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>
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 Sylpheed-Claws, like most good mail clients, provides you with multiple
12 possibilities in organising your mails.
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
28 <section id="handling_organisation">
29 <title>Folder organisation</title>
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
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.
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.
59 <section id="handling_filters">
60 <title>Filtering</title>
62 Once you have a nice folder hierarchy in place, you'll probably want
63 Sylpheed-Claws to sort your incoming emails automatically, in order to
64 avoid having to move messages manually each time they arrive. For this
65 you can use the Filtering feature.
68 You will find the filtering preferences via the
69 <quote>Configuration</quote> menu, <quote>Filtering</quote> item. From
70 this dialogue you will be able to define new rules, modify or delete
71 existing rules, re-order the rules, and enable/disable them. Filtering
72 rules are defined by four things: the enabled status, a name, a
73 condition, and an action. All disabled rules are simply ignored. The
74 name format is optional, it's there to help you identify your existing
75 rules. The condition format is an expression defining what
76 Sylpheed-Claws should look for when filtering emails, for example:
77 <quote>to matchcase sylpheed-claws-users</quote> is for messages sent to
78 any address containing <quote>sylpheed-claws-users</quote>. You can
79 easily define conditions by clicking the <quote>Define...</quote> button
80 at the right of the field. The third part of a filtering rule is the
81 action, which instructs Sylpheed-Claws what to do with emails matching
82 the condition we just defined. For example, <quote>mark_as_read</quote>
83 marks the mail as read as soon as it arrives in your inbox, or
84 <quote>move #mh/Mailbox/inbox/Friends</quote> moves the mail to your
85 <quote>Friends</quote> subfolder. Here, too, a <quote>Define...</quote>
86 button is available to help you define the action to take.
89 Once you have defined the rule, you can add it to the list of rules with
90 the <quote>Add</quote> button. Don't forget that the order of the rules
91 is important: if Sylpheed-Claws finds a rule suitable for an email that
92 either moves or deletes the email, it will stop looking for further
93 rules for that email. This is why, at the right of the rules list, you
94 will find four buttons allowing the re-ordering of rules. The rules can
95 also be reordered by drag 'n' drop.
98 There is also a quick method of creating filtering rules based on the
99 selected message. After selecting a mail of the type you want to filter,
100 choose <quote>Create filter rule...</quote> from the
101 <quote>Tools</quote> menu, and choose a type from the submenu:
102 <quote>Automatically</quote> mainly helps for mailing-lists posts,
103 <quote>by From</quote> creates a filter based on the sender of the
104 email, <quote>by To</quote> creates a filter based on the recipient, and
105 <quote>by Subject</quote> creates a filter based on the subject. Each
106 one of these types of filtering has its advantages, it's up to you to
107 find out what would be the more practical. Usually,
108 <quote>by From</quote> is nice to sort out your regular contacts' mails,
109 whereas <quote>by To</quote> is more useful to sort mails sent to your
114 <section id="handling_searching">
115 <title>Searching</title>
117 There are several methods for searching your emails.
120 One of them is relatively standard, and can be found in the
121 <quote>Edit</quote> menu, it's the <quote>Search folder...</quote> item.
122 This will open a window where you can specify one or more fields to
123 search in: From, To, Subject, and Body. After having specified your
124 criteria, click on the <quote>Back</quote> or <quote>Forward</quote>
125 buttons to navigate through the matching emails, or use
126 <quote>Find all</quote> to select all the matching emails at once. Be
127 aware that searching for text in the body of emails is much slower than
128 searching in its headers, because the body of emails isn't cached by
132 If you're looking at a large email and want to find a particular part
133 of it, you can use the <quote>Find in current message...</quote> item of
134 the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. This works like search in a text document.
137 The last way of searching for emails is using Quick Search, which you
138 can display or hide using the little magnifying glass under the Message
139 List. It's also accessible from the <quote>Quick Search</quote> item of
140 the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. Quick Search is more powerful than the
141 normal search as it can search in standard headers (From, To, Subject)
142 or in <quote>Extended</quote> mode using just about any criteria you can
143 think of. When in <quote>Extended</quote> mode, the
144 <quote>Information</quote> button is visible, enabling you to see the
145 search syntax. An <quote>Edit</quote> button is also available which
146 allows you to quickly create a rule. You can also configure the Quick
147 Search to search recursively through the subfolders, and whether it
148 should reset itself when you change folders.
151 When you hit Enter after having specified the search string, the Message
152 List will shrink to present you with only the matching messages. If you
153 set the search to be recursive, any subfolder of the current one that
154 has matching emails will change its icon to a magnifying glass icon.
155 This way, you can search in your whole mailbox at once. If the search is
156 in Sticky mode, the filter will stay applied when you go to another
157 folder. This can be disturbing at first, as you can forget about it, but
158 is useful in some cases, for example if you want to search in the body
159 of emails and are not sure of which folder contains the searched email:
160 a recursive search on the body of emails in a whole mailbox can be