Creating a Search Folder for Unanswered Sent Emails

[derhelge]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to enhance my email management within Evolution Mail and could use some guidance. My goal is to create a search folder that specifically shows emails in the “Sent Items” folder for which there has been no reply in the “Inbox.”

Does anyone know if it’s possible to set up a search folder or a filter that tracks whether a sent email has received a reply? Or, if not directly possible, could there be a workaround or a script that might help achieve this functionality?

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!

[mcrha]

Hi,
I’m afraid there is nothing builtin for it. It’s pretty complex task,
when it comes to it. What you’d want is to show the leaf messages,
which are in the Sent folder only. There’s nothing for it, I’m sorry.
It’s just too specific constraint.

You need to merge all the folders the messages can be in (aka the “Sent
Items” and the “Inbox”). Then the search folder can be set to use these
folders (or a semi-temporary search folder for “match-all” in the
needed folders can be created, say called as “Inbox+Sent”; then you can
add this “Inbox+Sent” into a new search folder) and then try one of the
“Include threads” option. The last one “No reply or parent” sounds
close to your request, but I’m afraid it won’t work for cases where you
reply to a mail in the Inbox and then wait for the response to your
reply, because the two messages will create a thread:

Inbox - original message
Sent - reply

thus there is a reply and a parent, which rules out your Sent message.
And when you have two replies, it’s even worse:

Inbox - original message
Sent - reply 1
Inbox - reply on reply 1
Sent - reply 2

Try to experiment with the “Include threads” option, just be aware that
it’ll take some computational time, depending on those folders’ size.

I’d try more manual work, like tagging messages in the Sent folder, for
example marking them Important (which is saved on the server), but it
means a lot of manual work, thus probably not usable.

Or if you move away dealt-with messages from the Inbox, the Sent
messages will get almost orphans (the “reply 1” and “reply 2” in the
Sent folder still construct a thread, even when those Inbox messages
are not included).

With respect of the script, the filters do not work like that, they
operate on each message separately, thus even if there would be a way
to pipe the message to anything, it won’t know about the siblings.

Bye,
Milan

[derhelge]

Hi Milan,
thank you very much for your detailed and quick response. And in general, for your work!

I tried the workarounds you suggested, and you’re right: none of them really fit well, so I’ll stick with my manual tagging. I already do this for important emails that require tracking. Sometimes, though, I miss something, and I thought I could simplify it with a search folder.

Bye
Helge