FILTERING MAIL
For the Sake of History ;-)
Subject: Filtering Mail in Navigator 2.0 and 3.
----------------------
Issue: 970820-79
Product: Navigator
Created: 08/20/97
Version: 2.x, 3.x
Last Updated: 10/24/97
OS: Win3.1/3.11, Win95, WinNT
Netscape Navigator 4.0 and later have a graphical interface for automatic filing/filtering of mail messages. Earlier versions did not have this UI.
However, for those of you still using 2.0 or 3.0, there is a way to filter mail messages, though it doesn't have a graphical interface.
(This feature was officially dropped from the 2.0 product before its release, but it turns out that the underlying code was never actually removed; there is just no simple interface to it.)
Don't rely on this. It is untested. It is hard to use. It's not supported. It's not even a claimed ``feature.'' It doesn't work in news. It has many limitations. Treat it as ``as is'' if at all.
To filter your mail, you create a text file describing the rules:
On Windows, this file is called ``sort.dat'' and goes in the ``nsmail'' directory along with your mail folders.
On MacOS, it's called ``Mail Filters'' and goes in the ``Mail'' directory, which you will find in the Netscape Preferences folder (that is, ``Disk: System Folder:Preferences:Netscape:Mail''.)
On Unix, it's called ``mailsort'' and goes in your ``~/.netscape/'' directory.
When you use the ``Get Mail'' command, this file is consulted for each new message to decide where to put it. In the file, each line describes a pattern and an action to take. The first line which is matched by a message is executed, and subsequent matches are ignored. If no line matches, the message is left in your Inbox folder, as normal.
The lines have three fields, seperated by spaces or tabs: the file name of the destination folder; the name of a header field to consult; and a substring to look for in that header field. For example:
Windows: (nsmail\sort.dat)
# Put any messages that contain "mailer-daemon" in
# the "From:" field into a mail folder called "bounces"
# bounces From mailer-daemon
# Put mail about my home page in a mail folder
# called "fan-mail" that is in an (already-existing)
# subdirectory called "personal"
# personal\fan-mail Subject your home page
Macintosh: (Netscape:Mail:Mail Filters)
bounces From mailer-daemon
# Note: Mac uses slash to separate directories, not colon.
personal/fan-mail Subject your home page
Unix: (.netscape/mailsort)
# Note: Unix requires the full pathname.
/u/xyz/nsmail/bounces From mailer-daemon
/u/xyz/nsmail/personal/fan-mail Subject your home page
Lines beginning with ``#'' are comments. Blank lines are ignored.
You can filter on any header field.
If a message contains more than one header of the same name, only the first (topmost) of those headers is examined.
Comparisons are done case-sensitively, and all comparisons ask the question ``contains'' -- there is no provision for exact matches, or for regular expressions.
Mail files will be created as necessary, but directories will not. That is, in the above examples, while the mail file named fan-mail need not exist first, the subdirectory which contains it (personal) would need to have been created by hand.
If one of your folders has a name that contains a space, you will need to enclose it in double-quotes ("").
