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Filters - How to distinguish between email address and name?

  • 6 majibu
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  • Last reply by sfhowes

StarliteLemming
StarliteLemming
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One of the reasons I wanted to move away from Outlook was that it was unable to tell the difference between an email address, a name, and the combination of both. Now it seems I may have stumbled upon exactly the same problem in Thunderbird.

I try to use Filters to distinguish difference types of email (for the record, I'm setting up a heap of Tags with different colours, and letting auto-filters assign appropriate Tags -- poor-man's colour highlighting).

I had a Filter that applied to messages with the "From" field equal to "mailer@company.com" (not their real name).

However, they changed their mail-out address to "noreply@company.com", so I had to change the filter. Rather than risking missing important emails again (I missed a few), I tried changing the filter to the "From" field *contains* "@company.com" -- and now the filter fails to hit *any* of their mail, when run.

I suspect Thunderbird is only attempting to match the "name" in the "From" field, rather than both "name" and "email address", or "email address" alone. In this case, the full "From" field is "Parent Company <noreply@company.com>".

First question is, is there something else I could try?

Second question is, why can't I specify which part of the "To", "From", "Cc" and "Bcc" fields are searched?!

Seriously, this is a major design flaw (that has been part of Outlook forever). It can be **really** important to distinguish email addresses from Contact Names, and from names accompanying email addresses. That's especially true in a case like mine where I'm working with partial matches. It's not hard to formulate a scenario where an attempt to match just a name also started matching spurious email addresses -- and especially vice versa!

Anyway, I hope someone can help me out. Thank you.

One of the reasons I wanted to move away from Outlook was that it was unable to tell the difference between an email address, a name, and the combination of both. Now it seems I may have stumbled upon exactly the same problem in Thunderbird. I try to use Filters to distinguish difference types of email (for the record, I'm setting up a heap of Tags with different colours, and letting auto-filters assign appropriate Tags -- poor-man's colour highlighting). I had a Filter that applied to messages with the "From" field equal to "mailer@company.com" (not their real name). However, they changed their mail-out address to "noreply@company.com", so I had to change the filter. Rather than risking missing important emails again (I missed a few), I tried changing the filter to the "From" field *contains* "@company.com" -- and now the filter fails to hit *any* of their mail, when run. I suspect Thunderbird is only attempting to match the "name" in the "From" field, rather than both "name" and "email address", or "email address" alone. In this case, the full "From" field is "Parent Company <noreply@company.com>". First question is, is there something else I could try? Second question is, why can't I specify which part of the "To", "From", "Cc" and "Bcc" fields are searched?! Seriously, this is a major design flaw (that has been part of Outlook forever). It can be **really** important to distinguish email addresses from Contact Names, and from names accompanying email addresses. That's especially true in a case like mine where I'm working with partial matches. It's not hard to formulate a scenario where an attempt to match just a name also started matching spurious email addresses -- and especially vice versa! Anyway, I hope someone can help me out. Thank you.

All Replies (6)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Post the exact From: header as shown in the message source (Ctrl+U), as this may be different from what is shown in the message header in the Threads Pane. A good way to test filter criteria is to apply them in Classic Search (Ctrl+Shift+F), since if messages aren't found with search, they won't be found by a filter.

curls3
curls3
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I want to filter by the Name in the address field, and not the actual address.

KetoVIP <ernest@goeshome>

I want to filter by "KetoVIP" not by ernest@

How do I?

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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curls3 said
I want to filter by the Name in the address field, and not the actual address. KetoVIP <ernest@goeshome> I want to filter by "KetoVIP" not by ernest@ How do I?

Does From + contains + KetoVIP for the filter rule work with Classic Search?

curls3
curls3
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You asked "Does From + contains + KetoVIP for the filter rule work with Classic Search?"

That's exactly the problem. It does NOT. If you put KetoVIP using a From and Contains, it doesn't filter. If you put the contents of the email address into the From and Contains then it does filter.

What can I do to get the filter using From and Contains to recognize the NAME, and not just the EMAIL ADDRESS that are in the From field?

curls3
curls3
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sfhowes said
Post the exact From: header as shown in the message source (Ctrl+U), as this may be different from what is shown in the message header in the Threads Pane. A good way to test filter criteria is to apply them in Classic Search (Ctrl+Shift+F), since if messages aren't found with search, they won't be found by a filter.

I never new about Ctrl+U as easy way to see the whole header, and hadn't thought of that. That solves it for some of my filtering!

On others...

The FROM in the header has "=?utf-8?Q?=D2=9Ceto?= VIP" which then displays as Keto VIP (in the From field.)

Putting any part of "=?utf-8?Q?=D2=9Ceto?= VIP" into the search filter doesn't work. How can I put something into the search that picks up that coded mess?

Thanks!

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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The =?utf-.... string is a graphic image that is designed to foil filters based on text strings. I think you will have to examine other headers in the source to find a common string that can be added to a filter. If the header isn't one of the standard ones such as From, Body etc., you can add a custom header and filter accordingly.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Filters_(Thunderbird)#Custom_headers