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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <section id="ch_handling">
3 <title>Basic mail handling</title>
5 <section id="handling_folders">
6 <title>Mail folders</title>
7 <para>
8 If you receive a lot of emails, you will probably soon find that your
9 Inbox folder is growing to the point where you have a hard time finding
10 an email again, even if you received it just a few days ago. This is why
11 Claws Mail, like most good mail clients, provides you with multiple
12 possibilities in organising your mails.
13 </para>
14 <para>
15 You can create as many folders and subfolders as you need. For example,
16 one folder for your family, one folder for friends, folders for
17 mailing-lists, archive folders for old mails that you still want to have
18 available, etc. To create a new folder, simply right-click on its parent
19 folder and choose <quote>New folder...</quote> from the drop-down menu.
20 If you want to create a folder <quote>Friends</quote> inside your Inbox
21 folder, for example, just right-click on the Inbox folder, choose
22 <quote>New folder...</quote>, and type in <quote>Friends</quote> in the
23 dialogue that appears. Click the OK button, and the new folder is
24 created.
25 </para>
26 </section>
28 <section id="handling_organisation">
29 <title>Folder organisation</title>
30 <para>
31 Now that you have created folders, you can manipulate them and their
32 contents using menu items or drag 'n' drop. Moving one folder into
33 another, for example, can be done by right-clicking on the folder you
34 want to move, choosing the <quote>Move folder...</quote> menu item, and
35 selecting the destination folder. This will move the folder, with the
36 mail it contains, to a subfolder of the chosen folder. Alternatively,
37 you can drag a folder to another one by clicking on it, keeping the
38 mouse pressed, moving the mouse cursor over the destination folder and
39 releasing the button.
40 </para>
41 <para>
42 If you want to remove a folder and the mail it contains, simply
43 right-click on the folder and choose <quote>Delete folder...</quote>. As
44 this is potentially harmful, (the mails in the folder will be deleted
45 and not recoverable), you will be asked for confirmation.
46 </para>
47 <para>
48 In the same manner that you move a folder to another one, you can move
49 emails from one folder to another. The same method applies for this:
50 either drag 'n' drop emails to a folder, or choose
51 <quote>Move...</quote> after right-clicking on the mail. You can select
52 multiple emails by using the Control or Shift key while clicking on
53 them. You can also copy emails to another folder by pressing the Control
54 key when drag'n'dropping, or by choosing <quote>Copy...</quote> from the
55 email's contextual menu.
56 </para>
57 </section>
59 <section id="imap_subscriptions">
60 <title>IMAP subscriptions</title>
61 <para>
62 The IMAP protocol allows one to store a list of subscribed folders. Most
63 mail user agents hide the unsubscribed folders away from the GUI, and have
64 a little window allowing to subscribe to these unsubscribed folders. In
65 Claws Mail, subscriptions are respected by default, and only subscribed
66 folders will be displayed. If you want to see all your folders, you can just
67 uncheck <quote>Show subscribed folders only</quote> in the IMAP mailbox'
68 contextual menu or the account preferences. You'll be able to subscribe and
69 unsubscribe folders from this contextual menu too. If the unsubscribed
70 folders are hidden from the list, you will have two ways to subscribe to
71 a folder: either show all folders, subscribe the ones you want, and hide
72 unsubscribed folders again; or, if you know the folder's name, use
73 <quote>Create new folder</quote> in its parent's contextual menu.
74 </para>
75 </section>
77 <section id="handling_filters">
78 <title>Filtering</title>
79 <para>
80 Once you have a nice folder hierarchy in place, you'll probably want
81 Claws Mail to sort your incoming emails automatically, in order to
82 avoid having to move messages manually each time they arrive. For this
83 you can use the Filtering feature.
84 </para>
85 <para>
86 You will find the filtering preferences via the
87 <quote>Configuration</quote> menu, <quote>Filtering</quote> item. From
88 this dialogue you will be able to define new rules, modify or delete
89 existing rules, re-order the rules, and enable/disable them. Filtering
90 rules are defined by five things: the enabled status, a name, an account
91 name, a condition, and an action. All disabled rules are simply ignored.
92 The <quote>Name</quote> entry is optional, it's there to help you
93 identify your rules. An account name can be chosen, which will restrict
94 the rule to mail retrieved from the named account only, skipping it for
95 mail retrieved from all other accounts. The default value is
96 <quote>All</quote>, which means that the rule is global and will
97 be applied to all mail, regardless of the account from which it was
98 retrieved, (see paragraph below). The condition format is an expression
99 defining what Claws Mail should look for when filtering mail, for
100 example: <quote>to matchcase claws-mail-users</quote> is for messages
101 sent to any address containing <quote>claws-mail-users</quote>. You can
102 easily define conditions by clicking the <quote>Define...</quote> button
103 at the right of the field. The last part of a filtering rule is the
104 action, which instructs Claws Mail what to do with mail matching
105 the condition we just defined. For example, <quote>mark_as_read</quote>
106 marks the mail as read as soon as it arrives in your inbox, or
107 <quote>move #mh/Mailbox/inbox/Friends</quote> moves the mail to your
108 <quote>Friends</quote> subfolder. Here, too, a <quote>Define...</quote>
109 button is available to help you define the action to take.
