Sorting Incoming Mail Into Folders

Choose Good Target Text

Choose words or phrases that reliably pick o the messages you want. For instance, filtering based on the sender’s email address in the From field is generally a good choice, but filtering based on common words in the text body is generally a poor one.

Use Wildcards

In any of your conditions, you can use the * (asterisk) to designate one or more characters. Use this character at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a string of characters. For example, if you set up a filter on the From field named wil*@yahoo.com, it will filter messages from will, willy, william, wilma, and anyone else whose email address at yahoo.com begins with wil.

Use Multiple Rules for "Or" Conditions

If you want to specify alternate ("or") conditions for sorting, you need separate filters. For example, if you want to direct all messages that either come from the tennis coach or that have the word "tennis" in the subject to the Tennis folder, you need to following two rules:

Tennis1 filter

If From begins with coachchris

then deliver to: Tennis

Tennis2 filter

If Subject contains *tennis*

then deliver to: Tennis

Tip: If you include both of these conditions in a single rule, a message must meet both for the filter to apply. In other words, the message must both be from the coach and have "tennis" in its subject.

Avoid Incorrect Rules

If your messages wind up in unexpected folders after Yahoo! Mail applies your filters, it’s likely that one of your filters contains an incorrect rule or that the order of your filters is incorrect. Incorrect rules often occur if you choose negative criteria like "does not contain" combined with wildcards and/or other positive criteria (such as "contains" or "begins with").

Avoid Empty Filters

An empty filter (that is, one that you create without defining any conditions or destination folder for it) is not really empty. Yahoo! Mail interprets such a filter to mean:

If From contains [an empty (null) character]

then deliver to: Inbox

If you create an empty filter at the top of your list and save it without changing anything about it, all of your messages are sent to your Inbox, bypassing any other filters you may have.

Avoid Filters With POP Access

When you use a client email application to access ("pop out of") your Yahoo! Mail, it is possible to retrieve messages only from the Inbox and Bulk folders. If you intent to pop into Yahoo! Mail, you may first want to delete filters that sort email to folders other than the Inbox.

To control whether or not to retrieve messages in your Bulk folder when you pop your Yahoo! Mail using a client application, go to the POP Access and Forwarding page (accessible from the Mail Options page) and select one of the following options:

Enlarge

• I don’t want to receive any messages that SpamGuard thinks are spam—Select this option if you do not want to pop the messages in your Bulk mail folder on the Yahoo! Mail server.
• I want to receive all messages, including those that SpamGuard things are spam—Select this option if you want to pop the messages in your Bulk mail folder on the Yahoo! Mail server.

  If you chose this option, you can also select to have the prefix [Bulk] added to the subject of messages that originated in the Bulk folder.

Use SpamGuard to Filter Spam

It is possible for you to write your own filters to redirect messages from undesirable senders directly to the Trash folder. The easier solution, however, is for you to use Yahoo! Mail’s SpamGuard feature to identify and sort junk mail or spam directly into the Bulk folder. To find out more, try the tutorial on Using SpamGuard.

What’s Next

Using filters effectively can save you a lot of time organizing your messages in Yahoo! Mail.

Was this tutorial helpful?   Yes   No

Tell us what you liked or didn't like about this tutorial

Thanks for your feedback!