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filtering - manuel run on selected or all emails
 
Hi,

Greetings, I have returned to TheBat!  My Eudora was simply not reliable for downloading Verizon from their new AOL host.
Using 7.4.2 on Windows 10.  Willing to upgrade.
So far quite pleased.

These filter and search (find) areas are a little tricky, and Eudora is quite robust in those areas, so bear with me a bit.
It looks to me that search and find is handled through Virtual Folders, so I will leave that aside for now. Eudora only has static search.

A couple of filter questions, these all relate to manual filters, not inbound.

Can we filter on all downloaded messages?  
And I noticed there  is Read Messages and Replied Messages, but how about ALL Messages.
Plus can such a filter run on all Mailboxes? (Presumably a Common Filter.)

Similarly can we make and apply a filter simply to a group of highlighted messages?
(In Eudora, this is Special-Filter Messages, and the manual filters act on the msgs.)
Or, similarly, to one mailbox? Or selected multiple mailboxes?

Can I filter (or search) looking for specific text in the mailbox?
(Or should I first create a virtual folder, which allows text search. That would be reasonable, if that is the way.)

Why does Special->Create Filter-->Edit .. not bring up a form, it simply blings away.

Am I missing a spot of explanation like on a video somewhere?

Thanks!

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY
Edited: Steven Avery - 03 May 2018 01:57:21
 
Some comments and answers:

Special | Create Filter is a simple dialog to make simple filters quickly. For the full filter creation/management dialog, see Account | Sorting Office/Filters.

The main Help item on filters can be found at https://www.ritlabs.com/en/support/help/64/

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A couple of filter questions, these all relate to manual filters, not inbound.

(note that manual and inbound are not mutually exclusive. Filters from all categories can be made manual, and can then be applied to messages of all kinds).

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Can we filter on all downloaded messages?

Yes if you first select the desired messages.

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Plus can such a filter run on all Mailboxes? (Presumably a Common Filter.)

Yes, but (as far as I know) not on all at the same time. A manual filter is executed on the current message or on the current selection of messages.

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Similarly can we make and apply a filter simply to a group of highlighted messages?

If you mean selected messages, yes.

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Can I filter (or search) looking for specific text in the mailbox?

I guess you could use a filter for that (in the case of specific frequently recurring searches) but the more common everyday approach is to simply use Tools | Search (F7).

Note: a filter sets up certain qualification criteria and certain actions. For instance, a filter might look for messages that contain "Widget" and then Copy them to folder "Sales". However, when you make a filter fully manual (i.e. it will not be run automatically when new messages arrive, or are replied, etc.), then by default it will apply its action to all selected messages. So, if you select ten random messages and press your hotkey for this filter, all 10 will be copied to Sales, regardless of whether they contain Widget or not. If you want the filter to apply its qualification criteria (so it will only copy the messages that actually contain Widget), then you must enable the "Check the messages against this rule" option.

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These filter and search (find) areas are a little tricky

Not my experience..
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Hi Daniel, thanks for the great help!

I'll be looking at this more shortly.  However, trying it out some questions arise.

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"Selected – Selected messages settings (the cursor is on the message)" - text from Ritlabs

What does it mean to have all the messages in a mailbox selected?
Is it sufficient simply to have the cursor on the mailbox name at the top level?

===========

These are the Office/Sorting sections. ( Although the specific filter can be applied to selected Folders)

Incoming mail
Outgoing mail
Read messages
Replied messages
Selective Download

If I want to mark a filter as manual only and run it on all my messages (e.g. to move or to make a copy to some special spot-- of all messages that have a specific text match) does it matter which section in which I create the filter?

And I see the hotkey method of triggering the filter. How would I trigger a specific filter otherwise, say for all the mail in mailbox.

(It did not seem to capture all my posts with the specific text, I am using the same text search as I have in a virtual folder for comparison.)

A tutorial online would be nice about manual filtering :)  Am I missing some basics?

Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 03 May 2018 09:39:58
 
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"Selected – Selected messages settings (the cursor is on the message)" - text from Ritlabs

That's part of the help text for Color Groups, which is not directly related to filters (it describes how different types of messages will be displayed in the message list).

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If I want to mark a filter as manual only and run it on all my messages (e.g. to move or to make a copy to some special spot-- of all messages that have a specific text match) does it matter which section in which I create the filter?

No, I don't think that matters. To my best knowledge, when you select a bunch of messages and press the hotkey that you've set up for a filter, that filter will be applied to all selected messages regardless of the category that the filter was made in.

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And I see the hotkey method of triggering the filter. How would I trigger a specific filter otherwise, say for all the mail in mailbox.

I don't think there's an alternative. Filters can be triggered automatically as messages come in, are read, replied to, or sent. Or you can use the Refilter command to apply certain classes of filters to the current folder. But to trigger one specific filter, I know of no other way than to use a hotkey.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Great info.  Thanks, Daniel. Appreciated. (  I can accept hot-keys as a reasonable try, although I am generally mouse-centric.)

And I am still not sure how to "Select" messages for manual hot-key filtering.
e.g. All messages. Or a group of 50 in one mailbox.
Presumably highlighting within a mailbox for the 50?  Like the colour groups.  Am I missing something basic?

Now here is my zinger question.  

My basic philosophy of mail is two-step filtering.  

First everything goes to a special inbox section which is fairly large groups of maybe 20 overall groups. And a couple of them are real important (e.g. personal mail.) And one is a final catchall box of everything that was unfiltered (rather than landing in Inbox). And  I think that is rather easy to do with TB! and rather similar to Eudora as well.

Then I want to do a massive 2nd filter, where the mail - e.g. "inbox-Travel" goes into individual boxes "Southwest" "Expedia" "Hotels.com"

Can a hot-key trigger 100 manual filters?  Is that the trick?

In Eudora essentially you said simply "filter these messages" and it goes down the filter row for manuals.  Quite effective. Actually it has a checkbox-mailbpx method for which boxes you are working with.  And I saw a similar checkbox-mailbox approach somewhere in TheBox! Is that in the "Apply Filter" motif?  And is basically based on the hot-key method?

Overall, happy with TheBat!
(Later, I do have to check about backing up and also moving from one puter to another. And I have a bunch of questions outside filtering.)

Thanks!
Edited: Steven Avery - 08 May 2018 17:55:40
 
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Steven Avery wrote:
And I am still not sure how to "Select" messages for manual hot-key filtering.

Well, you put your cursor on a message in the list and it's selected, simple as that :)  Use Shift-click to select a range, Control-click to add or remove messages to your selection, Ctrl-A to Select All, et cetera.

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Can a hot-key trigger 100 manual filters?  Is that the trick?

You can use the Folder | Re-filter command and assign a hotkey to it, but that would run all active manual filters in the folder - not sure if that's what you need?

Your 'stage 2' sounds well-suited for automatic filters, wouldn't you rather use those and just sit back while The Bat takes care of it?

Backing up: I don't use The Bat's backup feature, I just include its mail directory in my regular system backups. Likewise, you could move the contents of that directory to The Bat's mail directory on another PC.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Thanks. Good info.

I've got a few questions that don't really need their own thread.  (Is that legal?)

Let's take a simple one.

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Moving filters.  It looks like they only go up and down one at a time?  

You might want to move one from the bottom to the top (e.e. with a "continue processing with other filters" checkmark to make sure that is only what happens.)

One at a time won't do.  
You could Copy, Delete and Paste, but that seems to put the filter at the bottom of the section.

What am I missing?

Stevem
 
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Steven Avery wrote:

Moving filters.  It looks like they only go up and down one at a time?

I'm afraid so. I use Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down. I don't think there's a way to move multiple filters around at the same time, or to make them jump to the top or bottom.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
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 Steven   Avery  wrote:

Moving filters.  It looks like they only go up and down one at a time?
I'm afraid so. I use Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down. I don't think there's a way to move multiple filters around at the same time, or to make them jump to the top or bottom.
And when you Copy and Delete and Paste they always end up in the bottom of the section.  So that would solve some situations. And any new filter you add also goes to the bottom of the section, there is no real insert?  Always to the bottom.

