After using The Bat for many years, something came up very recently where I am now considering to totally reorganize the way I deal with my e-mails in The Bat.
I would like to move to using Folders instead of multiple e-mail addresses under main addresses.
But before I make this radical change, I'd like to find out what the difference is between actual Folders and Virtual folders?
Could you try to simplify the explanation and give me practical differences? Also the pluses and minuses of each approach (if you have used both)? Thanks.
Mad Batter wrote: After using The Bat for many years, something came up very recently where I am now considering to totally reorganize the way I deal with my e-mails in The Bat. I would like to move to using Folders instead of multiple e-mail addresses under main addresses.
That's not how it works. You cannot not have accounts.
Quote
But before I make this radical change, I'd like to find out what the difference is between actual Folders and Virtual folders? Could you try to simplify the explanation and give me practical differences? Also the pluses and minuses of each approach (if you have used both)?
No. You can't ask people to write a book for you.
Read the documentation () use the search (or Google), and if you still have any specific questions, you're welcome to pose them here. You may also want to explain what you would be trying to achieve, so people can comment on whether that might work or not.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
I'll try to flesh out more what I am after and then maybe someone here can guide me to the best solution.
As I said something happened very recently that has given me pause for thought with how I've been handling The Bat all these years.
I'm pretty sure that I haven't been using The Bat the conventional way and that there's a much better way to handle it.
Because my ISP allowed me to create virtually an unlimited number of e-mail addresses, that's what I did. But it certainly is a bit unwieldy and most people would probably be scratching their heads asking why on earth do I have/use more than 30 e-mail addresses?
Currently I have seven main e-mail addresses and under each one I have 'sub-e-mail addresses'. One address has 10 sub-addresses and another has 15 sub-addresses. I set up The Bat so that when an e-mail is sent to it is filtered into its correct sub-address mailbox. Similarly, when an e-mail is sent to it is filtered into its correct sub-address mailbox.
There are probably many different ways to set up The Bat to get e-mail sorted in a meaningful way. I likely chose an unusual way to achieve this.
I 'd like to hear about what the more conventional ways to organize e-mails are?
What I am aiming to do now is to pare down the number of e-mail accounts I have, from 30+ to just 6 or 7. Then when someone asks for my e-mail address I won't give them one of 30+ addresses, I'll just give them one of six or seven.
After that, I am aiming to set up filters that will throw incoming mail into folders/virtual folders/common folders (whatever that is) so that all of my 'financial' e-mail will appear in one 'financial' folder, and all 'travel' e-mails in a 'travel' folder etc. etc.
I hope I have made myself clear and that there are simple solutions for this.
Mad Batter wrote: Because my ISP allowed me to create virtually an unlimited number of e-mail addresses, that's what I did.
Are all these addresses within a single domain that you own? If they are, what happens when you send mail to an undefined address in that domain?
For instance, if widgets.com is your domain and I send a message to blabla-random-hello321@widgets.com, will I get a "undeliverable - recipient doesn't exist" error or will it be delivered to a so-called catch-all address, which would usually be info@widgets.com?
If all mail to undefined addresses goes to a catch-all address (or can be made to do so - ask your provider), then you don't have to mess with filters in The Bat but you can simply delete those redundant accounts from the mail server, and any and all mail that is still sent to them will go into your catch-all account.
Another approach, if your provider allows you, is to use mailserver forwards. This would cause the server to route all messages for a certain account to a different (usually external) address.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
Hi Daniel thanks for your reply. I'll try to explain in more detail how I've set things up and how they have been working for more than 15 years.
My ISP has a partnership with Yahoo Mail! They work together in mysterious ways. It's a great relationship because when one has a problem they simply refer me to the other company!
For example at the top of the Yahoo Mail! webmail page, there are around 10 buttons to click on. If I'm having a problem which I had a couple of days ago, you would think the 'Tech Support' button would be able to guide me to solving my problem. But it's a trap! If I click on it I am shunted over to my ISP's website !!!
In the partnership with my ISP and Yahoo Mail!, Yahoo Mail knows the 8 or so e-mail addresses I have with my ISP. When I log into my ISP's website, there's a button at the top right that when clicked, will shunt me over to Yahoo Mail's website.
