I don't know if it's possible to change the order of the drop-down, but you may find it easier to copy an existing filter with the correct filter action rather than create a new filter (see picture).

Thanks for the reply, sfhowes.... I guess that's one way to do it... still, it just adds a different set of things to do... the "delete" would be there, but I'd have to change everything else.

Thunderbird has a junk mail filter, and here you are bemoaning the fact your doing it manually. Your not helping the filter learn. that filter should mark the message as junk even if it's next step is to delete it. Work with the tools instead of fighting them. You never know, Thunderbird might learn what you think is junk if you teach it. But it will not learn from senders address, because they are not relevant in detecting Junk mail. More appropriate would be to mark it a junk and move it to the junk folder. Then if the filter get one wrong you get a chance to recover it.

Hi Matt,

thanks for your reply. I've seen T-bird mark a lot of junk emails as junk, and I've marked a large number of ones that it missed as junk, too. It should be learning from that, no?

My goal here was to never see any junk mail at all, via the filters... doing it your way, my inbox is still going to be jammed with junk mail that I have to deal with.

I'll try it your way for awhile and see how it goes.

All I am suggesting it you add another action in your filter before you move or delete to mark as junk.

Thunderbird should, unless the default is changed be moving all mail when it is marked as junk to the relevant junl folder so it should not be in your inbox.

I have heard of issues with anti virus programs that are just too aggressive locking the files to scan the "change" and resulting in junk not being moved. We generally suggest you exclude your Thunderbird profile from any on access scanning. Leave it to the weekly full scans only.