Nested criteria are not available in Mail. They are available in Finder Smart Folders.
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Ha, the 1st prize for best man/woman in the class goes to @GFS. His/her contribution did it, eventually. THANK YOU.
I am well aware about boolean logic and even more confused by Appleâs implementation. In this case itâs mainly down to really odd naming of the descriptors. We would all understand that the FROM descriptor is the recipient who sent me an email. Whatâs unclear is the âAny recipientâ descriptor together with the really weird way to search for SENT emails. Why is there no âTo:â descriptor? We will never know.
Only the result counts and I do now find exactly the right emails, following @GFS 's solution. Honorable mention to @aforkosh.
Happy New Year
Glad you got it working mHm.Mertens. 
The âAny Recipientâ usage is, I imagine, down to the fact that many people will stuff the To address field, with dozens of email addresses, plus, it must also cater to CCs. So âToâ alone would not work as a logical description of the possibles.
Your curiosity encouraged you to try and set up a Smart Mailbox and now that you have that working, I wonder if your curiosity will entice you to try some more?
Happy New Year to you too and indeed to all here on TidBITS!
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E-mail is, unfortunately, not nearly as straightforward as it sometimes seems.
As @GFS pointed out, there are two different header lines that identify recipients: To: and Cc:. And each may contain lists of addresses.
There is also the fact that mail may be sent using a Bcc: destination. Mail apps should not include this in an outbound message, but the addresses provided there are used by the mail transport system to deliver the message to them. Which is why you may sometimes receive mail (especially from mailing lists) when your own address doesnât appears in either the To: or Cc: headers.
Trying to identify the source is equally ugly. There is a From: header in mail messages which is supposed to identify the sender but, like all mail headers, it may contain whatever the sender tells it to contain. Some mail clients (especially web-based ones) may take steps to keep you from using a fake return address, but the mail protocols themselves donât care (and actually have no possible way of verifying an address if they did care).
Itâs even possible to send out mail messages without any From: header line. Some mail servers will see this and insert an Apparently-From: header, based on the address used by the mail-transfer protocol, but that address could also be a fake.
Hopefully, when you create a mail rule that filters on FROM, it will check for both From: and Apparently-From: header lines. But there is never a guarantee that either of these identify the actual source of the message.
But filtering on these headers is usually good enough, when dealing with the majority of legitimate e-mail. Just be aware that nothing is guaranteed and illegitimate mail is not likely to provide meaningful data in these headers.
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@Shamino Youâre right in many ways, what you describe might however apply more to the problems of an anti-spam software. Smart Mailboxes are for non-techies and what weâre facing here is the age old problem of implementing it totally correct on a technical level vs making clear what it actually does. Strangely enough, I am techie enough and still struggled. As ever so often, the Help pages revealed nothing useful, only a forum (this one) plus team work and experience helped.
Here we go, a solved problem is one thatâs no longer there, right?
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