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Although the examples given herein refer to filtering using Becky! Internet Mail, most of the specific functions to be described can be implemented using your e-mail client as well, be that Outlook Express or some other e-mail program.
Have you ever been overwhelmed by the number of e-mail notes you receive? Have you ever joined a mailing list, but needed to drop out because your other (perhaps more important) e-mail was getting buried in the piles of notes from the mailing list? If you answered yes to either question, read on.
Just What is E-Mail Filtering?
Stated briefly, e-mail filtering is the automation of the decision-making process that e-mail users all go through each time they read their incoming mail and decide what to do with it. E-maiil filtering can be used to sort your incoming e-mail into folders or visibly flag incoming e-mail, and can further be used to discard unwanted e-mail. All of this is done automatically, triggered by user-set characterstics, which are usually character strings included within the e-mail.
This brief introduction will demonstrate:
Who Can Benefit From E-mail Filtering?
If you answered yes to even one of the above questions, you can benefit from e-mail filtering, and I am very certain that almost all readers of this article would qualify as potentially benefiting users.
Just What Will E-Mail Filtering Do For You?
While the specific benefits you will enjoy will depend on your particular e-mail usage patterns, some benefits my personal experience are:
Another benefit (to colleagues, albeit), related to the last benefit listed above is that of being able to contribute to discussions on mailing lists. If you are able to join a mailing list, your colleagues will benefit from your knowledge. If you are locking yourself out by not using the ability you have to cope more efficiently with the high level of traffic, both you and your colleagues lose.
Are There Any Special Software Requirements for Using E-Mail Filtering?
The short answer is no. The author has not encountered any e-mail clients that do not provide the functionality necessary to filter and sort your e-mail.
The only real requirement is that you not be using a Web-based freemail service (such as Hotmail or Yahoo!), since these services give you basically what you pay for; their e-mail filtering capabilities are non-existent or extremely limited.
Do I Need Some Special Skills or Knowledge to Use E-Mail Filtering?
Again, the short answer is no. Most e-mail users, even the ones who haven't started using filtering, are already creating folders for their e-mail. If you have not, you will need to learn to create folders. Beyond that, you will need to learn to use the e-mail filtering capabilities of your particular e-mail client. In this article, I will use the example of e-mail filtering using the e-mail client Becky!, which I am using in place of Outlook Express, which came with my most recent computer.
Sorting Your E-Mail Into Folders (Manual Method)
Most e-mail users at least do this sorting manually. This usually entails dragging e-mail from the in-box to a specific folder, after manually deciding into which folder it should be placed. Automatic sorting by establishing filtering rules eliminates most of this decision making.
Sorting Your E-Mail Into Folders (Using Filtering)
The most application of filtering is to automate the process of sorting mail into folders. This can sometimes be applied to outgoing mail as well.
The basic procedure is to establish a filtering rule, the satisfying of which is the trigger to the action of placing the subject e-mail into a specific folder.
Filtering Rules
Most e-mail clients offer a variety of criteria (conditions) for sorting and other actions. Here, for example is the section of the filtering manager window in Becky! used to set the filtering condition(s).
The overall Becky! filtering manager window and the section used to set the filtering conditions are as follows.
The ヘッダ (H) field allows the user to select what part or parts of the header is to be tested for the string entered into the 文字列 (S)field. The choices for header parts are extensive.
The first six items cover most of the sorting that you would want to do, by enabling you to trigger sorting or other actions on the content of the most visible parts of the header.
Note that the * (全てのヘッダ) item enables triggering if the character string is found anywhere in the header, and [body] item enables triggering of the action on the content in the body an incoming e-mail note.
There are a number of ways you can make these settings work for you in sorting your e-mail.
Sorting Folders Based On the Sender
Consider the case in which you are concerned that e-mail from your client, Bigspender Planning Office KK, will get buried in all the rubble of spam and mailing list notes in your in-box. Even if you deal with a number of people at Bigspender, as long as they all have a common element in their e-mail addresses, a single filter can be used to catch all Bigspender mail and place it in its own folder. For example, assume that all the people over at Bigspender use e-mail addresses ending in @bigspender.com. The From field from any message from these people would contain the string bigspender, thereby making it easy to set up a filter to catch all e-mail from any sender at Bigspender. The conditions and string setting would look something like this.
That is all there is to it, at least for setting the conditions and character string. All that is left is to set what is to be done when a note with bigspender.com in its From field is received. If you wish to place the note in a folder made specially for your Bigspender e-mail, you will need to create a folder, and this is possible from the filtering manager window itself.
In the case of Becky!, the action of sorting is specified by selecting振り分け and フォルダへ振り分け as the action, and then either clicking on a folder or clicking on a folder and then selecting the フォルダ button to create a folder within the selected folder. This completes the specification of the filtering rule. All that remains is to click on the ルールを追加 (A) button to enter the rule into the filtering manager, and then close the filtering manager window.
Once a rule and filtering action have been set, they appear on the left side of the Becky! filtering manager window.
Note that this screen section shows the Bigspender filtering rule described above. The first rule is the one I use to filter JAT-LIST notes into my JAT/JAT-LIST folder if the string jat-list@yahoogroups.com is included anywhere in the header.
The next rule has a multitude of conditions that can trigger the sending of e-mail into the trash folder. These should be self-explanatory, and e-mail users will recognize some of these words as "frequent offenders."
The last rule that you see opened is to sort e-mail from the Zig Ziglar domain into the Zig Ziglar folder. This illustrates a potential problem, in that mail with the word zig-zag in the header will also be shunted into the Zig Ziglar folder.
Another consideration is the sequence of the filter rules. Take for example the case in which a test is made for the string early retirement(to kill spam) before a test is made to detect mail from the JAT-LIST mailing list. If one of the notes has early retirement in the header, for example, the note could be shunted into the trash bin before it reaches your JAT-LIST folder. Fortunately, it is easy to change the sequence of rule application using the Up and Downtabs located above the rule display sub-window.
Other Actions
You might wish to keep e-mail in your in-box but flag it in some way. In Becky! (and other e-mail clients) you flag such e-mail using a variety of methods. The 振り分け action provides a number of options.
It is thus possible, without even using folders, to make specific mail you receive more visible in your inbox by changing its color or applying a flag to it.
Becky! provides an additional range of more sophisticated actions, which you see below in the pull-down menu available with the filter action.
The above arsenal of functions should be more than anyone needs. My personal filtering strategy involves only folder sorting and output of a small variety of ringing tones for specific classes of e-mail, specifically: clients and non-clients.
Where to Go From Here
If you do not use Becky! as your e-mail client, there is no need to worry. Your e-mail client probably provides most of the more important filtering capabilities. For more information, you could read the on-line help of your mail client or seek out a mailing list of users of your client. The time you will save by using e-mail filtering is well worth this small setup effort.