If you want to go uphill, no easy way if you have hundreds?  Any thoughts as to how to create a new one on top? Or middle?  Sometimes I actually section my filters, using an inactive filter "---- Forums" to start a new virtual section.

Eudora is pretty strong on all this. I may have to go simpler.

Is the filter file a text file?  Does anyone play there? Of course, you could mess stuff up.  That was an occasional way in Eudora and one fella wrote a $6 utility that was designed for text file filter maintenance.  He did not give up his day job.
 
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Steven Avery wrote:

Is the filter file a text file?

No, apparently not. They're stored in a file named account.srx.

If you want them in text format, you could copy your filters to the clipboard, paste them into a text editor, work on them there and then paste them back. I doubt if that would really be faster though (they're multi-line blocks -not easy to sort like that- and I don't know if The Bat will re-sort them when you paste them back).
Edited: Daniel van Rooijen - 19 May 2018 15:16:24
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Here is a question or suggestion.

I get some mail, e.g. Wordpress blogs, where the:

Sender is very uninformative e.g. donotreply@wordpress.com
Subject varies .. (of course I could ask the source to put in a common identifier, like [myblog] in each subject)

Yet the Name (or From in the Message List) is informative and constant.

Ergo, it would be good to have a sort capability for that From.

Or find any workaround.

Your thoughts?
Edited: Steven Avery - 23 May 2018 16:01:13
 
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Steven Avery wrote:
Ergo, it would be good to have a sort capability for that From.

But you can just click on the 'From' column header to sort on it, can't you? (I can)
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
Quote
 Steven   Avery  wrote:
Ergo, it would be good to have a sort capability for that From.
But you can just click on the 'From' column header to sort on it, can't you? (I can)
Oh, I meant getting the five or ten senders from that same domain together in one spot.

In the proposed From(domain) column.

Without setting up a special (permanent or temporary) tab that only looks at stuff from that domain. (A good suggestion for major ones.)

=======================================

Sometimes filters seem to be not working completely. And stuff ends up in the Inbox that I know there is a filter which places it in its own box. (And since I do not filter anything to the Inbox, it can not be an earlier filter.)  Any ideas why this occurs? Or best troubleshooting method?  

===========

Normally, I would simply place a  filter right at the top, and tell it to end filtering.  However, I think we decided that filters have to go to the bottom, and then they only go up one at a time.  

Is there a way to put a new filter in the top?

===========

Thanks!
Edited: Steven Avery - 28 May 2018 15:45:37
 
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Sometimes filters seem to be not working completely. And stuff ends up in the Inbox that I know there is a filter which places it in its own box. (And since I do not filter anything to the Inbox, it can not be an earlier filter.)  Any ideas why this occurs? Or best troubleshooting method?

I don't think I've ever noticed this myself. I'd take a good look at the filter definition and at the message that should have triggered it. Theoratically, the message may also have triggered a previous filter that did not use the "continue processing with other filters" option - and then the current filter would never get to see it.

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Normally, I would simply place a  filter right at the top, and tell it to end filtering.  However, I think we decided that filters have to go to the bottom, and then they only go up one at a time.  

Is there a way to put a new filter in the top?

I don't think there is :(
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Tool Tip
Did you know...
You can specify a filter to be executed before a range of filters - select the filter in the hierarchy tree and drag it up and drop where it is supposed to be

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So far I have not seen drag and drop in any way with filters.
Am I missing something?
 
Back to the filter.

It seems that The Bat! is a bit unusual with the:

"Sender" *"Contains"  concept..
I had "@facebookmail.com" and that is not a match. I want any email that ends with that to go to one spot.

And I probably need to have  "ends with" as the safest.  
Although some others might work?.

If that is right, then I still would like to know the difference between "Contains" and  "Match"
I went over some of the earlier puzzles in the forum.

