Hello to all,

right now, I have this situation:

1. one email account I use most, with more space and features

2. another email account, in a separate server

3. a third email account, in yet another separate server

Redirecting accounts in 2 and 3 is easy. But both of these accounts receive BCC'ed messages. These messages are one of: mailing list subscribe with that address; mailing list that simply exist for that account; BCC message someone sent to that address. Not all "mailing lists" I wrote here have a subject tag or something similar to suggest a filter.

I want to: have the messages received in each of these 3 addresses separated in different folders; have the option to eventually send answers using the same address the message was composed to (BCC'ed or not), preferably automatically.

I contacted the support for account 2, and they did not have anything guaranteed for what I asked. But said something that can be useful to create filters using Thunderbird - not valid for 100% of the messages, though.

One solution I imagine: do not redirect any account; configure them on Thunderbird; create filters for both accounts that move all arrived messages to the folders in my main account.

Is there a better solution? At some time, I may be forced to use redirection for accounts 2 and 3, so the problem may be reborn then, if I choose to stay with the solution I just said.

Do you use POP3 or IMAP for these accounts?

Can you use procmail on servers 2 and 3 ?

I always use IMAP to access all accounts - so the messages are never lost from the server, unless I delete them. But when I redirect an account, then it is not POP3, nor IMAP. Right? It is what the redirected-to account is (how I access it).

"Use promail on servers". I do not know. Is that something people would normally do? Servers 2 and 3 create accounts that are eventually given to people without top notch technical knowledge (different from me, theoretically).

What I know about procmail now is what I just quickly skimmed from its Wikipedia article. It reads from standard input, fine. But would I use a sort of IMAP client to pass messages delivered to accounts 2 and 3 to account 1, in chosen folders present in it? Or I would need to have a server, somehow?

When you say "redirect" I'm hearing "automatically forward," which you can do with procmail...but I don't have enough information to tell you how to route incoming email through procmail. I do it on my server with a utility called simscan, which is incorporated with my qmail MTA

I use Thunderbird to monitor/read/send email from several different accounts on several servers (mine own, gmail, aol, cox, etc.) Each server has it's own inbox, but there's one can also configure "Unified folders" so there's a single inbox displaying all the mail from each server's inbox. Replies are configured to use the default email address for the server. No need to move messages around. That may work for you.

The services use the word "redirect" for that setting. In my language, it is "redirecionar" (verb) or "redirecionamento" (substantive). But maybe that is called forward (different from what we do in Thunderbird when we forward an existing message to someone, and that is a reason why I did not use the word forward in the original post).

I do not have a server. But does that apply to my situation? If I had a server to access 3 different external accounts {A, B, C}, would I be able to solve the BCC problem when moving messages from B and C to A? (a bit more about this question below)

I use TB to check several accounts. But do you mean by "unified folders" that we only check Thunderbird to know which account has new messages? I know that. But I really need to move messages from accounts B and C to A (a matter of available space, basically). Redirecting (or automatically forwarding, if more appropriate) B and C to A has the problem with the decision "where this BCC message came from?".

After moving the messages to where they are safer, I would like to know if TB has an automatic way of using the correct account if I reply things from a specific folder in account A.

I would redirect B and C to A, and do the sorting in a client such as thunderbird or evolution. You don't really need to sort on the remote side if you do it on the client side.

I never said I want to sort on the remote site. It was a suggestion I received here in LQ, and I was (I am) still not sure how I would do that (if at all possible to me, as an user).

But redirecting B and C to A (this is something I was doing until recently) has the problem of determining the actual receiver of messages sent to B and C with me (B or C) in their BCC. I need to answer a few of these messages, and I want to answer them with the correct account.

I apologize for the delay in responding. I had to set up some TB accounts and do some testing.

It appears that a move of an email in Thunderbird does in fact physically move the message to the destination account/server.
One could do those moves manually or create a TB filter to do them automatically. The latter will only happen when the Thunderbird client is actually running, of course.

There is a TB add-on called "Folder Account" which enables TB to default a given From address when you reply to email in a specific folder. So, if you move email from server B to a specific folder on server A, and set the Folder Account for that folder to use the From address for server B, that should do what your asking. Same for server C, of course, but with a different folder (doh!).

This doesn't require any changes or reconfiguration on the servers...it's all done in the Thunderbird client.

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No problem with your delay. Sometimes I also take longer than intended to do things.

Moving the messages is a fair semimanual solution. It is what I have done with account B now. A fair solution, except that at some point in the future, I should be demanded to use redirection for both B and C - that, together with the BCC'ed received messages, is the main reason for this thread.

I created a "filter for all messages" in Thunderbird like this, for a lack of options, or creativity:

- before the spam filter, if at least one of the following rules are true, move the message to [account A > folder B];

- rule 1: subject contains "a"

- rule 2: subject does not contain "a"

It worked... so I will do that for account C too.

I just installed that addon and tested it a bit. It was "hard" to find where its setting is (in each folder properties). And now it seems to work fine!
(:

To end (and possibly close) this thread: is it true that in a message written for account X in BCC, if this account is redirected (automatic forward) to account Y, we have no way to know if a message received in account Y was sent to X or Y in BCC? For this question, I do not consider messages where X or Y addresses are in "to" or "cc" headers, of course.

Is this question clear? It seems confuse (I think) because there are many similar details and effects to write about.

I have all replies stored in the same folder as the message I'm replying to...that's another add-on, I think. Not sure if that addresses your last question.

Does "CCO" mean Carbon Copy? It appears that a moved message retains all of its header information, so to whom it was sent should be preserved.

I just noticed a configuration option where one could have ALL messages on one account stored in a folder on a different account, which would move everything, always.

This is something I have seen for the first time a few weeks ago. Maybe I will give it a try - and Thunderbird has the setting:

Account pref > section 'copies and folders' > "when sending messages, save a copy in [...] folder"

I am using this setting (and the others below it) to store the messages I send or draft (a verb!) or model (a verb!) in the accounts B or C. This plus the "all messages" filter, is a fair solution.

Oh! I am very sorry! All the times I wrote CCO, I meant BCC (blind carbon copy). I confused the acronyms in English and my language. I will edit my posts to fix that. Does this explain why most of you replying here seemed (to me) a bit confuse with what I said.

All messages in a folder in another account? Where is that? The only thing I can find is the local folder for each account... but using the same folder for two TB accounts is something I would not do, since TB may crash for details hard to foresee.

Ahh. BCC...
BCC'd messages to you are not "blind" to you. That is, you know they came to you, and from whence they came..., so it doesn't really change things much I wouldn't think. You'd just need to figure out what to filter on, since your address won't be in the To: or CC: headers My server and gmail have a Delivered-To: header, but I'm not sure if that's universal...

Hmm. I'm not finding that again...I thought it was in the "Server Settings" under "View settings for this account...so "never mind"
I agree that's probably not what you'd want to do anyway.

1 members found this post helpful.

I only see the local folder setting there. That is what I meant before. Don't you think that setting the same local folder to different accounts may cause problems?

(I will comment about the rest of #12, but I want to look around a bit with what you said)

Yes. Maybe not problems with the software, but definitely would mess me up as far as knowing what is/came from where.
Please forget I brought the idea up at all

@ #14: I will not forget it, but that is not even close to it being something bad. I just had a kind of argument to consider it possibly dangerous, or uneffective, or... I do not know what else may happen. Other opinions may differ - and when they are shown with a good intention, that is very very good. And that is why I like these fora. (: