How Filtering Works?

When you set up a filter in your e-mail program, the program moves messages from inbox to a designated folder as Soon they are received. This process enables you focus on the mail in your inbox when time is tight and to leave the filtered mail in Cler folders for when you have more time. Alternatively, you may choose to target -priority e-mail and filter it into another folder, which you attend to first. Filtering works by looking at the contents of the message. Normally, you tell your e-mail application to look at the contents of the message and to do something with the message based on what it finds. You may choose to look at the headers, such as who - message is to or from, or what the subject line is. Alternatively, you may want to at specific words in the message. For instance, you may want to filter all messages at least put the message in a folder that you specify.

Devising a rule to sort messages that always come from the same place or that are always addressed to the same address usually is easy. For instance, you can easily sort messages from a mailing list or from a small group of people (say, the eight colleagues rking with you on a particular project). However, sorting junk mail (unsolicited marketing messages) out of your inbox is considerably more difficult because you have devise a rule that sorts only junk mail and not the mail that you actually want to read.