VPOP3 Email Server
Advanced Features
This page shows a few of the advanced features that VPOP3 can do. It is by no means an exhaustive list,
but may give you some ideas about how to use VPOP3's facilities more. This page will be updated
frequently, so keep coming back to look.
Any methods described on this page are for VPOP3 1.5.0, but should work on later versions, and may work on earlier versions as well.
Download Rules
VPOP3 can process a rules file when downloading messages from an Internet POP3 account. This facility is called
'Download Rules' in the VPOP3 help, and is very powerful.
To set up Download Rules you go to the In Mail tab and press the 'Edit DLRules' button.
(In VPOP3 1.4.0 and earlier, create a text file in the VPOP3 directory called DLRULES.DAT (the filename is important,
so if you are using Notepad to make the file, check that it isn't adding .TXT to the end of the filename!)).
The Download Rule definition format may look a bit confusing for a start, but it is quite
straightforward once you get used to it, and there are examples in the help file and here which
should help.
(If you receive your incoming mail using SMTP instead of POP3, there are also SMTP Rules available, but these are
less flexible because of limitations of the SMTP protocol).
Spam Filtering
A common use of Download Rules is to restrict the amount of spam (or junk email) that you receive. Using Download Rules won't
stop you receiving spam at all, but it may help to reduce it.
For instance, you may want VPOP3 simply to delete mail which matches one of the following rules:
- Subject contains LET BULK E-MAIL WORK FOR YOU!!!!
- Subject contains SEX SEX
- To contains <Undisclosed.Recipients@earthlink.net>
- From contains @inboxexpress.com
- Subject contains Viagra
To make VPOP3 ignore messages which match those rules, you'd put the following into the DLRULES.DAT file
+@Silently Delete Spam mail
Subject: LET BULK E-MAIL WORK FOR YOU!!!!
Subject: SEX SEX
To: <Undisclosed.Recipients@earthlink.net>
From: @inboxexpress.com
Subject: Viagra
You can obviously extend these rules to automatically delete your 'favourite' spam.
Offpeak Downloading
You can use download rules to wait until offpeak times before downloading large messages. To do this you would create a download rule
something like this:
~Ignore Big messages between 9:00 and 17:00
Size: 100000
TimeNow: 9:00-17:00
When you do this, VPOP3 will ignore big messages between 9am and 5pm. If it connects at any time outside those hours, it
will download the big messages which it hasn't downloaded before.
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