Overview
Mail filters are a powerful way to automatically categorize existing email messages in the your mailbox and act on incoming mail. Depending on the different attributes of the mail such as the sender, subject etc., a mail existing in your mailbox or arriving in your inbox can be automatically moved to a different folder.
Each mail filter is defined by a set of rules.
First time the filter is applied to all the emails in your mailbox. When a mail arrives it is checked against all the rules. If all the rules are satisfied, then the filter is applied.
For example, lets create a mail filter to move messages received with the word "Meeting" in the subject, to the personal folder "upcoming_meetings" folder.
Define Mail filter
To define a rule to filter mail, follow the steps given below
Lets define a filter for example when the subject Contains the string "meeting" if such a mail arrives in Inbox, Move it to the "upcoming_meetings" folder.
- Go to the Settings > Filters interface.
- Choose the
- Filter attributes example "subject"
- Contains example "meeting"
- Folder to be checked for message example "Inbox"
- Move to the folder example "upcoming_meetings"
- Apply this rule for all/ unread/ read messages.
- Mark these filtered messages as Unread/ Read or None to keep it as it is.
- Save the filter.
As you save the filter, it is applied to all the messages in the mailbox. All the emails with the word "meeting" in the subject will be moved to the "upcoming_meetings" folder. And later, when a mail with the word "meetings" in the subject arrives to your inbox, it will be moved to this folder automatically.
Delete the filter
Clicking the Delete link next to the filter will remove the filter from the list. Deleting the filter from the list will keep the filtered emails in the current folder, they will not be moved to the Inbox again.