re :When I receive an email, the filter does run. The message shows up with the appropriate tag and priority.

Does the message show up in the account 'Sent' folder ? Does the sent copy contain the correct email address in the 'To' field ?

re : But the Auto Reply does not return to the sender.

If email was sent to correct email address and you did not get a mailor daemon email from server saying it could not be delivered then it is likely the email was delivered. Hence checking to see if the TO email address was the correct TO email address. It is not known is whether the receiving server put the email in junk.

Did the recipient check to see if the email arrived on the server - by logging on directly to the webmail account via a browser?

TRy setting the following in the test template to see if you get any further info on delivery. Please note - not all servers will respond but it's worth a try.

Open Template email - Options > select 'Delivery Status Notification' Save Template email.

In Message Filter - reselect the 'Reply with Template' and reselect the updated 'Reply' test template.

Run a test. Please make sure the recipient is a completely different email address using a different server from yourself. If you need me to send you an email, so it runs a test and I can report back to you then send me an email with the 'Subject: Test template' to this email address - note I've written it phonetically to avoid spam bots. Email : mail at anje dot co dot uk I will then create an email and send to you - it should get auto picked up by filter and send an auto reply back to me.

Thank you for your reply but this did nothing to solve the problem.

'Does the message show up in the account 'Sent' folder ? Yes

"Does the sent copy contain the correct email address in the 'To' field ? .. It is not known whether the receiving server put the email in junk. " Yes it did have the correct address and it IS known that it was NOT put in the junk folder. It was be the server, it was pulled from the reciving server by thunderbird, the thunderbird filter did run on it setting the received email with a tag and a priority.

"Did the recipient check to see if the email arrived on the server - by logging on directly to the webmail account via a browser?" Yes, the receiver is myself. I sent the test email from a gmail account to an email account in a domain I own. I use thunderbird as my client for that domain I own. The google account the test email was sent from is totally indiependent of the thunderbird client. I repeated sending a test email from a different account, this time one that was a gmail account.. Again the sent message showed up in the sending account's sent folder and it was received by the receiving server and by thunderbird, the filter was run as evidenced by the setting of the tag and priority.

FWIW: Nothing appeared in thruderbird's Sent folder either.

I decided to test this to see what is going on - but I'm on a Windows OS. However, I'm not so sure that should have any effect.

I have just created a Message Filter for Account A

• Filter called 'test reply'
• Filter before junk classification
• Match all the following
• 'Subject' 'contains' 'chicken run'
• 'Reply with Template': 'table layout test'
• 'Set Priority': Highest'
• 'Tag Message': Test

Using Account B (my own domain) in From - Create email with Subject: 'chicken run' send from account B in Thunderbird and send TO Account A also a mail account in Thunderbird. Account B has copy of sent email showing Subject : chicken run

Account A receives email in Inbox with Subject 'chicken run' Noted: It has Tag : Test and Priority: Highest In the Message List - 'Subject' it's showing a left point arrow implying it has been replied. Checked Account A Sent folder I can see a sent email with Subject as follows: Auto: table layout test (was: chicken run)

Now check the original account sending account as it would now be receiving the auto reply. Account B receives email in 'Inbox' with 'Subject' : Auto: table layout test (was: chicken run)

Additional info : Account A and B are POP accounts. Account G is gmail imap account.

Please check the info you have in the Message Filter logs.

• Tools > Message Filter
• Clicked on 'Filter Log'
• If this has not been enabled then nothing is displayed - in which case select the checkbox 'Enable the filter Log' and click on 'Close'
• Then repeat your tests.

In my case ...At the bottom of log, the last entry said:

[31/03/2023, 4:44:04 pm] Applied filter "test reply" to message from my name<mail@mydomain.co.uk> - chicken run at 31/03/2023, 4:43:38 pm replied

[31/03/2023, 4:44:04 pm] Applied filter "test reply" to message from my name<mail@mydomain.co.uk> - chicken run at 31/03/2023, 4:43:38 pm priority changed

[31/03/2023, 4:44:04 pm] Applied filter "test reply" to message from my name<mail@mydomain.co.uk> - chicken run at 31/03/2023, 4:43:38 pm tagged

I then tested sending from a gmail account 'Account G' which also have in Thunderbird - to Account A which has the filter and the result was identical.

So I can confirm this type of auto reply is working as expected.

Can you post the info you see in the 'Filter Log'. Please note the 'Subject' will change, so you may be looking for a slight modification. eg: Original message 'Subject: chicken run' becomes a Reply 'Subject : Auto: table layout test (was: chicken run)'

I did not notice the filter log. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

I get these 3 lines at the same time.

