is there anyway to restrict incoming email to only those in an adress book?

rneaul@sbcglobal.net wrote:

> is there anyway to restrict incoming email to only those in an adress book?

Create a rule that deletes all incoming e-mails EXCEPT if the sender is
in your address book. Include the stop-clause in this rule. This works
if you have only 1 address book (or contact-type folder).

If you have multiple address books, and because you can only specify one
address book per rule, you would define rules that basically do nothing
on the e-mail itself (i.e., no moves or deletes) but has the
stop-clause. If the e-mail is from a known sender, no action is
performed other than not process any more rules. You would follow those
whitelist rules with a rule that deletes all e-mails. The e-mail gets
left in the Inbox (no action on it) if the sender is in one of your
address books; otherwise, and because it didn't trigger a whitelist
rule, the sender is not in any of your address books and so the
delete-rule gets triggered.