Filter Assistant

I don’t know when the Filter Assistant feature first appeared, but I have found it very useful.

You’ll find the link to the filter assistant in the upper right of any message. When you click on this link, an orange section appears that looks a lot like the content when you are creating filters via the Settings screen or the “Create a filter” link near the search box at the top.

By default the From and To boxes are filled in, but you are free to remove that content and filter any other way you like. The bottom part of the orange box is to tell what actions to take on the filters you have created. Again, similar to doing the same thing from the settings tab.

Let’s walk through a quick example… Let’s say you spot a message on your index from a mail list you got on and cannot seem to get removed from. Go ahead and open the conversation from the index by clicking on it. Now locate the Filter Assistant link in the upper right of the conversation – it will be the same distance down the screen as the sender’s name. For this example, you’re really only concerned with who the message is to, not necessarily who it is from. That sender may send you valid information later. It’s your choice, but for this example I’ll remove the information in the From box. Once that is done, I go to the second half and check the box next to “Delete it”. Finally, I click on the “Create Filter” button.

If I ever need to remove or modify that filter, I can do it via the “Settings” link in the upper right of the screen and click on the “Filter” tab the same as any other filter.

Quick Tip: Here’s a quick tip for all you Mac users who are also using Firefox; if you right click (or Ctrl-Click) on a message in the conversation index you will get a pop-up, or call-out, with the message content. Across the top of this you can Close the window, Archive it, Leave the message marked unread, or Trash it. I would love to see a Reply option, but since you cannot reply directly from the index normally, this kind of makes sense. I haven’t found this feature available in IE or FireFox on the Windows machines yet, but I’ll keep looking and let you know.

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