Yahoo! Mail Tutorials

Using Filters to Sort Incoming Mail

Creating Filters Changing Filter Order Filtering and Mobile Alerts Editing and Deleting Filters Additional Tips

Changing Filter Order

If you create more than one filter, the order of your filters can be very important. When Yahoo! Mail receives an incoming message for your account, it tries to match the message to your filters in the order listed on the Filters page. If you arrange your filters in a less-than-optimal order, Yahoo! Mail may redirect messages to different folders than the ones you expect.

Yahoo! Mail first applies the filter at the top of your list (Filter 1). If the message matches Filter 1’s rule, Yahoo! Mail sends the message to the destination folder that Filter 1 specifies. In that case, Yahoo! Mail doesn’t consider any of the other filters in your list.

If the message does not match Filter 1, Yahoo! Mail tries the second filter in the list and so on. It continues until it either finds a filter that matches or it runs out of filters to try. If no filter matches an incoming message, Yahoo! Mail delivers the message to your Inbox folder.

Consider the following example: Suppose an important piece of mail is sent from somebody@companyname.com to your account, and you have two simple filters set up:

Company filter
If From contains "companyname.com"
then deliver to: Company XYZ

Somebody filter
If From begins with "somebody@"
then deliver to: Somebody

If the Company filter is listed before the Somebody filter, Yahoo! Mail compares the message to the Company filter first. Since the message contains "companyname.com" in the From box ("somebody@companyname.com"), the message is placed in the Company XYZ folder.

On the other hand, if the Somebody filter is above the Company filter, Yahoo! Mail compares the message sent from somebody@company.com to the Somebody filter first. Because the From condition of the Somebody filter (somebody@) matches the message’s From box, the message is directed to the Somebody folder and not to the Company XYZ folder.

For the best results, put your narrowest (most restrictive) filters at the top of your list and your broadest (least restrictive) filters at the bottom.

 

Here’s How

  1. Go to your Yahoo! Mail Filters page. (Remind me how.)

    The filters list shows the current order in which Yahoo! Mail tries to apply your filters.

    Filters are numbered in the order in which Yahoo! Mail tries to apply them.

  2. To move a filter up or down in the ordered list, select the filter, then click the up or down arrow to the right of the list.

    Click an arrow to move the selected filter up or down in the list.

    The list refreshes, showing the filter in its new position.

    The list redisplays, with the filters renumbered.

 

What’s Next

In addition to filtering messages into mail folders, you can also use filters to send mail alerts to your mobile device.

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Words to Know

  • Filter: a rule that Yahoo! Mail uses to direct an incoming message to a particular folder.
  • Folder: a container that holds individual elements specific to the context; for example, email messages in Yahoo! Mail.