Organizing Your Mail Messages

Folders and Filters

You can sort mail into different folders according to specified criteria (sender, subject, date, etc.) using filters. Filters are very powerful, but in this guide we will only be able to look at some simple filter rules. Feel free to explore the filters tool (Tools->Message Filters).

Let us assume you want to filter incoming messages according to the sender and you have at least one message from that sender in your Inbox folder. You want all incoming e-mail from someuser@somecompany.net to go directly into the SomeUser folder.

Highlight the message from the sender you want to filter and choose Message->Create Filter From Message from the menu. The filter creation window (Figure 9.10, “The Filter Creation Window”) will appear.

Figure 9.10. The Filter Creation Window

The Filter Creation Window

If the SomeUser folder does not exist, click on the New Folder button. In the Name field, enter the name of the new folder (SomeUser in our example). The Create as a sub-folder of pull-down list specifies the parent folder for the one you are about to create. Select the desired parent folder by navigating the folder tree and selecting Choose this for the parent. Click OK to create the new folder.

[Note]Note

The filter can also execute other actions (moving to a folder is the default one, and is preselected), for example: label the message as important, delete the message, delete the message from the POP3 server, change the message's priority, etc. More than one action can be selected.

[Tip]Tip

Select the Delete from POP server action to prevent downloading any messages which match the filter rule. This can be very useful for handling spam messages: they are deleted directly on the server.

And that's all. You can change the Filter name if you want to (by default the filter's name is sender's mail address). Use the More and Fewer buttons to add and remove filtering criteria to the rule and, once you are satisfied with your settings, click on OK to accept the rule. You can create as many filtering rules as you want. By moving rules up and down in the Message Filters list, you can actually create a very complex and efficient set of filtering rules.

Dealing With Spam

Mozilla Messenger suggests a simple way to deal with unsolicited mail messages, also known as “spam”: the junk mail control. Clicking on this button in the toolbar will mark the currently selected message as junk mail. This way, you can train Mozilla to have it recognize messages similar to the one selected as spam and perform actions on them. Click again on the button to mark a junk-mail message as good mail.

Choose Tools->Junk Mail Controls from the menu and click on OK to display the junk-control window (Figure 9.11, “Junk-Mail Control Options”). The example configures the junk-mail control to move messages determined to be junk mail to the Junk folder of the defined account, automatically delete junk mail after two weeks and immediately delete messages manually marked as junk. The different options available are self-explanatory.

Figure 9.11. Junk-Mail Control Options

Junk-Mail Control Options
[Note]Note

The Junk folder will be automatically created, if needed, when the “move messages determined to be junk” option is activated.