This page is a copy of the document originally available at http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/ recovered from the Wayback Machine at archive.org. Tony Finch is maintaining updates to this copy.
This page last updated 17 Oct 2005.
| RFC Name/Location | Author | Description |
| Sieve: A Mail Filtering Language RFC 3028 (Janurary 2001) |
Tim Showalter | The Sieve RFC (the base specification) |
| Sieve Extension: Relational Tests RFC 3431 (December 2002) |
Wolfgang Segmuller | Relational Tests Adds a relational operator for field values and for the number of entities in header fields and addresses |
| Sieve Email Filtering: Subaddress Extension RFC 3598 (September 2003) |
Ken Murchison | Subaddress Extension Specifies an extension to make matching different parts of subaddresses easier |
| SIEVE Email Filtering: Spamtest and VirusTest Extensions RFC 3685 (February 2004) |
Cyrus Daboo | Spam and virus tests Adds new generic tests for spam and virus checking. |
| Draft Name/Location | Author | Description |
| draft-melnikov-sieve-imapflags-06.txt | Alexey Melnikov | A proposed Sieve extension that would allow specification of modification of IMAP message flags on an IMAP server |
| draft-showalter-sieve-vacation-05.txt | Tim Showalter | Sieve Vacation Extension Provides "Vacation" style auto-reply processing through a Sieve extension (3rd version) |
| draft-murchison-sieve-regex-07.txt | Ken Murchison | Regular Expression Extension Specifies an extension to add regular expression match type for comparisons |
| draft-martin-managesieve-04.txt | Tim Martin | A Protocol for Remotely Managing Sieve Scripts |
| draft-martin-sieve-notify-02.txt EXPIRED Local Copy of -01 |
Tim Martin | Sieve Instant Notification Extension |
| draft-degener-sieve-body-02.txt | Jutta Degener | Allows tests on the body of a message |
| draft-daboo-sieve-include-02.txt | Cyrus Daboo | Include Extension Allows one script to include another. |
| draft-homme-sieve-variables-03.txt | Kjetil Torgrim Homme | Variables Extension Adds variables to the SIEVE language. |
| draft-degener-sieve-multiscript-01.txt | Jutta Degener | Sequential Execution of Multiple Scripts Extension Defines sieve behaviour when multiple scripts are executed on a message |
| draft-degener-sieve-editheader-01.txt | Jutta Degener | "editheader" Extension Allows headers in the message being processed to be added, changed or deleted. |
| draft-degener-sieve-copy-03.txt | Jutta Degener | "copy" Extension Adds a keyword to prevent cancellation of implicit keep for fileinto and redirect actions |
| draft-elvey-refuse-sieve-02.txt | Matthew Elvey | "refuse" Extension Allow the mail system to refuse email during the SMTP transaction as opposed to doing a reject or discard. |
| draft-daboo-sieve-mime-00.txt | Cyrus Daboo | "mime-test" Extension Allow tests on MIME headers. |
| draft-madanganeshv-sieve-remove-attach-00.txt | Madan Ganesh Velayudham | "fileinto-except" Extension Allow remove of specific attachments when filing messages. |
| draft-madanganeshv-sieve-stat-01.txt | Madan Ganesh Velayudham | "STATISTICS" Extension to MANAGESIEVE Allows users to get statistics on how SIEVE has filtered their messages. |
| draft-hansen-sieve-loop-00.txt | Tony Hansen | Mechanism for looping and testing each mime part in a message. |
The "Sieve Manifesto", aka Sieve White Paper, aka "The Sieve Language and a General Model for Delivery and Interoperable Filtering in Internet Mail" is available in PDF format here.
This is version 2.00, updated in February, 2001 to reflect the evolution of Sieve to date.
There was a Network World article on the front page in August, 2000.
Slides were prepared by Tim Showalter for the formal Sieve BOF at the 41st IETF at Los Angeles, California, describing Sieve Syntax. They're here in PostScript format. Please note that portions of this Sieve syntax are now obsolete, and that the complete presentation was not made at this meeting due to time constraints (see also the minutes for that meeting, linked below in the history and milestones section).
There is a brief description of SIEVE in the new O'Reilly Managing IMAP book by Dianna & Kevin Mullet.
These pages were originally sponsored and maintained by Cyrusoft International, Inc., as a general service to the community, to try to support development, standardization, and implementation of Sieve and related tools and standards. Copyright and ownership of any linked document, script, or other contributed piece remains the sole property of its original owner/author. Cyrusoft in no way makes any ownership claims, except as specifically listed for any items it may have contributed. In all cases, users of this website are asked to carefully look for the specific copyright language and restrictions of each individual document. This copy was made available by Tony Finch after Cyrusoft went bankrupt in order to preserve a useful Internet resource.