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Need simpler filter setup
To deal with the overwhelming volume of bulk email (magazines, event notices, linkedin, ...), I use separate folders and filters extensively. However it is cumbersome to add items to filters.
What I have done to simplify this some is to use both address books and filters. I have a magazine filter which filters all of the items in the magazine address book into a folder. To add a new item, I right click on a name and specify "Add to Address Book" (which is really "Move to Personal Address Book") and then right click again and specify "Edit Contact...". One simplification is a composition of these two: "Add to Named Address Book" in the initial menu. This would be useful to anyone using multiple address books.
Unfortunately using address books in this way looses some of the capability of filters, specifically regular expressions, such as "*@mozilla.org". This is particularly useful when I want to filter not only the new clients email, but also other email from the same company, such as their purchasing or contracts department.
OTOH, maybe this is an abuse of address books. Currently when I receive a new email, I can right click on the name and select "Create Filter From...". What would help more is an "Add to Existing Filter" - perhaps with a quick or default option that adds the email name as "from, to, cc, bcc" and a more comprehensive one.
However as filter lists get longer, they are not nice and clean looking like address books. Maybe this is just a presentation thing. In addition, filter lists do not sort like addresses books do, so it is harder to find existing items in them. It would be nice to be able to sort the filter lists either by action or targets (email address or expression).
It would be nice to have a default filter / address book "black list/SPAMMER list".
Vsi odgovori (4)
You can click the star in the message header to add a contact to the address book. The star will then turn yellow. Click the yellow star again will allow you to file the contact to a specific address book.
Thanks, that is cool and helpful.
However, it is not intuitive like having something on the right click menu - and one step from right click would be real nice.
Perhaps one of these add-ons will meet your needs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/search/?q=filter&appver=30.0&platform=windows
I would recommend you try out my Addon quickFilters it has many features for making both managing and creating filters much easier. For instance you can generate a new filter simply by dragging an email to another folder (just activate the filter assistant). Also there are rules for naming filters automatically.
ON top of that I have added a lot of search features such as search for filters with a target folder, merge filters, or search for filters that tag messages.
The latest feature I have just added is a "sort alphabetically", which you can preview here: Filters sort feature