claws-mail/manual/handling.xml

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<section id="ch_handling">
<title>Basic mail handling</title>

  <section id="handling_folders">
    <title>Mail folders</title>
    <para>
	If you receive a lot of emails, you will probably soon find that your
	Inbox folder is growing to the point where you have a hard time finding
	an email again, even if you received it just a few days ago. This is why
	Sylpheed-Claws, like most good mail clients, provides you with multiple
	possibilities in organising your mails.
    </para>
    <para>
	You can create as many folders and subfolders as you need. For example,
	one folder for your family, one folder for friends, folders for
	mailing-lists, archive folders for old mails that you still want to have
	available, etc. To create a new folder, simply right-click on its parent
	folder and choose <quote>New folder...</quote> from the drop-down menu.
	If you want to create a folder <quote>Friends</quote> inside your Inbox
	folder, for example, just right-click on the Inbox folder, choose
	<quote>New folder...</quote>, and type in <quote>Friends</quote> in the
	dialogue that appears. Click the OK button, and the new folder is
	created.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="handling_organisation">
    <title>Folder organisation</title>
    <para>
	Now that you have created folders, you can manipulate them and their
	contents using menu items or drag 'n' drop. Moving one folder into
	another, for example, can be done by right-clicking on the folder you
	want to move, choosing the <quote>Move folder...</quote> menu item, and
	selecting the destination folder. This will move the folder, with the
	mail it contains, to a subfolder of the chosen folder. Alternatively,
	you can drag a folder to another one by clicking on it, keeping the
	mouse pressed, moving the mouse cursor over the destination folder and
	releasing the button.
    </para>
    <para>
	If you want to remove a folder and the mail it contains, simply
	right-click on the folder and choose <quote>Delete folder...</quote>. As
	this is potentially harmful, (the mails in the folder will be deleted
	and not recoverable), you will be asked for confirmation.
    </para>
    <para>
	In the same manner that you move a folder to another one, you can move
	emails from one folder to another. The same method applies for this:
	either drag 'n' drop emails to a folder, or choose
	<quote>Move...</quote> after right-clicking on the mail. You can select
	multiple emails by using the Control or Shift key while clicking on
	them. You can also copy emails to another folder by pressing the Control
	key when drag'n'dropping, or by choosing <quote>Copy...</quote> from the
	email's contextual menu.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="handling_filters">
    <title>Filtering</title>
    <para>
	Once you have a nice folder hierarchy in place, you'll probably want
	Sylpheed-Claws to sort your incoming emails automatically, in order to
	avoid having to move messages manually each time they arrive. For this
	you can use the Filtering feature.
    </para>
    <para>
	You will find the filtering preferences via the
	<quote>Configuration</quote> menu, <quote>Filtering</quote> item. From
	this dialogue you will be able to define new rules, modify or delete
	existing rules, re-order the rules, and enable/disable them. Filtering
	rules are defined by five things: the enabled status, a name, an account
	name, a	condition, and an action. All disabled rules are simply ignored.
	The <quote>Name</quote> entry is optional, it's there to help you
	identify your rules. An account name can be chosen, which will restrict
	the rule to mail retrieved from the named account only, skipping it for
	mail retrieved from all other accounts. The default value is
	<quote>All</quote>, which means that the rule is global and will
	be applied  to all mail, reagrdless of the account from which it was
	retireved, (see paragraph below). The condition format is an expression
	defining what Sylpheed-Claws should look for when filtering mail, for
	example: <quote>to matchcase sylpheed-claws-users</quote> is for messages
	sent to any address containing <quote>sylpheed-claws-users</quote>. You can
	easily define conditions by clicking the <quote>Define...</quote> button
	at the right of the field. The last part of a filtering rule is the
	action, which instructs Sylpheed-Claws what to do with mail matching
	the condition we just defined. For example, <quote>mark_as_read</quote>
	marks the mail as read as soon as it arrives in your inbox, or
	<quote>move #mh/Mailbox/inbox/Friends</quote> moves the mail to your
	<quote>Friends</quote> subfolder. Here, too, a <quote>Define...</quote>
	button is available to help you define the action to take.
    </para>
    <para>
	Filtering rules can be assigned to a single, specific account. To do
	this select an account from the <quote>Account</quote> combo below the 
	<quote>Name</quote> entry. When you set a specific account the filtering
	rule will only be applied to messages retrieved from the named account.
