<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_organise">
+ <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>Simple mail filters</title>
+ <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 four things: the enabled status, a name, a
+ condition, and an action. All disabled rules are simply ignored. The
+ name format is optional, it's there to help you identify your existing
+ rules. The condition format is an expression defining what
+ Sylpheed-Claws should look for when filtering emails, 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 third part of a filtering rule is the
+ action, which instructs Sylpheed-Claws what to do with emails 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/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>
+ 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_searchin">
- <title>Searching for mails</title>
+ <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.
+ </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 last way of searching for emails is using Quick Search, which you
+ can display or hide using the little magnifying glass under the Message
+ List. It's also accessible from the <quote>Quick Search</quote> item of
+ the <quote>Edit</quote> menu. Quick Search 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 the Quick
+ Search to search recursively through the 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>
projects / claws.git / blobdiff