" Is there some esoteric reason why this would be difficult? I know I can easily create rules around specific dates, but that isn't the same thing by a long shot; am I missing something? In Outlook 2010 I can create search folders that do sort of this type of thing, but you can't create rules around a search folder... seems like either I am missing something major, or this is terribly short-sided.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 00:39

1

Standard rule for The Bat! For any exact or approximate age ("Yesterday" here is "from 2 to 1 days old")

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answered Mar 30 '12 at 00:39

Lazy Badger

3,714

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '12 at 22:12

Pretty sure you can do this with Outlook + VBA script. In Thunderbird, there is a filter that selects emails by their age (in days) and also a filter action that lets you move filtered messages to a specified folder.

These are just the 2 most popular email clients, but this is definitely possible with other clients as well.

Why can't email clients create rules for moving dates like "yesterday"?

2 Answers2