Sorting mail in Communicator 4.01

1. Create a new folder for storing mail. To load Communicator's Messenger Mailbox, press <Ctrl>-<Shift>-1 or click the mailbox icon on the components tray. (You may need to enter a password.) Select File--New Folder, and in the dialogue box enter a folder name (you can designate it as a subfolder of your Inbox or other mail folder). Click OK.
2. Select Edit--Mail Filters and click New.
3. In the Filter Rules dialogue box, type a filter name.
4. Click the If the drop-down list and choose sender to select mail from a specified person, or choose subject, body, or date. If you want to move the mail from a group of clients to a specific folder, for example, your rules might look like the ones illustrated. Click More to apply more rules or to specify multiple addresses.

Filtering rules in Netscape Communicator (above) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 (below) let you automatically forward, store, or delete e-mail messages that meet specified criteria

Sorting mail in Internet Explorer 4.0

1. Load Outlook Express Mail by clicking the Mail icon and selecting Read Mail in Internet Explorer. Create a new subfolder in which to store sorted mail by right-clicking the Inbox icon. Click New Folder, type a folder name, and click OK.
2. To create rules for how mail should be sorted into that folder, select Tools--Inbox Assistant from the menu, then click Add.
3. In the Properties dialogue box, type the address of the sender, words from the message's subject, or other properties of incoming mail you'd like filtered. In the From field you can type multiple addresses, separated by a comma, or parts of an address -- for example, just the domain name.
4. In the bottom half of the Properties box, specify the action you'd like performed. To move the mail to your newly created folder, check the Move To box, click Folder, and click Browse to find the folder. You can have Outlook Express dispatch replies to certain messages by checking the Reply With box, then clicking Browse to select a word processing file. Just be sure the file is stored in text-only format, unless your recipient uses the same word processor as you do. Click OK when you're finished.
5. Back in the Inbox Assistant, make sure your rule is checked, then click OK.

Blocking big file attachments

You can prevent Internet Explorer from downloading big file attachments by creating a rule that leaves e-mail attachments larger than a certain size on your Internet service provider's mail server. In Outlook Express, select Tools--Inbox Assistant and click Add to create a new rule.
In the Properties dialogue box, check the Message is greater than box, and use the scroll bars to set a message size limit. The limit will depend on whether you receive a lot of graphics files or word processing documents, and whether your penpals are especially verbose. Otherwise, 10K is a good limit. Check the Do not download from the server box, then click OK. In the Inbox Assistant dialogue box, check your rule to activate it, and click OK.
When someone sends you e-mail with a big attachment, just the message will arrive in your in-box. To download the attachment, you'll need to dial up your ISP. First, though, you must deactivate the rule about leaving big e-mail attachments on the ISP's server: select Tools--Inbox Assistant, uncheck the rule, and click OK. Once you've downloaded the file (by clicking Send and Receive to retrieve mail as you normally do), you can reactivate the rule.
Unfortunately, Communicator doesn't offer a similar feature.

Filtering spam

Mail filtering in Internet Explorer and Communicator lets you turn back the flood of spam. First you need to create filtering rules to delete messages whose subject and body contain words that are characteristic of spam. Here are some of them: hot, live, one-on-one, porn, porno, calling card, ladies, babes, toll-free, toll free, cutie, girls, weight loss, lose weight, authorized, independent distributor, sugar, strippers, multi-level, dear friend, pennies, adults only, guaranteed, money, $, congratulations, free.
Next, create a rule that deletes mail coming from known spammer addresses and domains. You'll have to type the addresses yourself. Eudora users may want to visit Multimedia Marketing Group's "No spam" page at http://www.mmgco.com/nospam/, which details a strategy for dealing with junk e-mail.
- Judy Heim