Filters don't work manually?

david-dsi · Cadet Joined: Jun 01, 2004 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Just cretaed a filter and ran "Process Mail"-didn't appear to work. Do I have to exit the program for the filter to be saved first?

rogerw · Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 12:24 pm Post subject:

You don't need to exit MW...but for the emails to be re-evaluated you'll need to clear the mailgrid (Email>Clear the message list) then reread the accounts containing the email(s) you expect the filter to work upon.

You should also be aware that most spammers mung up the text portion of spam with hidden characters and controls so that plain text matches are impossible.

If your filters still don't work, have a look at the raw text view of the emails you wish to filter (there's a button in the preview pane to toggle to the raw view). When trying to match text in the emails, you'll need to match the raw view.

Ikeb · Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2004 1:01 pm Post subject:

david-dsi · Cadet Joined: Jun 01, 2004 Posts: 2 Location: USA

Does MW (not pro) have the ability to see the raw view? Also, is there a hierarchy of rules? Does the friends list supercede the filters? I'm trying to sort out spoofed addresses by filtering out the reurn paths.

stan_qaz · Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 9:48 pm Post subject:

Yes, click on the raw source view button or rightclick and pick view entire header.

Rules are processed in the order they are listed as are the spam tools. You can set a filter to "override" which moves it up in the priority of processing.

AlphaCentauri · Lieutenant Joined: Nov 20, 2003 Posts: 284 Location: USA

If your filter doesn't work, there are a couple common reasons:
1. You are using Regular Expressions, but didn't choose "Contains RegExp" on that line of your filter.
2. You did choose "Contains RegExp" but you are filtering for a text string that contains a special character like "?" or "+" so your filter means something different than you think. You have to precede each special character by "\" if you don't want them to have a special character meaning.
3. You didn't change the filter from the default "all of the rules are satisfied" to "any of the rules are satisfied," so it only works when every line is "true." (Dumb default, by the way.)

Ikeb · Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 9:44 am Post subject:

Why do you think the default is dumb? I normally build filters to be increasingly discriminating as I add rules. If I want to look for something else that should match, I just do so with another filter.

AlphaCentauri · Lieutenant Joined: Nov 20, 2003 Posts: 284 Location: USA

You've seen my filters -- I'd have pages and pages if I didn't combine them into thematic groups.

stan_qaz · Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 10:24 am Post subject:

I got over the filter writing urge and am down to 8 filters, all for marking legitimate e-mail. SpamCop, FA and the Bayesian are doing great at identifying the spam.

Now if there was just some way to tag the spam that had been reported to both FA and SpamCop already I could report the new stuff and autodelete the known spam and RBLed stuff that had also been correctly tagged by the Bayesian.


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