[Users] What does Filtering do?

[Milan Obuch]

On Tue, 13 Dec 2022 10:14:12 +0100
Rick De <rrdein at gmx.com> wrote:

> I needed to search the bodies of my e-mails to find some specific
> e-mails. When I did so, it oddly still displayed all of the
> non-matching messages in the message list pane and just highlighted
> the matches. I had expected the message list to only show the
> matching messages in the message list so I could arrow through them,
> just like if I used the search box right below the message pane, but
> this wasn't what happened. So I naturally looked for the option to
> remove all non-matching messages from the message list. The only
> thing I could find was "Filter selected messages" which I was pretty
> sure would do exactly what I wanted.  But it didn't do that.

How did you make the search? There is a Quicksearch input box just
above message preview in main screen. You can select a mode from drop
down button (I am using Extended only, most flexible for me), enter a
phrase to search for, clear search phrase and display some information
about it.

Searching for a text in body is translated into 'b text' entered into
text box, pressing enter starts the rocess, and just the messages
matching the selection criteria are listed, if any (yes, it is possible
to search for some non-existent word and list comes empty).

> I searched again for the same messages and it still found a bunch, so
> I don't "think" this deleted anything.  There is a "Delete" option
> already, so it would be redundant for "Filter" to "delete" the
> messages.  So ultimately I can't figure out what filtering did here.
> Are some of my messages deleted?  What did filtering do here?

Did you look into Configuration -> Filtering menu item? That's
something different. I am not using it, you can create a set of rules
to be applied on demand and do something with matching messages
(delete, move, manipulate message flags, execute some external program
etc.) - I think you just looked in wrong place for the task you are
trying to do.

Regards,
Milan