using filters

[anoop]

I've been using filters to directly archive messages
from mailing lists and attach a label to them. Most
groups prefix their subject line with something like
"[xyz]". Now, when I create a filter asking gmail to
match [xyz], emails which contain xyz by itself anywhere
in the subject line gets treated as a match.

Let's say I have a group XYZ whose emails have
the subject line as:
"[xyz] welcome to our new group!"
This gets filtered correctly.

Now I receive an email from a friend, which is completely
unrelated to XYZ, and the subject of that email is:
Let's just call it something like xyz.

The above, despite not having the "[]" matches the
filter rule and gets auto-archived. I've tried all of the
following as match criteria and none of them are able
to get around this problem:
[xyz]
"[xyz]"
\[xyz\]

Is there a way around this?

Thanks,
Anoop

[Zack (Doc)]

Not exactly, but yes.

There is no way to "escape" search terms that have special meanings, so you can't do what you say below.  You can, however, search for list-id which is set on most of those mailing lists, and won't exist on your friends messages.  This should cut down/eliminate false-positives.

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[Andy]

> Is there a way around this?

As Zack (Doc) says, there isn't a way around this particular problem
with Gmail's search methods. Gmail searches seem to be blind to just
about all non-alphanumeric characters (including [ and ]), and there
seems to be no fix for that. We are stuck with it.

This behavior bothered the heck out of me too, for precisely the same
reason as yours.

His suggestion to search for the "list-id" works with MOST email
lists, but not all. To use it:

Select any message from the email list, then go to the the "More
actions" button and select the "Filter messages like this" choice.
This should fill in the Filter parameters to select only that email
list.

If an email list doesn't use the "list-id" thingy, then the filled-in
parameters will be something like the sender's name. In that case,
you may be out of luck ... unless you can find other things unique to
your email list messages that you can include in a filter search.
(For example, many email lists add a few lines of text as the "footer"
or bottom of every list message.)

You could also search for email that is addressed to that list's email
address, but that won't find messages where the address was done as a
BCC.

Regards,
Andy

[Kenneth Ayers]

I've always filtered on the to: field, e.g.,

to:(gmail...@googlegroups.com)

As Andy said, this won't catch those emails sent to the group via the
BCC field, but in my experience that is extremely rare.