I want to preface this with a hearty thanks for all the help so far. I am slowly adding a few rules a day to start learning all this stuff and to keep from having to spend my entire day forwarding mail that is erroneously trapped in my filters. I now have a new question. When should you use each different element in a search filter?

For example, when should I search in the Header vs. searching in the Body vs. searching the From field vs. searching in the To field vs. searching the Subject, etc.? If I am trying to eliminate messages based on a text search, wouldn't two rules, one in the body and one in the header take care of all instances of the search text in all messages regardless of whether the text was in the subject, the body? If I wanted to eliminate message from one certain domain or user, wouldn't a single rule in the header perform the same function as if I used the from field instead?

I realize that I am lacking some knowledge as to how the messages are actually formatted and maybe an education in this area would help my understanding. If someone could point me to a FAQ on this and how Imail fits into this that would be great. Also, can I add comment lines in the rules.ima file to delineate each section? It would be great if we could optionally add a field to a rule that would create a notation in the log files when a rule was applied.

The last question is has anyone used external files in the rules setup? Is there any disadvantage to using external files instead of one huge rules.ima file? I have though about a different file for each search type (ie. Header, body etc.) that would forward to individual mail.fwd boxes so that I could at least narrow down which rule is kicking out the message when it gets caught in the filter.

Thanks for the advice.

Scott R. Morgan skydiver@srmservices.com SUPERIOR RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT SERVICES (512) 443-3979 (512) 416-9621 (Fax)

USPA A-29450 Only a skydiver knows why the birds sing.... They don't have to repack a parachute every time they land!!!