Not sure what you are trying to achieve Filters do not use wildcards but with the choices offered you can get very close. Not even regex is perfect

block all email from *@somedomain.com filter name [Any] From - ends in - @somedomain.com Do action - delete [All domain @somedomain.com deleted]

allow friend@somedomain.com but no other.

A filter pair A1 first then A2 filter name A1 [Any] From - is - friend@somedomain.com Do action - move [saves friend@somedomain.com] filter name A2 [Any] From - ends in - @somedomain.com [+] Do action - delete [deletes all remaining @somedomain.com

block email from spammerNNN@AAA.somedomain.com [NNN and AAA are random characters, vary with message] filter name [All] From - starts - spammer [+] From - ends - somedomain.com Do action - delete [All messages from spammer*@*somedomain.com deleted)

Experiment with them. Don't forget that filters are executed in the order they are listed. A1 came first so friend was removed to safety. when A2 was run, all the rest of the somedomain.com were deleted. If the order was reversed, and A2 executed before A1, friend would have been deleted along with the others.

TB 38.2 Win10-PC

Another sample filter.

block email from spammerNNN@info.AAAAAA.com [NNN and AAAAAA are random characters, vary with message] filter name [All] From - starts - spammer [+] From - ends - .com [+] From - contains - info Do action - delete

TB 38.2 Win10-PC

Thank you for a quick response. My prob is to try to seperate my wife's emails to her@ourdomain.com. I myself have emails coming in to him@ourdomain.com, me@ourdomain.com etc. All from the same server. For many of her emails I can simply filter on the sender and move them to her folder, but there are some correspondents who might send to either or both of us. Thus filtering on To: her@ourdomain.com might well put an important email that needs a response from me into her folder, where it sits unanswered.

I was thinking to filter on matches To: contains her@ourdomain.com AND To: does not also have another address *@ourdomain.com which is not her.

I hadn't thought on running 2 filters, but still can't see how to implement this. It's not a desperate need. I have many other filters running successfully - just wondered if I could improve this, as my wife has just missed an email that I manually moved when it got marked as 'read' in the move process.

Thanks again

The FiltaQuilla add-on offers regexes in the address and subject fields. Another addon, Expression Search / GmailUI adds regexes to message body text. Note that while this second addon is presented as a search tool, it does also provide new filtering options.

But why don't you just set up separate accounts? There should be no need for messages addressed to one of you appearing in the other's Inbox.

Why would you want to filter all mail coming into an address?

If it was an IMAP account it would already be in it's own account folders, so I assume it is POP.

For POP, right click the account in the folder pane (Local Folders) select the server settings for your wife's account. Select Advanced select use inbox for this server. Now her@ourdomain.com will appear in the folder pane as it's own account.

Thanks all. Yes, POP. I've used Thunderbird for at least 15 years, and all those stored emails take up several Gb on my local desktop. I try to save/delete attachments to keep the size down, but I'm unwilling to delete most old emails. Yes, I'd like to move to IMAP, but haven't figured out yet how to do it - impractical to move Gb onto an online server, even if this were possible, and my ISP talktalk is 'reliable some of the time' - so I could be left with no access to email while their servers refuse to respond. Basically I don't understand it well enough :) - but I should probably raise this in another thread, seeing how helpfully people respond. We both have multiple email addresses - this filter issue is with a single account where we own 'ourdomain.com' and redirect (so it's one server). Lots of our contacts have these addresses, so it's simpler not to change. But in the long run we will change I think. I can now solve this issue with the add-on - thank you for that

redirect? what on the server. Why not just add the pop account for your wife and let Thunderbird retrieve mail for it, instead of trying to untangle redirected mail upon download.

Matt said

redirect? what on the server. Why not just add the pop account for your wife and let Thunderbird retrieve mail for it, instead of trying to untangle redirected mail upon download.

Thanks. The addresses I'm trying to untangle relate to a single domain name that we own. The mails go to a server for this domain and are then redirected to my isp's server, where we retrieve them by POP. So there isn't a seperate POP account for my wife for this specific address. She has other addresses where this would work, but that means persuading her contacts to change their address books, etc. It's not ideal, but there's a load of history behind it. And it works, albeit with this small snag.

