Filter Configuration
This Filter Configuration screen is where you can add new filters
or modify existing ones.
In order to determine whether or not a message matches a filter, the
message is compared with the Filter's Pattern. Once a filter match is
found for a particular message, there are some actions which may be
taken.
NOTE: When you set up a Pattern to delete messages, it is recommended
that you test the Pattern first with a "Move" folder in case unintended
matches occur. Messages that are deleted will be removed from the folder
and may be unrecoverable.
Filter Patterns
- Nickname:
This is a nickname to help you. You should have a different nickname for
each filtering rule you define. The nickname will be used in the Message
Filtering screen to allow you to pick a rule to edit.
- To:
Any text you enter as the "To pattern" will be compared to the recipients
from the To: line of messages when WebPine
opens folders. When the text you entered matches all or part of the To:
line of a message, then the Filter Action you
have specified will be carried out. (Any other non-blank parts of the
Pattern must match, too.)
You may enter a complete email address, part of an address, or a
comma-separated list of addresses or partial
addresses. For example:
To: = friend@public.com
To: = rated.net
To: = admin@public.com, admin@msn.com, fool@motleyfool.com
Each of those are valid "To patterns".
Messages match those patterns if any of the addresses in the To: line
of the message contains the pattern. If the pattern is a comma-separated
list of patterns (like the last example above) then it is a match if any
of the patterns in the list match any of the addresses in the To: line.
(It is not possible to specify two addresses which must BOTH be present
for a match. It is only possible to specify that EITHER address1 OR
address2 must be present. That is exactly what the comma-separated list
does.)
Some messages may be "bounced" to you, and will have a "Resent-To:"
header line. If the message contains a Resent-To: line, WebPine will look
for matches to your "To: patterns" there, and NOT in the original To:
line.
- From:
This is just like the "To pattern" except that it is compared with the
address in the From: line of the message instead of the addresses from the
To: line. See the help for the To pattern for more information on header
patterns.
- Sender:
This is just like the "To pattern" except that it is compared with the
address from the Sender: line of the message
instead of the addresses from the To: line. See the help for the To
pattern for more information on header patterns.
- Cc:
This is just like the "To pattern" except that it is compared with the
addresses from the Cc: line of the message instead of the addresses from
the To: line. See the help for the To pattern for more information on
header patterns.
- Recipient:
This is just like the "To pattern" except that it is compared with the
addresses from both the To: line and the Cc:
line of the message instead of just the addresses from the To: line. In
other words, it is considered a match if the
pattern matches EITHER an address in the To: line OR an address in the Cc:
line. (Notice that defining the Recipient
pattern does not have the same effect as defining both the To and Cc
patterns. Recipient is To OR Cc; not To AND Cc.
It is equivalent to having two different rules; one with a To pattern and
the other with the same Cc pattern.)
- Participants:
This is just like the "To pattern" except that it is compared with the
addresses from the From: line, the To: line, and the Cc: line of the
message instead of just the addresses from the To: line. In other words,
it is considered a match if the pattern matches EITHER an address in the
From: line, OR an address in the To: line, OR an address in the Cc: line.
(Notice that defining the Participant pattern does not have the same
effect as defining all of the From, To, and Cc patterns. Participant is
From OR To OR Cc; not From AND To AND Cc. It is equivalent to having
three different rules; one with a From pattern, another with the same To
pattern, and a third with the same Cc pattern.)
- Newsgroups:
If this pattern is non-blank, then for this rule to be considered a match,
at least one of the newsgroups from the
Newsgroups line of the message must match this pattern. If this pattern is
a comma-separated list of patterns, then at
least one of the newsgroups must match at least one of the patterns. (Any
other non-blank parts of the Pattern must
match, too.)
- Subject:
This is similar to the other parts of the Pattern. It is compared with the
contents from the Subject of the message.
If you enter non-ASCII characters in this field then the search will be
done using the character set you have defined with the "character-set"
configuration variable. (The truly sophisticated may use an alternate
character set for a search by entering the MIME encoding of the header
string here.)
- All Text:
This is similar to the header patterns. Instead of comparing with text in
a particular header field it is compared with all of the text in the
message header and body.
If you enter non-ASCII characters in this field then the search will be
done using the character set you have defined
with the "character-set" configuration variable. (The truly sophisticated
may use an alternate character set for a
search by entering the MIME encoding of the header string here.)
It is possible that you may notice degraded performance when using
AllText Patterns.
- Message is New
This part of the Pattern may have one of three possible values. The
default value is "Don't care", which matches any message. The other two
values are "Yes", which means the message must be "New" in order to be a
match; or "No", which means the message must not be "New" in order to be a
match. "New" is the same as Unseen and not "New" is the same as Seen.
- Message is Deleted
This part of the Pattern may have one of three possible values. The
default value is "Don't care", which matches any message. The other two
values are "Yes", which means the message must be marked "Deleted" in
order to be a match; or "No", which means the message must not be marked
"Deleted" in order to be a match.
If you are thinking of using this part of the Pattern as a way to
prevent messages from being filtered more than once in a Filter Pattern,
take a look at the Filter Option "move-only-if-not-deleted" instead. It
should work better than using this field since it will hide the filtered
messages even if they are already Deleted. That option is at the bottom of
the Filter configuration screen.
- Message is Important
This part of the Pattern may have one of three possible values. The
default value is "Don't care", which matches any message. The other two
values are "Yes", which means the message must be flagged "Important" in
order to be a match; or "No", which means the message must not be flagged
"Important" in order to be a match.
- Message is Answered
This part of the Pattern may have one of three possible values. The
default value is "Don't care", which matches any message. The other two
values are "Yes", which means the message must be marked "Answered" in
order to be a match; or "No", which means the message must not be marked
"Answered" in order to be a match.
Filter Actions
The Filter Action specifies the action to be taken when the Pattern is a
match. It may be either Delete or Move
If you set it to "Move", then provide the name of the folder to which
the matching message should be moved in the corresponding text box. You
may type a list of folders separated by commas, in which case the message
will be copied to all of the folders in the list before it is deleted.
Move only if not deleted
If you set this option then a message
will be moved into the specified folder only if it is not marked for
deletion. This is useful if you have multiple Pine or WebPine sessions
running simultaneously and you don't want messages to be filtered into a
folder more than once. It is also useful if you want to filter only the
"undeleted" messages in a newsgroup into a folder. This method is not
foolproof. There may be cases where a message gets marked deleted and so
it is never filtered into the folder. For example, if you deleted it in
another Pine or WebPine session or another mail program that didn't use
the filtering rule.
This option has no effect if the Filter Action is not set to Move.
Examples
To create a filter to move all incoming messages from
"sue@travelworld.com" to your "Vacation" folder, add the following to the
Filter Configuration screen:
Nickname: Travelworld
From: sue@travelworld.com
Move filter action:Vacation
Click Save to add the filter.
To create a filter to delete all incoming messages that contain the
text "Make Money fast!" in the subject line, add the following to your
Filter Configuration screen:
Nickname: Make Money
Subject: Make Money Fast!
Delete: (Click next to this option)
Reminder: It is a very good idea to test this with the "Move to Folder"
option in case unintended matches occur.
Click Save to add the filter.