Rules and Filters

Overview

By default, Easy Mail Archive stores every message delivered to it. Rules let you change that — either by skipping certain messages entirely or by setting how long messages are kept before automatic deletion. You manage both from Admin > Rules.

Exclusion rules

Exclusion rules prevent matching messages from being archived. They are useful for filtering out automated notifications, newsletters, or other noise you do not need in the archive.

Each exclusion rule has an optional name and one or more conditions. When an incoming message matches the conditions, it is silently dropped instead of archived.

Conditions you can set

• Domain — match messages involving a specific domain (e.g. newsletter.example.com)
• Sender — match a specific sender address
• Recipient — match a specific recipient address
• Has attachment — match messages that include file attachments
• Is spam — match messages flagged as spam
• Size — match messages above or below a given size in MB (with operators like greater than, less than, etc.)

You can combine multiple conditions on a single rule. All conditions must match for the rule to apply.

Ordering

Exclusion rules are evaluated from top to bottom, and you can drag them to reorder. The first matching rule wins.

Retention rules

Retention rules control how long archived messages are kept before they are automatically deleted. Each retention rule has the same conditions as exclusion rules, plus a retain days value that sets the retention period.

There is always a default retention rule that applies to any message not matched by a more specific rule. The default rule cannot be deleted, but you can change its retention period. Setting it to 0 means messages are kept forever.

Non-default retention rules can be reordered by dragging. Like exclusion rules, they are evaluated top to bottom.

GoBD compliance warning

If you set a retention period shorter than 10 years (3,650 days), the app shows a warning about German tax law (GoBD/AO), which requires businesses to retain certain correspondence for 6 or 10 years depending on the document type. You need to acknowledge this warning before saving.

Creating a rule

Click the Add button in either the Exclusion or Retention section. Fill in a name, set the conditions, and save. For retention rules, also specify the number of days to retain matching messages.

Editing and deleting

Click on any rule to edit its conditions inline. You can delete non-default rules. The default retention rule can be edited but not removed.

Things to keep in mind

Rules only apply to new incoming messages. They do not retroactively remove messages that were already archived. If you need to clean up older messages, use bulk restore from search results to move them out, or wait for retention rules to expire them.