periodic message filter not working properly
I am on w10 with TB 6.3.0esr (64bit) and I have set a message filter on one of my imap mailboxes which moves messages with a certain address to a local folder. This works as it should. Then I have 3 filters on that local folder which deletes messages with certain header information. I have ticked the "manually run" and the "periodically, every 10 minutes" option. All filters work when I run them manually but the periodic check does not work as it should. I sent some test messages to myself and waited for 30 minutes for the periodic check to do its job but nothing happened. Then I ran the filter manually and the messages were gone.
I could of course apply the filters directly to the incoming mailbox but from my understanding a periodic filter should run regardless of anything else.
Are there known issues with the periodic filter or is there a log file which may show what is going on?
All Replies (6)
filters do not let you specify a folder they are to execute on, so it is not that the filter is not executing, it is executing on the inbox of the account.
Does that mean filters are not executed on local folders? Why then is local folders offered on the drop down list for filters?
That is a list of accounts. "Local Folders is an account. It has an inbox like any other. 99% of my filters are on local folders that use pop and the global inbox. Mail arrives in the global inbox on local folders and filters move them where I need them to be from that inbox. I see exactly no benefit in using IMAP to get mail that I ultimately want in local folders, I use POP and place in in the local folders inbox to start with.
IMAP has it's place, but so does POP. So many people are moving mail from IMAP accounts to local folders, effectively deleting it from the server. They make the job harder for them selves and more error prone for no gain at all really. IF they used POP it would be placed in a local folder (inbox) and be removed from the server at the time of download.
In your case you probably need to fix your copy filter to only copy the messages you want, not try and delete them once you have moved them
I use imap to read my mails with K9 on my phone and with pop-peeper on my desktop and my notebook. When I am at home on my desktop I use thunderbird to store and archive important mails into subfolders of local_folders. Thus imap makes more sense to me than pop.
Normally I do not use any filters to sort my mail but occasionally I use filters on certain topics.
My question is not about a certain way of working though.
I just think that if I put a filter on any item that thunderbird shows in its drop down list and I tell the filter to run periodically then it should do so.
IMAP makes sense, but not on your desktop as IMAP is particularly unsuitable to local archiving.
So use IMAP elsewhere and use pop to clean up your mail server and archive on the desktop. You are already doing that the hard way, using filters
ffsync5 said
I just think that if I put a filter on any item that thunderbird shows in its drop down list and I tell the filter to run periodically then it should do so.
It does run the filter periodically, on the inbox in the Local Folders account. You not understand or accepting that is really irrelevant to the way it works.
I am trying to offer you alternatives to doing what you think you want to do. But I can stop doing that.
Ok, I understand that your saying the filter only applies to the inbox of Local Folders. But there is a drop down box where the filters should run on (see screen shot) And why do my filters work on the specific sub folder when I run them manually?
To me it is not understandable that I can have a filter set up for a sub folder of Local Folders and set a check box to run it periodically when it does not do so by design.
