Monday, July 11, 2011

Blocking a sender in Thunderbird

This topic is now included in the Mozilla knowledge base
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Thunderbird does not have a block option that can be used from the menu or toolbar, but it can be made to dispose of unwanted mails using message filters.

Message filters operate on a per account basis, so it is important when you first set up the filter to set it to act on the correct account.  The easiest way to do this is select a message from a sender you wish to block and choose Create a filter from message from the message menu.  This will open the filter settings windows with the email address already inserted into the filter.  Name the filter.  My preferred name is "block list". Simply change the action in the bottom half of the window to delete and you are all done.  Save the filter and next time that person sends you mail it will be deleted.

Message filter that you have created can be opened and edited by selecting the message filters entry on the Tools menu. It is not necessary to create an individual filter for each address you want to block.  
 Now you have the block list filter, next time you want to block someone you can add their address into the top of the filter by pressing the plus button and thus creating a new field to enter the new address to be deleted.

7 comments:

  1. thank you Matt,for your help
    Best regards,
    Roland

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  2. Very helpful! Thank you!
    ~ skywriter

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  3. Thank you Matt, i will print it out & keep it, & also do it. Many thanks. Keith....

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  4. Thank you so much Matt.

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  5. Hi Matt
    That is a big help, but... for those relatives that really make your blood boil when they send you an email, do you know if it is possible to delete them so they don't sit in your deleted folder? Is that what the POP server section is for? Cheers Kate

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  6. Thanks much. I didn't even know about filtration, perhaps I should rtFm once in awhile :P

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