Creating Filters

The Filter Manager The Filter Manager is used to manage all the filters you create. The Filter Manager Buttons The New Button The New button allows you to create a new filter. When you click on the button, you will be presented with an empty filter window. The image below is shows this: Procedure 16 - Creating Filters To create a new filter follow these steps: Open a NewsHunter document. Select Filter Manager from the Utilities menu. Click the New button. Enter a name for the filter. Optionally, enter a description of the fi.lter. Select the header you want to filter Enter information appropriate to the header. Click the OK button. The Edit Button The Edit button allows you to edit existing filters. The Delete Button The Delete button allows you to delete filters. Simply select the filter or filters and click the Delete button. The On/Off Button The On/Off button allows you to turn filters on or off. Filters that are turned off will not be used. Simply select the filters you wish to turn on or off, click the On/Off button, and select the appropriate menu item. Contains versus. Equals Some filters, including the Subject filter allow you to select whether you want to filter out items that contain a certain string of characters or items that exactly equal a string of characters. Each of these selections is discussed below. Contains When you select Contains, you are telling the filter to ignore any article that contains the string of characters. So, for example, if you create a filter that ignores any article that contains the word "orange" in the Subject header the following articles would be ignored: Subject = "orange" Subject = "this is the orange wall" Subject = "good-bye to orange juice" Subject = "orange and brown in neo-classical art" Equals When you select Equals, you are telling the filter to ignore any article that equals the string of characters. So, for example, if you create a filter that ignores any article that equals the word "orange" in the Subject header the following articles would be ignored: Subject = "orange" The following examples illustrate how to create several kinds of filters. Filter on the Subject Header If you want to filter out any article that contains a specific string of characters in the subject header, use the Subject header. The screen shot below shows a filter that has been created to filter out any article that contains the word "yellow" in the subject header. Filter on the Number of Cross-Posts One way to filter out spam effectively is to check how many newsgroups to which an article has been posted. The more newsgroups to which an article has been cross posted, the more likely it is spam. In the screen shot below you can see that the user has created a filter that will ignore any article that has been cross posted to more than 3 other newsgroups. Filter on the From Header If there is a particular author you want to filter, you can use the From header. In the image below, you can see that the user is creating a filter to ignore any articles posted by the author indigo2@mindspring.com. Filter on the Number of Lines You can filter out articles that are either smaller or larger than a certain number of lines. In the image below, you can see that a filter has been created to filter out articles that are more than 2000 lines in length. Filter on Anything in any Header You can also create a filter that will search all the headers and filter out any article that contains or equals a certain string of characters. In the image below you can see that the user is creating a filter that will ignore any article that contains "fido.net" in any header.