# Add List Filter

You can use filters to direct incoming mail to particular mailboxes based on the contents of To, From, Sender, Subject, the entire message Header (everything but the body of the message), or the Body of the message.

To add a filter:

1. Select the field you want to search. You can select from: To, From, Sender, Subject, the entire Message Header, or the Body of the message.

2. Select contains to have the filter look for messages that contain the search string; select doesn't contain to look for messages that do not contain the string.

3. Enter a search string in the Phrase text box as described below.

4. Select Case Sensitive Match to search for text that matches the case of the search string; to ignore case, clear Case Sensitive Match.

5. Select Search string from file if you have placed the search text in a text file. The list box shows a list of the existing filter files.

6. Click Add Condition.

7. Select one of the following Filter Actions to take on messages that meet the rule criteria.

   - Send the message to a mailbox. Select Move the message to this mailbox. Then, in the Destination text box enter the name of the mailbox to which messages meeting the rule criteria will be sent. If you enter a mailbox that does not exist, one will be created. A POP3 user will see this mailbox only if he logs on to this mailbox using the format userid-mailbox. If nothing is entered in this text box, messages meeting the rule criteria will be sent to the user's Main mailbox.

   - Send the message to an address. Select Forward the message to this address. Then, in the Destination text box, enter the e-mail address, of the person or list, to which messages meeting the rule criteria will be sent. You must enter the full e-mail address, such as Fred@domain1.com.

   - Delete the message. Select Delete to delete the message.

   - Deliver the message and copy to an additional mailbox. Select Send message with Copy to to deliver the message to its intended recipient as well as copy it to an additional mailbox that you specify in the Destination text box.

   - Send a Bounce message to sender. Select Bounce to send a message back to the sender informing them that the message was not processed.

8. Click Finish to save the rule.

## Entering a Search String

Enter a search string by doing one or more of the following:

- Enter the literal text (up to 255 characters) that you want to search for. For example, if you want to find the word jazz, type: jazz.

- Type search expressions and quantifiers (up to 255 characters) as shown in the Text Patterns tables below.

- Paste a portion of a mail message that meets your intended search criteria. For instance, you could copy and paste text such as XMSMailPriority(High) from the header of a message; this would search for High priority messages.

Text Pattern | Expression
Any character | .
Any of the values separated by vertical bars within the parentheses | (this|that|other)
Any word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) | \w
Any non-word character | \W
Any digit (0-9) | \d
Any non-digit | \D
Any white space (spaces and/or tabs and/or carriage returns) | \s
Any non-white space | \S
Any punctuation character (any character other than \w or \s) | \p
Any non-punctuation character | \P

Quantifier | Expression
Zero or more | *
One or more | +
Exactly 100 | {100}
At least n1, but not more than n2 (where n1 and n2 are numbers) | {n1,n2}

Note: The following characters have special meaning in a filter:

{}()|*+,.:

If you want to use one of these characters in a search string, precede it with a backslash. For example, to search for a plus sign, enter \+ in the search string.