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
- Filter Actions
- Examples

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.