How can I set up my e-mail program to sort my e-mails into folders? Are any other filtering tasks possible?

With rules/mail filters (these setup options have different names in different programs), you can have your e-mail program perform automatic functions on your incoming mail based on criteria you specify. The capacities of different e-mail programs vary, but you should be able to sort messages into different folders, mark them as read, delete them, and more.

By setting up a rule, you are telling your e-mail program "If the criteria I have established match those of the e-mail, please perform this action/these actions on this e-mail." Each e-mail you receive will be run past those criteria to see if it qualifies.

Criteria facts:

Each criterion has three components:

• a place to look (for example: From, Any To Recipient, Any Cc Recipient, Subject, Size, Date Sent...)
• a modifier (is, is not, contains, does not contain, etc.)
• what text to look for.

You can almost always set up a series of criteria per rule to make it as specific as you'd like.

Action Facts:
 
Actions can include move to folder, copy, delete, forward, redirect, reply, play a sound, and more. You can frequently perform more than one action on selected e-mails.

IMPORTANT: if you pick delete as your action, those e-mails are gone forever, and you won't have an opportunity to review them before they disappear. It's better to filter them to a folder called, say, Junk, then check that periodically and delete the folder's contents.

One of the most useful things you can set up a filter to do is to put specific e-mails into a specific folder. For example, if you receive e-mail frequently from your friend Alice, you could set up a mail rule like this: If "From" contains "Alice" then "move message" to folder "Alice."

Remember, filters only take effect when new mail is first received. They have no effect on messages that have already been retrieved.

We've included a sample of setup instructions below, including those for Outlook Express 5.0 for the Mac, Outlook 2000 for Windows, Eudora, Netscape Messenger , Mail.app, and procmail. If none of these is close enough to the program you are setting up, or you want to see some screenshots, head for the search engine of your choice (like Google), do a search, and the info you need will surely be there!

Open Outlook Express.

Under Tools in the menu bar, click Rules.

Click New to create a new rule.

You now have a dialog box which gives you choices for setting up your first rule. Set up your criteria and choose your action(s).

You can have many criteria per rule. Just keep clicking Add Criteria to create new ones.

Click Okay.

Open Outlook.

Under Tools in the menu bar, choose Rules Wizard, then click on New to create a new rule.

Click Check messages when they arrive.

Select what to check for when the message arrives. Scroll through the choices and select the one to apply for this rule.

Click Next to specify what to do with the message. Scroll through the choices and select the one to apply for this rule.

Click Next for a screen where you can identify any exceptions.

Click Next, specify a name for the rule and turn the rule on.

Open Eudora.

Under Tools in the menu bar, click on Mail Filter.

Click New.

In the Make Filter dialog box that will pop up, the Match section is where you can enter your criteria for the e-mail you want to filter. You probably want to sort incoming mail, so check Incoming. Choose either "From contains", "Any recipient contains", or "Subject contains" and type in the specific text of what you are trying to filter (for example, check "From contains," and type in "Mom.")

Fill in the Action section of the Make Filter dialog box. You'll probably want to send the filtered mails to a relevantly named mailbox (folder). Move the mouse over the arrow next to None and click. Choose from the list of all the various actions that the filter can do.

You are not limited to one action - you can have your filter perform multiple actions. For example, you can transfer mail to a designated mailbox, and also set it to play a particular sound when mail's been moved there.

Go to File and choose Save to save your changes, or close the Filters window and it will ask you to save your changes.

Open Netscape Messenger.

Under Edit on the menu bar, click Message Filters.

Click New to create a new filter. (This is also the window in which you may edit and delete existing filters, or change the order in which they are applied.)

In the Filter Rules window, type a name for your filter.

Choose the criteria to be used for your filter. Choose Match any of the following or Match all of the following depending on how inclusive you want the filter to be. On the next line, set your criteria.

Choose the action you want to take on any incoming messages that match the filter. For moving them to a folder, you can specify an existing folder or create a new one by clicking New Folder.

If you want, you can add a decription for your filter at the bottom.

Click OK. You will return to the Message Filters window, to create more filters if you wish. When you are finished creating your filters, click OK again.

Open Mail.app.

If you are creating a Mail Rule to sort e-mail into a specific folder, you will need to create that folder first:

Under Mailbox in the menu bar, click on New Mailbox. In the dialog window that opens, name your new folder, and click Okay. It will be saved into the list of folders on the right hand of your Mail.app display.

To create the rule itself, under Mail on the menu bar, select Preferences.

In the Mail Preferences dialog box, highlight the Rules icon, and click Create Rules.

In the Rules dialog box, type a name for your rule, and create your criteria and actions.

Click Okay. This will put you in a list of rules you've created. If you have more than one, you can drag them into the order in which you would like for the filters to be performed. When the order suits your fancy, click Okay.

If you use Pine or mutt to read your e-mail, you will need to use Procmail to filter the messages. Here are some sample "recipes" that can be placed in your .procmailrc file.

To automatically move every message that has been flagged by SpamAssassin as spam to another folder:

:0
* ^X-Spam-Flag: YES
spamfolder

To automatically delete every message that has been flagged by SpamAssassin:

:0
* ^X-Spam-Flag: YES
/dev/null

IMPORTANT NOTE: Test your procmail filters carefully. If you lose mail due to a mistake in a recipe, there is no way to recover it.

More information on procmail can be found here.

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