=================

And what does "move out" and "move in" do ?

=================

Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 30 May 2018 02:05:32
 
And here is a little question.

A single filter can not be used for both Incoming and manual refiltering?

Have to make two filters?

Any reason why?

Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 03 June 2018 00:43:07
 
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
Quote
Steven Avery wrote: And I am still not sure how to "Select" messages for manual hot-key filtering.
Well, you put your cursor on a message in the list and it's selected, simple as that Use Shift-click to select a range, Control-click to add or remove messages to your selection, Ctrl-A to Select All, et cetera.

The three commands above are all within one folder?  (The emphasis is CTRL-A.)    
Is there any more global selection method possible?

e.g. All the mail in all the folders withing an account.
Or all the mail in a folder with its sub-folders.

If there is not an ability to do a global manual filter,if you have to go single folder by single folder, that would be awkward.
And I would put it in to Ritlabs as an enhancement.

Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 10 December 2018 11:04:20
 
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Steven Avery wrote:
The three commands above are all within one folder?  (The emphasis is CTRL-A.)

Yes. That's just how Windows works. Selections operate on the current scope.
   
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Is there any more global selection method possible?

e.g. All the mail in all the folders withing an account.
Or all the mail in a folder with its sub-folders.

Well, you could run a search that returns all messages from the current folder and its sub-folders. Then sel ect all the messages fr om the list of results?
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Thanks.
True.  

However, one  of my goals is to apply a filter on the existing mail.

eg. If the mail matches up with an address in the address book, I could assign it a colour group.
Then, I could have a virtual folder with all the mail with sender or recipient that matches my address book. Handy-dandy.

This is doable with filters for mail inbound, as has been pointed out on the forum.
However,  I would like to do it for the historical mail.

Any ideas?

Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 11 December 2018 23:27:53
 
Here's what I would try: I would create a filter that looks for 'Address Book' 'Contains' 'Sender' and that assigns all found messages to the desired color group. Make the filter Manual and assign a hotkey to it. Then go to the folders that hold old mail, press Ctrl-A to select all messages, and press the hotkey to run the filter on the selected messages.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
My main goal is to run the filter on my mail so that all the letters  that match up to my address book can be given a special marker, like a  color group.

With this filter, if I missed some responses to  mail that I sent out, they would be easy to find in a new virtual box,  based on the color code. (As long as the sender used the same address.)

Granted, I should set this up for new mail, going forward, but I would also like to go backwards.

The  method you outline above would be cumbersome to use on a couple of  hundred email folders.  However, I could just run it on the more likely  parking boxes (ignoring e.g. forum mail.)  

And I could use the  tabs under the mailbox folders  to create a single spot where a dozen or  so boxes could be kept. I sort of like those tabs for specialty groups  of mail folders. Although you have to make it a "favorite set" if you  want the ability to add or subtract folders later.

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The  tabs under the message list have been quirky.   I have not figured out  how to make them stick, rather than vanish upon creation. And whether  they are supposed to be variable to the specific folders, rather than  global.  

=============

Steven
 
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Steven Avery wrote:
The  method you outline above would be cumbersome to use on a couple of  hundred email folders.

Yes. I haven't tried this, but can't you do a search that returns ALL messages, then press 'Virtual Folder' (in the menu of the Search window) to copy all results to a new virtual folder, and then run your filter there to color-group the matching messages?

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The  tabs under the message list have been quirky.  I have not figured out  how to make them stick, rather than vanish upon creation.

You can right-click on a tab and use the context menu to make it permanent.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
Thanks.  I will try the full blown virtual folder idea, to filter en masse.

===========================

First, though, on my tests of hotkey manual filters.

This message often comes up:

"OK to delete the related entry from Address Book?"

I don't see anything in the General or Options section that should lead to that question.
Any help appreciated.
Steven
Edited: Steven Avery - 30 December 2018 17:58:14
 
I don't have a clue either. Looks like something in one of the filters that you're running is trying to delete (or update?) an address book entry.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
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