How to filter your e-mail

You receive way too much e-mail and would like the computer to filter and sort your messages for you. For example, you would like all messages from a certain person to go into a separate mail folder, or maybe you want all messages with a certain word in the subject line to be deleted before you see them. Can this be done?

Yes it can. Certain mail programs, for example elm or pine can do some sorting or filtering, and if you use either you can look at the appropriate documentation for more information. But there is a general purpose mail filtering program called procmail which is very powerful and not very difficult to use.

• What does procmail do?
• Setting up your account to use procmail
• Specifying filter criteria
• An example .procmailrc file. [under construction]
• How do I see what mail has arrived in my various mailboxes?
• How do I read one of these files that contains my filtered e-mail? [under construction]
• What is a mail folder?

If you have other questions about mail filtering, please ask one of the consultants or send mail to help.

[Help home page]

(Last changed: 14-Nov-1995)