[3/31/23, 16:25:16 GMT-4] Applied filter "NoReply" to message from "..." <...> - test 27 at 3/31/23, 16:25:12 GMT-4 replied

[3/31/23, 16:25:16 GMT-4] Applied filter "NoReply" to message from "..." <...> - test 27 at 3/31/23, 16:25:12 GMT-4 priority changed

[3/31/23, 16:25:16 GMT-4] Applied filter "NoReply" to message from "..." <...> - test 27 at 3/31/23, 16:25:12 GMT-4 tagged

Then some added lines for a second filter that gets run. Then I get this.

[3/31/23, 16:25:16 GMT-4] Filter action failed: "Sending reply aborted" with error code=0x80004004 while attempting: Applied filter "NoReply" to message from "..." <...> - test 27 at 3/31/23, 16:25:12 GMT-4 replied

I googled the error code and found a number of posts referrring to autoreply did not work unless the account sending the email is entered as an identity in thunderbird. That is not practical as I cannot enter as an identity all the people who may email me. But even if I did, the latest test I ran above for which the log is supplied above, the email account the original message was sent from (A3) was an identity in thunderbird as was the identity of the email that was being addressed (B).

As far as acounts, I have used these.

Account A1: a gmail.com account, not an indenity in Thunderbird Account B: an account in my domain provided by ionos.com, with an identity in Thunderbird. Account A2: a ***.edu account, not an identity in Thunderbird. Account A3: a different account in my domain provided by Ionos.com with an identity in Thunderbird.

"Account G is gmail imap account". I did not see anyrefernces to account G in your preevious email, so I do not know where that fits in. In my case, thunderbird uses POP for account B and A3. Accounts A2 and A3 have no identity in thunderbird.

OK.

I tested again and this time I logged onto my mothers webmail account to send an email to me. Her account is Not an identity in Thunderbird. I sent it to my email address which is an identity in Thunderbird. It sent it to the identity which has the auto reply template. All worked as before, she did receive the auto reply email.

I do not think this has anything to do with account sending the email is entered as an identity, because that is hardly ever going to be the case - you would be sending to yourself to all intents and purposes.

Then I checked my filter: I had this settings 'Filter before junk classification' I changed it because in reality you want to check After. So I set : Filter After junk classification' Repeated test and now I get same error as you. I can reproduce this.

So the issue only arises if you set to filter AFTER junk classification.

This gave me an idea so I made another change in the filter; I reset 'Filter before junk classification' In the conditions I set up: 'FROM' 'is in my address book' and chose 'Personal Address Book'

Obviously you can add more address books, but be careful to select 'Match any of the following' so it means is in any of the address books. This would now only reply to people who are in any of my address books which would not include spam speculative emails.

Tested again and Bingo it works.

My issue was not the junk mail classification but you said something in your post which did lead me to what I think is the problem.

There is a difference between a TB account and a TB identity. I have one TB account with a number of TB identities because I have a number of forwarding addresses. So I have PRIMARY@DOMAIN as a regular email account and ALIAS1@DOMAIN, ALIAS2@DOMAIN, etc which are all forwarding addresses to PRIMARY@DOMAIN.

In TB I have the account for PRIMARY@DOMAIN and within that account I also set up identities for ALIAS1@DOMAIN, etc. I can both send and receive emails using either the PRiMARY or ALIAS addresses.

BUT, the TB AutoReplay fails if the email that is being replied to is anything but the PRIMARY email address (even though the other addresses or identities).

TH, thanks for all your help.

I would classify this as a "bug" in TB. If I can manually reply to an identity, I see no reason why I should not be able to auto-reply to an identity. If not a bug in function, it is a bug in documentation. And documentation bugs are no less serious.

Idea: You could create several instances of yourself as a contact in an address book one for each of those 'identities'. Both Primary email address and all the others - just a list of yourself as contact for all email addreses.

Possibly create a new address book called 'Just me' to contain all of those email address/identities. Then use a 'To, Cc' 'is in an address book' 'Just Me'.

Does that force it to work ?

What I have in my address book is not the issue. Some of the aliases are in the address book. The issue is the configuration in TB. I did try creating one of the identities in TB as a separate account. But I found out TB does not allow one to create two accounts that use the same incoming server (at least I got such an error message when I tried to set it up).

I have solved my problem by bypassing TB by forwarding email to another account that can do the auto-reply.

So I have found a workaround to get done what I need to get done.

Thanks for your help.