Apple Mail VIP Feature: Multiple Emails for one Contact

It is often handy to collect emails from a particular person or business into one handy grouping.

Adding a VIP to the VIPs list

The Apple Mail VIP feature is a useful shortcut, saving me the trouble of making sets of rules to organize my mail by sender.

1. Right click on the email in an email message and choose Add to VIPs.
2. A new entry appears under the VIPs list in the sidebar; clicking on it shows all emails from that entity.

Apple Mail VIP facility

What about multiple emails for the same person?

The Apple Mail VIP feature became problematic for one reason: my contacts often use two or even three or four emails, leading to that many entries for the same person. This became frustrating.

But then I reasoned: if I make a contact for a person and add all that person’s emails, might the Apple Mail VIP feature behave as desired?

Indeed, creating a contact for a person and adding all emails for that person to the contact makes the Apple Mail VIP feature work properly: one entry regardless of how many different emails. I don’t normally use Apple’s Contact application, so this is now one reason I will, at least for this situation.

Contacts

For an Apple Mail VIP contact:

1. First, delete any existing VIP entries for the person in question (creating or updating a contact won’t fix existing VIP entries).
2. Create a contact for the person, adding all emails to the contact.
3. Create the VIP in Apple Mail as per above.

Apple Contacts