And no, I can't untangle on the 'ourdomain' redirecting server - it's just a basic redirect service

drking said

Yes, I'd like to move to IMAP, but haven't figured out yet how to do it - impractical to move Gb onto an online server

Thunderbird has the "special" account, Local Folders, which is offline and independent of servers. One of its uses is to store messages independently of any particular email account or address. So you could move your stuff from the POP folders (which are already on your hard disk) to the Local Folders account, then delete the POP-connected account in Thunderbird and set it up again using IMAP.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Local_Folders

Saved Searches can then be used to create an amalgamated virtual folder to simplify searching.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/using-saved-searches

Thanks. All my (many) folders are currently subfolders of Local, so that's OK. Didn't know there was another way to do it :).

But last time I looked at IMAP I couldn't understand the sync options - my worry being that the online server would sync with my local desktop storage and wipe it clean - it presumably can, as you can delete an email on the online server and it will sync, deleting the email locally on my deskop too I think. So maybe I have an option for the desktop to have existing emails in Local and new emails somewhere else - but then I'm going to have two folders for eg 'my choir' - one for the old stuff and one for the new - far from ideal. Or have I failed to understand still?

drking said

but then I'm going to have two folders for eg 'my choir' - one for the old stuff and one for the new

That's where the Saved Search comes in; it can offer you a composite folder blending together the old and new (archive and current?) folders.

Yes, you're correct about deleting a message on the server having the effect of deleting its local mirror copy, so long as the local copy is still in a synchronized folder. Move the message to a Local Folders location and it's yours, isolated from and independent of the server.

Ah - thank you - I didn't read your reply carefully enough. I think probably the best thing is for me to read this up again, and then start a new thread - because I'm now thinking that this would mean I'd have all my folders appearing in triplicate - once for existing stuff, once for new stuff where I file my new messages and once as a saved search where I read my messages. Rather than carry on here under the wrong subject line, may I re-group and read the docs (yet) again - then start a new thread in due course?

Thanks for your help

From one of your earlier comments, you mentioned that

...filtering on To: her@ourdomain.com might well put an important email that needs a response from me into her folder, where it sits unanswered....

How would you know if a particular message, addressed only to her, needed a reply from you?

TB 38.2 Win10-PC

I'm trying to filter those messages addressed to *her only* into her box, but not those addressed to us both

In other words I don't want emails addressed to us both to go into her box, but I do want emails addressed to her only to go there. If there's a message addressed to *her only* that needs a response from me, then the sender should have sent it to me! :)

So the problem is that if I filter on her@ourdomain.com without catching those emails addressed to us both, moving those messages to her box, then that would include those messages addressed to us both.

So the first filter needs to be

match all the following to: her to: me copy to her folder move to my folder

then you can have a second filter

match any of the following to: her move to her folder

and a third

match any of the following to: me move to my folder

Anything that falls through would appear not to be addressed to either of you. Would you want to do anything with these? e.g.

match all tag (as junk, important) move to trash

It gets more complicated if you also want to filter on subject matter or sender. You have a really poor email system there. :-(

I'm not seeing any need here for regexes.

Thanks. That would be OK if I had just one address me@ourdomain.com, but there are several that might be used for my mail eg choirstuff@ourdomain.com. I could list them individually I guess, hoping to remember them all - though I'd rather check for all_other_addresses@ourdomain.com. Your plan would mean moving the mails to her folder and then moving them out again if I'm included, is that right?

Yes, it's a very old email system, possibly going back to the last millenium... :) But it's served me very well, and a change seems fraught with issues/complexity, needing lots of my time to get it right.

This is only a small issue - not a show-stopper

The sequence below would move all messages addressed to any of 'his' addresses into one folder for 'him', including those that were sent to both. The remainder are placed into a folder for 'her'

Move all mail addressed to him, or him and her, to Folder 'Mine filter name A1 [Any] To - starts - abc [+] To - starts - def [+] To - starts - ghi [+] To - starts -jkl [etc. Add all 'him' address starts] Do action - Move to Folder 'Mine'

Result leaves only mail addressed to 'her'.
Move all 'her' mail to Folder 'Yours' Filter name A2 [All Msgs] Do action - Move to Folder 'Yours'

Result should leave inbox empty.

You only have to enter the first few letters of your addresses. No need to enter '@ourdomain.com' for each.

TB-38.2 Win10-PC

Thanks - sorry for a delayed response. I'm afraid it's more complex than that as I have about a dozen other filters active - and other addresses. It's ending up with lots of cleverness and potential confusion to try to solve a non-major issue.

Very grateful for your help!