Forwarding, automatic responses and email filters

What you get: that the mail arrives where it has to go even if you are on vacation, that ventas@ ends up in your usual mailbox, and that unwanted messages are filtered out.

Before starting

The three things are in the Email menu and all three need an already created mailbox (Create a mailbox). If you don’t have any, the panel tells you: “First create a mailbox in Mail”.

And a distinction that saves trouble:

Aliases - an address that does not really exist and that delivers to a mailbox. It does not take up space or account for your mailbox quota.
Redirection - the email that arrives at one address is also delivered to another, which can be from outside (your Gmail, for example).

A forwarding rule

Email → Email forwarders → New forwarder.
Since — the receiving address. It must be from one of your email domains.
To — where it goes. If there are several, one per line.
Create forwarder.

An automatic response

Email → Autoresponders → New automatic reply.
Choose the mailbox, write the subject and the message.
Create reply.

Write the message thinking about who will read it: tell when you will be back and who to write to in the meantime. And remember to turn it off when you return, it doesn’t turn off by itself.

A filter

Email → Email filters → New filter.
Choose mailbox, put a name and an order - the filters are applied from top to bottom.
Yes: the sender, the recipient, the subject or the text of the message, contains what you write.
Then: move to folder, resend, mark as read or delete.
In Folder or address enter the folder if you move it, or the address if you forward it. For the other actions, leave it blank.

How to check it worked

Send yourself a test email from another account that meets the condition, and see where it ends up. A filter that no one has tested is a filter that one day eats an important email.

Common problems

“The originating address must be from one of your email domains”: You can only resend the email from your own domains. If the domain is yours but it doesn’t appear, it means that you haven’t created an email domain yet: write to us and we will create it for you.
The forwarding works but the emails end up in spam in Gmail: It’s normal in forwards: the email arrives at Gmail from our server and not from the original sender, and that breaks its check. Mark those that arrive as “not spam” a few times, or better, read the mailbox directly with IMAP instead of forwarding it.
Alias or forwarding? I don’t know which one I want: If you want a new address to fall into an existing mailbox of yours, alias. If you want to send a copy to an address outside, I will forward it. If you want to enter that address separately, with your password, then it is a mailbox.
I put an automatic response and also answer spam: It is inevitable with any automatic response. Do not put any extra information in the text - neither personal phones nor anyone’s address - because it will end up in the hands of someone you do not want.
My filter doesn’t do anything: Review two things: the order - if a filter above has already moved the mail, yours does not see it - and that the condition is text that actually appears in the mail, not what you think the subject line says.
A filter is deleting emails I actually wanted: Change the action of deleting by moving it to a folder. “Delete” is definitive and there is no trash can worth it; moving always leaves a way back.
I want two people to read the same address: Create an alias for both mailboxes, or a forwarding with both addresses, one per line. If you also want to answer from that address, then yes, a shared mailbox is necessary.
I have removed the forwarding and it keeps arriving: Look if there is also a filter with a “Forward” action in that mailbox: they are two different sites and the filter survives deleting the forwarding rule.