Creating a filter in SquirrelMail

Server-side filters are rules than manage your email on the mail server before it is delivered to your account. Server-side filters are used to move, delete, automatically-reply to or otherwise deal with mail that matches criteria which you specify. So, for instance, you can have all email from your supervisor placed in a particular folder, or you can setup a filter to let people know you are on vacation and when you will return. Or you can toss all email marked as spam in a particular place.

Server-side filters are very nice because they work whether or not your computer is on or your email client is running. This document describes how to create server-side filters using SquirrelMail. There are also specific examples for how to create a filter to manage spam or to notify people that email you that you are on vacation.

Step 1: view your current list of server-side filters

To set up a server-side filter, you must first log into SquirrelMail, then click on the Filters link located at the top of the page. This will bring up your list of current server-side filters (if any) and give you the option of adding to or deleting from the list. The filters are applied in the order they are listed. Click the Add a New Rule button

Step 2: set rule conditions

Each condition has 2 basic parts. First is the type of condition:

Header Match: this means that the criteria used in the filter are contained in the header of the incoming email messages (such as the From:, To:, and Subject: fields).

Size: this means that the size of the email will be the criteria used in the filter.

All Messages: this means the filter action will be applied to all incoming email

The second part is the criteria of the condition.

If you chose to do a "Header Match" rule in step 1 of the wizard, you will be able to choose from the following header fields for each criteria: From, To, Cc, Bcc, Subject, Reply-To, Sender, List-Id, MailingList, X-ML-Name, X-List, X-Mailer, X-MailingList, X-Spam-Score, X-Spam-Warning, X-BeenThere, X-Priority, Importance, X-MSMail-Priority, X-Bugzilla-Product, X-Bugzilla-Component, X-Oracle-Calendar-Reminder.

If you chose to do a "Size" rule in step 1 of the wizard, you will be asked for size criteria.

Click the More... button to add additional conditions, and click Less... to remove conditions. If multiple conditions are specified, you will be given the option of whether all criteria must be met (the AND option) or if any of the criteria will suffice (the OR option).

Step 4: set rule actions

You have several options to choose from ... select one:

• Keep - you can use this to keep specific emails that could be affected by other rules
• Discard - this will throw away the message and you will not see it
• Reject - this will reject the email and send a message back to the person who sent it indicating that the email was rejected
• Redirect - this will pass the message to another email address, without you seeing it in your UWRF mailbox
• Move message - this will file the message into a folder on the mail server that you specify (this folder must be created before you can create the rule, otherwise it will not appear in the popup menu)
• Vacation - this will send an automatic reply (that you specify) to any incoming messages. The server will keep track of who has received the reply and will only reply again to that address after the number of days specified.

Step 5: set additional actions

Stop - check the box next to "Stop" if you don't wish any other rules to be applied to messages which match this rule.

Step 6: add the rule

Click the Add New Rule button. Your rule will be saved and take effect immediately.

Deleting rules

If you want to delete a previously created rule, click on the trash can icon to the right of the rule. Next click Yes on the message that pops up. The rule is now deleted.

Spam filter tutorial
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