Re: [Evolution] Listing all messages sent to a particular address, to which there was never a reply?

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> I like to keep the last 3 months worth of mail in a folder, which I use
> daily via evolution and dovecot.  Then, rather than clicking delete
> again and again (I receive a very high volume of mail), I just let a
> cron job delete anything older than 3 months that hasn't been refiled
> out of that folder.
>
> I have a particular correspondent who has a habit of not bothering to
> return my e-mails, and I'm having to generate lists of things to follow
> up with him on, unfortunately.
>
> Is there some way I can, using evolution or other imap-based or maildir-
> based tool, generate a list of all messages I sent to said
> correspondent, and to which there was never a reply?

Well...

Not exactly, but maybe a vFolder can help you at least. Set up a
vFolder, with all folders as sources that contain said mails (your Sent
folder and the folder(s) that contain his responses). Use his email
adress to filter out any mails not to/from him. You may want to let the
vFolder display entire threads with matching mails as well, rather than
only the matching mails.

Using View / Threaded Message List you now at least get an overview of
all correspondence to/from him and whether he answered or not.


An alternative not using Evo might be 'formail' and a bit of scripting.
Let it act on those mbox files, and use your Message-Id headers and his
In-Reply-To and References headers so generate a list of mails not yet
answered. No, I do not volunteer to hack that. ;-)

With some creativity, you even could hack a script using 'formail' or
parsing the mail with the language of your choice, to remember all
Message-Id's. 'formail' can be used to cache Message-Id's [1]. Using
this script in a Filter (pipe to script) you can set flags or move the
mail based on the return value.


Both rely on the proper handling of Message-Id's and threading. Which
means, if the other guy uses one of those broken MUAs out there, you're
screwed. Sorting manually or hitting him with a clue bat would be easier
in that case. ;-)

...guenther


[1] I posted how to do this with filtering/removing duplicates in mind a
    couple of times to this list.


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0  ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}