Hi,

On another list someone asked about how to use filters in Eudora to sort
her mail. .  I wrote the response below and got such appreciative replies I
figured I'd share it here.

Lynn

 This description will just cover sorting mail from different mailing lists
into mailboxes.
>
>Use Alt-t to pull down the tools menu and select "filters" which is the
first option.
>
>The filters box has two ccolums  or sections.  The one on he left is the
list of existing filters, it starts out empty, and the one on the right is
where you define how the filter that is highlighted in the lefthand column
will behave.
>
>You start out in the left-hand column.  To create your first filter, you
will  either press the hot key "Alt+n" or press tab twice till you get to
the "New" button and press "enter."   This will create a filter called
"untitled" and put the focus on that filter.
>
>Then you press F6, the magical Eudora key that is used to move between
columns in some dialog boxes. , and you will be in the column where you
define this filter.  If you tab through this box, the first three fields
are check boxes and "you want "match incoming" to be checked (this is the
default.  If it isn't you press the spacebar on that field to check it.
You don't want to check "match outgoing" but the third checkbox, , "match
manual"  should be checked if you want to go back and sort old messages.
>
>The next field you tab to is a combo box where you select the part of the
message  you want to match. Arrow up and down  till you find your choice
and press enter.  For mailing lists, often if there is a "reply to:" field,
this is a good choice  as you won't pick up messages that get sent to ore
than one list.
>
>The next field isn't important for your purpose.  It is another combo box,
and the default action is "contains" while you have other choices like
"doesn't contain, is, is not, etc."  which would help if you were writing
more sophisticated filters.
>
>Press tab again and you are in an edit field where you type the text you
want the filter to use to sort on.    It doesn't need to be long, just
something that is unique and consistent to the appropriate field for the
list you want filtered out.  My advice is to start out by pressing tab five
times to skip the next five fields.  They allow you to set a second
condition for the filter.
>
>You will then be on aanother combo box that is labelled "action."  Many of
the choices here are only available in the pro version, but the critical
ones you will need are either "transfer to" or "copy to,"  which you can
get to quickly by pressing "t" or "c" respectively.  The only reason to
choose "copy to" would be if you had amesages you wanted sorted out but
wanted to see a copy left in the in box for some reason.  Or if you were
sorting out a thread from a list and wanted to leave the list intact for
archival purposes. Otherwiase, choose "transfer to.
>
>You have five action fields available which you don't need for this
purpose, so just press tab five times to skip ahead.
>
>If you chose "transfer to" or "copy to" you will be on a button labelled
"in" which wouldn't exist otherwise.  Press enter on this button and you
will be in a list of your mailboxes.  If you have one set up already, arrow
down to that one and press "enter" and you are almost done.
>
>If you don't have a mailbox created yet, select "new" from the list by
arrowing to it and pressing enter.  You will be in the box where, to keep
it simple, you can just type thee name of the mailbox you want these
messages filtered to and press enter again.  This creates the mailbox and
changes the name of the button to the name of your mailbox.
>
>If you were done creating filters, you would just close the box by
pressing control+F4 or control+W.  You will be asked if you want to save
changes to filters and you can just press Y.
>
>If you want to go on to create another one, press control+s to save your
work and then  F6 and you will be back in Column one.  You will see that
the filter you created before is now no longer called "untitled" but has a
name that contains the message field and the beginning of the text you sort
on, which makes for rather easy identification. Repeat the steps above to
keep creating them.  You cn use alt-v to remove a filter from this list.
>
>To apply your filters to messages you already have in the in-box, or
another mailbox for that matter, you needed to have checked the "match
manual" boxes in your filters.  Open the mailbox in question, press Alt+A
to select all messages and then Alt+j to filter them.    All mailboxes that
have just had messages filtered into them will be open. and you can shuffle
through the mailboxes by pressing control+F6.  If the filters are working,
whenever you download or check your mail, it will automatically sort the
messages and leave the mailboxes that were used open.
>
>This may sound tedious, but it is not at all when you get comfortable with
it and I create filters on the fly all the time.
>
>Lynn Zelvin
>
>
>


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