Once there, Yahoo Mail will show all of my ISP's MAIL for the particular account I logged into. There is a special page I can navigate to at Yahoo Mail! that allows me to play around with extra e-mail addresses. The sections are called: - Mailbox list - Send-only e-mail addresses - Temporary e-mail addresses
Mailbox list gives the name of the ISP's e-mail address. () Send only does what it says. I don't use it.
It's in the Temporary e-mail addresses section that I have set up all of my Extra e-mail addresses that I use with The Bat. You set up the e-mails the following way: You start with word/code and it must then be followed by a dash, followed by what they call a 'keyword' and then @yahoo.ca (I'm in Canada) So I have accounts like:
etc.
I don't know the mechanics of how it works, but when someone sends an e-mail to that e-mail goes to my . Same thing for an e-mail sent to etc.
Once it reaches The Bat I catch all these e-mails in my account and use filters to send them to sub-accounts:
etc. etc.
Similarly I have an account (around 8 main accounts) with its own sub-accounts. etc.
To answer your question above: "...what happens when you send mail to an undefined address in that domain? "
The e-mail doesn't go anywhere. So If I send an e-mail to I won't receive it.
I hope this makes it clearer where I am coming from. I still would like to learn about how most users set up and use The Bat.
Is it what I am trying to do now? Use 7-8 e-mail addresses from my ISP. Give one of those 7-8 addresses to my friends, family, businesses etc. Then create folders (virtual/real/common) and SOMEHOW set up filters that will move the incoming e-mail into the folders that were created?
If so, does this involve using an Address Book? Folders? Filters? It seems there are many possibilities.
Obviously once it is set up properly I would eliminate my Yahoo Mail! Temporary e-mail addresses.
7-8 accounts is still a lot. There are different possibilities to manage all that.
One option is to treat one of the accounts as your "main" account and use filters to move messages from other accounts to a folder or folders in that account as the messages arrive.
Another option could be to use *common* virtual folders which work "outside" accounts. For example, you could create a "Unified Inbox" common virtual folder to view all incoming messages from one place.
Miloš Radovanović wrote: 7-8 accounts is still a lot. There are different possibilities to manage all that.
One option is to treat one of the accounts as your "main" account and use filters to move messages from other accounts to a folder or folders in that account as the messages arrive.
Another option could be to use *common* virtual folders which work "outside" accounts. For example, you could create a "Unified Inbox" common virtual folder to view all incoming messages from one place.
Thanks for your reply Milos.
I don't quite get the first option and certainly don't get the second one. Could you give dummy examples of both if possible and how they would work?
Also for the first option, why would you move messages from the 'other accounts' into the "main" account? What would be its purpose?
Mad Batter wrote: I don't quite get the first option and certainly don't get the second one.Could you give dummy examples of both if possible and how they would work?Also for the first option, why would you move messages from the 'other accounts' into the "main" account?What would be its purpose?
I prefer to see all my messages more or less in one "place", i.e., account. But if you want to organize things differently by all means do so.
Virtual folders are little more than views into messages that are stored elsewhere (in "real" folders). As a matter of fact, they are essentially shorthands for F7 search - whatever you can search for can be "formulated" as a (common) virtual folder. The example I gave was again in the spirit of viewing from one place, of course you can organize things differently.
I agree. I use one email address, and filters to sort messages into folders -- IMAP folders, not virtual folders.
I've been using the same email provider, Fastmail.com, for about 25 years. In that time, I've used several email clients. Initially, I had filters set up in Eudora, but when Eudora went south, I had to rewrite my filters. I did the rewrite using the server-side facilities on Fastmail. I did this while still using Eudora (even though its IMAP support was poor). Then I transitioned through a couple of email clients that didn't work out before landing on The Bat. None of these client changes required me to change anything at all in the server-side filters.
Actually, I currently use two clients -- on my phone, I use Aquamail. And occasionally I use Fastmail's webmail. All see the same filtering results, since the filtering drops messages into IMAP folders.
So server-side filtering allows the use of multiple email clients, both simultaneously and over time.
It's true that were I to change email providers, I would have to reconfigure my filters. But history says I'm far more likely to change clients and interfaces than email providers. As I said above, I've been with Fastmail for about 25 years, and given that I'm 75 years old, I probably won't be using Fastmail for another 25 years.
