Show email in multiple specific filters?

Show email in multiple specific filters?

Hi,

Is it possible to show email in a specific set of filters?

Here is what I am trying to do:

My ultimate goal is to try and adapt opera's mail client for use as a GTD (Getting Things Done) tool. It seems like filters would make this possible. I am trying to set up a nested filter structure with Next Actions as a top level filter and then specific contexts as sub-filters. Like so:

+ Next Actions
|------ At Home
|------- At Computer
|------- Errand
etc.

I've added some rules to the filters so certain keywords in the email will automatically display it in the appropriate filter. So far so good.

What I would like is to have the filtered email appear in both the context sub-folder and the Next Actions parent filter, but not any other filter. (This would allow me two views-- a master list of next actions and next actions by context-- and not have to worry about already filtered mail appearing in the inbox.)

It seems "Mark messages as filtered" causes an email to show up in only *one* filter and does not extend down to sub-filters. If is use this option in the Next Actions filter, nothing shows up in the sub-filters.

I didn't know if anyone knew a way to display sub-filter content in a parent filter, but nowhere else?

I have noticed that if I click on the Filters node/access point it will show all filtered messages. The same does not seem to happen for sub-filters of the main node/access point. (i.e. clicking on Next Actions will not show the content of all sub-filters of that filter.)

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Create a Filter named "Next Actions". Set up the rules for the filter. Check "mark messages as filtered". Click "apply filter".

Right-click on "Next Actions" and choose "New filter" and name it "At Home". Set up the rules for the filter. Check "mark messages as filtered". Check "limit to parent". Click "apply filter".

Repeat for additional sub filters.

(Do not use "learn" for any of the filters.

Then, clicking "Next actions" should show a message list of all messages in "Next Actions". If it doesn't open a message list when clicking it, click on something else and then click back to "Next actions". (It's a bug in Opera that's triggered when opening a filter causes a scrollbar to appear etc.)

Then, clicking each sub-filter should only show messages that match the rules for each filter. If you want a message to show up in one sub-filter and not another sub-filter, you have to make sure the rules for the sub-filters exclude the ones you don't want. This means that you will probably have to have both inclusive and exclusive rules for each sub-filter.

Then, in other views like All Messages/Received, click the View button on the toolbar and make sure Show -> Show filtered isn't checked if you want to hide the filtered messages.

Also, if you want to manually add messages to the "Next Actions" filter, right-click on a message (or selection of messages), goto show in -> Next Actions -> this filter. Then, the sub-filters should automatically be updated if any of the messages you just added match. Also, instead of right-clicking on a message to use "Show in", if you do shift + f12 -> buttons -> mail, there's a Show In button that you can add to the mail toolbar.

Also, if at any time messages are not showing in the filters, but should be and you know the rules are indeed correct, first go into the properties of the "Next Actions" filter and reapply the filter. Then, do the same to the sub-filters. But, usually, you should not need to do this.

Now, if you want to create a filter that doesn't include messages from the "Next Actions" filter, you'll need to set up an exclusive rule for that filter to not include any messages in the "Next actions" filter.

Unfortunately, there's no filter rule method for "match messages not in filter foo" or "match messages not in any other user-created filters", so you'll just have to create a rule that's kind of the opposite of the "Next Actions" filter rule etc.

burnout426,

Thank you for your detailed and extremely helpful reply!

Using your reply I was able to properly configure my filters to behave as desired. When I was initially configuring my filters I was not clicking "Apply filter" which may have been why it wasn't working for me the first time around.

I thought apply filter was used only to apply to existing email, so I wasn't using it as the filters were only for new mail. When I went back and clicked on it, the filters started behaving as you described.

All good. Thanks again.

Awesome!