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Thunderbird filter running order
I have created many filters, and on the whole they work well. But I have one that doesn't work as I'd like it to. I have a friend with whom I correspond regularly, often with the words 'Lunch Club' in the subject line. My wife also corresponds with a (different) group and uses 'Lunch Club' in the subject line. I have set up a filter with the intention of filtering my friend's e-mails first, using his e-mail address (as in 'from contains friend's email'). There's a second filter that filters any subject line 'Lunch Club' into my wife's in-box. Unfortunately ALL 'Lunch Club' e-mails end up in my wife's in-box, including my friend's messages, even though his filter is run first. Having read through the article on setting filters, I begin to suspect that this may be intentional behaviour as described here (extract from Mozilla Support 'Organize Your Messages by Using Filters'): "Filters are executed in the order they appear in the list of filters, except when that order is not possible, in which case you will see the message Note: Filter actions will be run in a different order, and the link See execution order. If you click the link, you will see which order is used. For example: If you have a filter that moves a message to another folder, and then further down the list a filter that replies, the reply filter will not work because the message is gone from the folder. In this case, Thunderbird will change the order, so the reply filter will be executed before the move filter. " I don't recall ever having seen seen the link 'See execution order'. Is there a recognised way of avoiding this problem? Regards, Tim Dawson
All Replies (3)
I can only offer two suggestions: - never place a filter below another where both refer to the same message - always use as many conditions as possible in a filter to ensure it selects only what is needed. I will agree that it's sometimes difficult to figure that out. :)
Thank you. Ideally my filters don't refer to the same message. My expectation was that I could first filter out messages from my friend (using his e-mail address as the criterion). I thought that would happen irrespective of Subject Line (which might sometimes be 'Lunch Club'). Then filter out other messages by Subject Line 'Lunch Club'. But it seems TB doesn't play ball! It moves them all according to the second filter.
Any chance you could post both filters, noting which comes first?