	The default value is <quote>All</quote>, which means that the rule will
	be appied globally, to messages retrieved from any account. When filtering
	messages manually, if there are any per-account filtering rules defined,
	you will be asked what you wish to do with those rules. Possible choices
	are to skip the rules, or apply these rules regardless of the account to
	which they belong, or use the rules for the currently selected account.
	Caution: if you unset the <quote>Show this message next time</quote>
	checkbox and click <quote>Filter</quote>, on subsequent manual filtering
	this choice will be applied without any confirmation. Account specific
	rules are only available for filtering, (at incorporation or manually),
	the feature is not available for folder Processing or Pre/Post-Processing. 
	</para>
    <para>
	Once you have defined the rule, you can add it to the list of rules with
	the <quote>Add</quote> button. Don't forget that the order of the rules
	is important: if Sylpheed-Claws finds a rule suitable for an email that
	either moves or deletes the email, it will stop looking for further
	rules for that email. This is why, at the right of the rules list, you
	will find four buttons allowing the re-ordering of rules. The rules can
	also be reordered by drag 'n' drop.
    </para>
    <para>
	There is also a quick method of creating filtering rules based on the
	selected message. After selecting a mail of the type you want to filter,
	choose <quote>Create filter rule...</quote> from the
	<quote>Tools</quote> menu, and choose a type from the submenu:
	<quote>Automatically</quote> mainly helps for mailing-lists posts,
	<quote>by From</quote> creates a filter based on the sender of the
	email, <quote>by To</quote> creates a filter based on the recipient, and
	<quote>by Subject</quote> creates a filter based on the subject. Each
	one of these types of filtering has its advantages, it's up to you to
	find out what would be the more practical. Usually,
	<quote>by From</quote> is nice to sort out your regular contacts' mails,
	whereas <quote>by To</quote> is more useful to sort mails sent to your
	different accounts.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="handling_searching">
    <title>Searching</title>
    <para>
	There are several methods for searching your emails.
    </para>
    <para>
	One of them is relatively standard, and can be found in the
	<quote>Edit</quote> menu, it's the <quote>Search folder...</quote> item.
	This will open a window where you can specify one or more fields to
	search in: From, To, Subject, and Body. After having specified your
	criteria, click on the <quote>Back</quote> or <quote>Forward</quote>
	buttons to navigate through the matching emails, or use
	<quote>Find all</quote> to select all the matching emails at once. Be
	aware that searching for text in the body of emails is much slower than
	searching in its headers, because the body of emails isn't cached by
	Sylpheed-Claws. <quote>Extended Search</quote> mode can be turned on by
	clicking the relevant checkbox, thus allowing you to use match expressions
	like those used in <quote>Filtering</quote> rules.
    </para>
    <para>
	If you're looking at a large email and want to find a particular part
	of it, you can use the <quote>Find in current message...</quote> item of
	the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. This works like search in a text document.
    </para>
    <para>
	The final way of searching for emails is using <quote>Quick Search</quote>,
	which you can display or hide by cilicking the little magnifying glass icon
	under the Message List. It is also accessible from the <quote>Quick Search</quote>
	item of	the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. <quote>Quick Search</quote> is more
	powerful than the normal search as it can search in standard headers (From,
	To, Subject) or in <quote>Extended</quote> mode using just about any
	criteria you can think of. When in <quote>Extended</quote> mode, the
	<quote>Information</quote> button is visible, enabling you to see the
	search syntax. An <quote>Edit</quote> button is also available which
	allows you to quickly create a rule. You can also configure
	<quote>Quick Search</quote> to search recursively through subfolders,
	and whether it should reset itself when you change folders.
    </para>
    <para>
	When you hit Enter after having specified the search string, the Message
	List will shrink to present you with only the matching messages. If you
	set the search to be recursive, any subfolder of the current one that
	has matching emails will change its icon to a magnifying glass icon.
	This way, you can search in your whole mailbox at once. If the search is
	in Sticky mode, the filter will stay applied when you go to another
	folder. This can be disturbing at first, as you can forget about it, but
	is useful in some cases, for example if you want to search in the body
	of emails and are not sure of which folder contains the searched email:
	a recursive search on the body of emails in a whole mailbox can be
	really slow.
    </para>
  </section>

</section>