Organizing Your Mail Messages

Folders and Filters

You can sort mail in 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's 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 10.10) will appear.

Figure 10.10. 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

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, change the message's priority, etc. More than one action can be selected.

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 the OK button 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 purposes a simple way to treat unsolicited mail messages, also known as “spam”: the junk mail control. Clicking on this button in the tool-bar will mark the currently selected message as “junk-mail”. This way, you can train Mozilla Mail 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 not junk-mail.

Choose Tools->Junk Mail Controls... from the menu to display the junk control window (Figure 10.11). 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-mail. The different options available explain themselves: feel free to explore them.

Figure 10.11. Junk Mail Control Options

Junk Mail Control Options

Note

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