Tuesday, July 19, 2011

How to Create a GMail Filter Based on Reply-To

Today, I found myself trying to filter a message in Gmail based on the "Reply-to:" header. "Reply-to:" was the only user-friendly header that clearly distinguished it from other types of messages I receive. I knew that Gmail allows list-based filtering using a "list:" prefix in the "Has the words:" field. But, I haven't found a resource to tell you what, if any, other prefixes are allowed. I tried "reply-to:" without success. Then, I searched and found another poor soul with the same dilema. A bit more futzing and I discovered that "replyto:" was the correct prefix. Unfortunately, the Google help forum won't let me post a reply (!) So, I am hoping that romadatnvwisp will read this post and learn how easy it is to filter based on the "Reply-to:" header. Maybe he's figured it out himself?

To recap... lets say you want to filter messages with a Reply-to: address of "me@sample.com". Here's how you do it:

  1. Click the gear icon in the upper-right-hand-corner of Gmail, then select "Mail settings"
  2. Click the "filters" tab, scroll to the bottom and click "Create a new filter"
  3. Type "replyto:me@sample.com" in the "Has the words" field
  4. Click "Next Step" and finish creating the filter; note that matching messages should appear below after clicking "Next Step"

6 comments:

  1. Not being able to filter messages by a custom header has been a pain for me as well. After waiting for Google to implement it for a long time, I've decided to implement a Gmail application to address that and other related problems. Sounds good? Get in touch at:
    http://www.filtermygmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for posting this.

    Was very useful and a simple hack.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi all,
    I have a website with a form. Every day 10 different people sending me that. The sender in email is always the same, their email address shows as "reply-to" always different.
    Because the sender email the same, every email goes into, accumulate 1 and becomes a giant "conversation", a headache.
    Where and how can i setup (might be a filter?) To seperate the emails using their email address (replay-to)? Ps: i do not know their email address yet!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Was there ever a solution to this?

      Delete
    2. I am having an issue with setting up a filter for emails form my website form. When contact form emails come in and the filter catches them the template email is sent out to the "from" email (basically my email) instead of the "reply to:" email. How did you set yours up so that it at least functioned even if in a frustrating way like you described.

      Delete
  4. Thank you for this, works like a charm.

    ReplyDelete