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Message filters

  • 4 respostas
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by Matt

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I'm a relatively new Thunderbird user, having switched over from Apple Mail. I'm running MacOS Monterey v12.3 and Thunderbird 91.8.0. A few days ago I started setting up message filters, to shunt certain types of msgs right into their appropriate subfolder, rather than leaving them in the Inbox. At first it worked like a charm. I set up the filter, then hit the Run Now button, and zap! all the targeted msgs were in their appropriate folder. Yay!

However, now the filters I'm setting up don't seem to be working, and I'm not sure the ones I set up earlier are still working correctly. In one of the bits of conversation on this site I saw something that appeared to say that if you add more email addresses to a particular filter (by clicking the "+" sign to get a new blank line), you are in essence telling the program "If you find [this] AND you find [that], move the msg to [this mail folder]". Which of course usually wouldn't work at all. That list of criteria or definitions needs to be OR, not AND. And since I couldn't find any way to set a switch, it seems to me that the process going on behind the scenes has to be an OR operation.

But, be that as it may (and of course I might be wrong), my message filters still aren't working. I went back and deleted all but one definition from one of the filters, and tried it again. I think it worked? But does that mean that, instead of adding lines to one message filter for various senders whose msgs all should be in that folder, I'll need to set up a new message filter for every unique email address? But if that's the case, why even have an option to add a line to that particular filter definition?

I'm adding a couple screen shots that show what I'm looking at so far. Clearly I'm floundering about. TIA for any information, wisdom, bon mots etc.

[some minutes later...] Ah-HAH! Looking at one of my screen shots, I see something I'd overlooked. The place where you can select "Match all of the following", "Match any of the following", and "Match all messages". I selected "Match any of the following" instead of "Match all", and figured that should fix the problem. But... I'm not sure it did. Then in the spirit of mucking around, I chose "Match all messages" for one of my folders, and now the entire contents of my Inbox has been moved over to my Food folder. Not what I was trying for.

I'm sure I just figured out one piece of the puzzle, but since it's not working the way I expect, there must be something else I'm not seeing. So, still in need of the collective wisdom here.

Regards, Puzzled in Salem, Massachustts

P.S. Aaand now one of my images has gone into perpetual load mode. I'll try to send that one later.

I'm a relatively new Thunderbird user, having switched over from Apple Mail. I'm running MacOS Monterey v12.3 and Thunderbird 91.8.0. A few days ago I started setting up message filters, to shunt certain types of msgs right into their appropriate subfolder, rather than leaving them in the Inbox. At first it worked like a charm. I set up the filter, then hit the Run Now button, and zap! all the targeted msgs were in their appropriate folder. Yay! However, now the filters I'm setting up don't seem to be working, and I'm not sure the ones I set up earlier are still working correctly. In one of the bits of conversation on this site I saw something that appeared to say that if you add more email addresses to a particular filter (by clicking the "+" sign to get a new blank line), you are in essence telling the program "If you find [this] AND you find [that], move the msg to [this mail folder]". Which of course usually wouldn't work at all. That list of criteria or definitions needs to be OR, not AND. And since I couldn't find any way to set a switch, it seems to me that the process going on behind the scenes has to be an OR operation. But, be that as it may (and of course I might be wrong), my message filters still aren't working. I went back and deleted all but one definition from one of the filters, and tried it again. I think it worked? But does that mean that, instead of adding lines to one message filter for various senders whose msgs all should be in that folder, I'll need to set up a new message filter for every unique email address? But if that's the case, why even have an option to add a line to that particular filter definition? I'm adding a couple screen shots that show what I'm looking at so far. Clearly I'm floundering about. TIA for any information, wisdom, bon mots etc. [some minutes later...] Ah-HAH! Looking at one of my screen shots, I see something I'd overlooked. The place where you can select "Match all of the following", "Match any of the following", and "Match all messages". I selected "Match any of the following" instead of "Match all", and figured that should fix the problem. But... I'm not sure it did. Then in the spirit of mucking around, I chose "Match all messages" for one of my folders, and now the entire contents of my Inbox has been moved over to my Food folder. Not what I was trying for. I'm sure I just figured out one piece of the puzzle, but since it's not working the way I expect, there must be something else I'm not seeing. So, still in need of the collective wisdom here. Regards, Puzzled in Salem, Massachustts P.S. Aaand now one of my images has gone into perpetual load mode. I'll try to send that one later.
Capturas de pantalla anexas

All Replies (4)

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(Here's the image that got hung up.)

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You have selected Match all of the following' option which basically means 'AND'. The 'From' will not have all of those of those addresses in one email, so it will fail to work.

To Fix: Select the option 'Match any of the following' This means 'OR', so if any email has any of those 'FROM' email addresses it will move them to 'Garden in Local Folders'

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Apparently time was the missing ingredient. It's working today. Go figure.

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mmorrison32 said

Apparently time was the missing ingredient. It's working today. Go figure.

Do you have an anti virus program scanning in the profile folder? They are known to lock needed files like the inbox so filtering takes a holiday while they play.