110 </para>
111 <para>
112 Filtering rules can be assigned to a single, specific account. To do
113 this select an account from the <quote>Account</quote> combo below the
114 <quote>Name</quote> entry. When you set a specific account the filtering
115 rule will only be applied to messages retrieved from the named account.
116 The default value is <quote>All</quote>, which means that the rule will
117 be applied globally, to messages retrieved from any account. When filtering
118 messages manually, if there are any per-account filtering rules defined,
119 you will be asked what you wish to do with those rules. Possible choices
120 are to skip the rules, or apply these rules regardless of the account to
121 which they belong, or use the rules for the currently selected account.
122 Caution: if you unset the <quote>Show this message next time</quote>
123 checkbox and click <quote>Filter</quote>, on subsequent manual filtering
124 this choice will be applied without any confirmation. Account specific
125 rules are only available for filtering, (at incorporation or manually),
126 the feature is not available for folder Processing or Pre/Post-Processing.
127 </para>
128 <para>
129 Once you have defined the rule, you can add it to the list of rules with
130 the <quote>Add</quote> button. Don't forget that the order of the rules
131 is important: if Claws Mail finds a rule suitable for an email that
132 either moves or deletes the email, it will stop looking for further
133 rules for that email. This is why, at the right of the rules list, you
134 will find four buttons allowing the re-ordering of rules. The rules can
135 also be reordered by drag 'n' drop.
136 </para>
137 <para>
138 There is also a quick method of creating filtering rules based on the
139 selected message. After selecting a mail of the type you want to filter,
140 choose <quote>Create filter rule...</quote> from the
141 <quote>Tools</quote> menu, and choose a type from the submenu:
142 <quote>Automatically</quote> mainly helps for mailing-lists posts,
143 <quote>by From</quote> creates a filter based on the sender of the
144 email, <quote>by To</quote> creates a filter based on the recipient, and
145 <quote>by Subject</quote> creates a filter based on the subject. Each
146 one of these types of filtering has its advantages, it's up to you to
147 find out what would be the more practical. Usually,
148 <quote>by From</quote> is nice to sort out your regular contacts' mails,
149 whereas <quote>by To</quote> is more useful to sort mails sent to your
150 different accounts.
151 </para>
152 </section>
154 <section id="handling_searching">
155 <title>Searching</title>
156 <para>
157 There are several methods for searching your emails.
158 </para>
159 <para>
160 One of them is relatively standard, and can be found in the
161 <quote>Edit</quote> menu, it's the <quote>Search folder...</quote> item.
162 This will open a window where you can specify one or more fields to
163 search in: From, To, Subject, and Body. After having specified your
164 criteria, click on the <quote>Back</quote> or <quote>Forward</quote>
165 buttons to navigate through the matching emails, or use
166 <quote>Find all</quote> to select all the matching emails at once. Be
167 aware that searching for text in the body of emails is much slower than
168 searching in its headers, because the body of emails isn't cached by
169 Claws Mail. <quote>Extended Search</quote> mode can be turned on by
170 clicking the relevant checkbox, thus allowing you to use match expressions
171 like those used in <quote>Filtering</quote> rules.
172 </para>
173 <para>
174 If you're looking at a large email and want to find a particular part
175 of it, you can use the <quote>Find in current message...</quote> item of
176 the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. This works like search in a text document.
177 </para>
178 <para>
179 The final way of searching for emails is using <quote>Quick Search</quote>,
180 which you can display or hide by clicking the little magnifying glass icon
181 under the Message List. It is also accessible from the <quote>Quick Search</quote>
182 item of the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. <quote>Quick Search</quote> is more
183 powerful than the normal search as it can search in standard headers (From,
184 To, Subject) or in <quote>Extended</quote> mode using just about any
185 criteria you can think of. When in <quote>Extended</quote> mode, the
186 <quote>Information</quote> button is visible, enabling you to see the
187 search syntax. An <quote>Edit</quote> button is also available which
188 allows you to quickly create a rule. You can also configure
189 <quote>Quick Search</quote> to search recursively through subfolders,
190 whether it should reset itself when you change folders, and whether to
191 use Type-ahead search (this is a search which results update dynamically
192 if you pause in the typing).
193 </para>
194 <para>
195 When you hit Enter after having specified the search string, the Message
196 List will shrink to present you with only the matching messages. If you
197 set the search to be recursive, any subfolder of the current one that
198 has matching emails will change its icon to a magnifying glass icon.
199 This way, you can search in your whole mailbox at once. If the search is
200 in Sticky mode, the filter will stay applied when you go to another
201 folder. This can be disturbing at first, as you can forget about it, but
202 is useful in some cases, for example if you want to search in the body
203 of emails and are not sure of which folder contains the searched email:
204 a recursive search on the body of emails in a whole mailbox can be
205 really slow.
206 </para>
207 </section>
209 </section>