Is this a bug in Thunderbird filtering?

2

I'm trying to create a Thunderbird filter that moves all emails from a certain coworker addressed only to me to a special folder and I can't figure out how to get it to work.

The first thing I tried is the following, which is the most straightforward, I guess:

This does not behave as expected in that messages with several people in the to field will also be moved by this filter.

I then tried another variant:

But again no luck. The cc is filtered correctly, not so the to. Messages with more than one recipient, despite having a ',' in the to field get moved as before.

I'm a little bit confused by this. Is there something obvious I'm missing or is the Thunderbird filtering just bugged? Because these filters clearly don't behave is I would expect them to behave.

I'm running 45.4.0 if that helps and I only have very restricted rights as this is on an institute machine, so I can't install extensions.

user35915

Posted 2016-10-26T19:53:52.897

Reputation: 137

4My bet would be that the "," won't actually be in the field, it's just a visual separator in the UI, so the filter can't filter on it. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2016-10-26T20:03:39.010

Hm, that's a good point. Do you have any idea what one could filter for then? – user35915 – 2016-10-26T20:05:00.343

1@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 I can filter for ',' in the 'to' field, actually. It's only the 'doesn't contain ,' which does not work for some reason. – user35915 – 2016-10-27T12:07:46.307

Answers

3

Thunderbird does not natively support this, but there's a workaround that you can use to get it to work.

First go to menu Extra > Addressbook

Go to menu File > New > Addressbook

Call the new addressbook: Only Me

In this new addressbook add one contact and make sure it has your email adress. If you have several adresses, you can add more contacts.

Now, from the rule, To Is not in my addressbook Only Me

And From as you already had.

As action you select: Stop processing rules.

A second action would be set: Is from your co-worker, and CC empty. The action would be the desired action.

Make sure these rules are the last ones to be executed, otherwise those after will not execute.

LPChip

Posted 2016-10-26T19:53:52.897

Reputation: 42 190

Unfortunately this does not seem to work. Messages with several recipients are still filtered by it. Do you have any other idea? I'm really stumped. – user35915 – 2016-10-27T12:37:58.693

1What if you use: Is not in my addressbook -> stop processing rules. And with the next rule, you do the action for every message, and order your rules so that this is executed last? – LPChip – 2016-10-27T15:48:27.867

Thanks, great idea! What I do now is I apply two filters: 1) if from is coworker and to is not in my addressbook -> stop filter execution 2) if from is coworker and 'cc' is empty, move message to desired folder. This does what I want it to do, however I feel it's far more complicated that necessary. Do you want to update your answer, or shall I edit it? – user35915 – 2016-10-27T23:15:35.010

1I've updated my answer, reflecting the changes. – LPChip – 2016-10-28T06:48:59.977

Asked: 2016-10-26T19:53:52.897

Viewed: 164 times

Active: 2016-10-28T06:48:45.137