GNUMail.app User's Guide

by Martin Brecher <martin@mb-itconsulting.com>


Contents

Composing
Overview
Composing new messages
General Structure
The Toolbar
The Message List
The Viewing Pane
Additional Functions
Saving to a file
Viewing the raw source of a message
Directly adding addresses to the Address Book


Reading Mail [top of page]


Overview [top of page]

This part will describe in detail the Mailbox windows that you already know from the "First Look" chapter. Apart from listing the mails contained in a mailbox, and letting you read their contents, these windows also let you perfom some actions on messags like replying, deleting etc.


The Window Layout [top of page]

First let us take an in depth look on the layout of the Mailbox windows to make you more familiar with their features and functions.

General structure [top of page]

As can be seen from a first glimpse the Mailbox window is structured into three parts. From top to bottom, first we have the Toolbar. Second there is the Message list showing the mails which are contained within this the currently opened mailbox. Last we have a huge text field, the Viewing pane, which shows you the contents of the message you have selected from the message list.

A mailbox window
(Click the image for a full size view)


The Toolbar [top of page]

The Toolbar allows you to easily perfom several actions on your messages or to quickly acccess often used functions using it's buttons.

Browsing up and down The up and down arrow buttons let you easily browse through the message list mail by mail.
Delete Pressing this button results in deleting the message(s). Deleted mail is moved to the Trash mailbox until you finally delete it there. You can undelete messages by using the menu function "Message -> Undelete".
Get This button is only visible in the Inbox window. It will fetch mail from the POP3 sources you have specified in the Preferences as well as your local mail spool file.
Mailboxes This one will bring up the Mailboxes Dialog where you can open other mailboxes, create new ones. move mail between them, etc.
Compose Press the Compose button to create a new messge.
Reply To write an answer to the author of a message, press the Reply button. If the mail was sent to several recipients you will be asked whether to reply all of them or just to the author.
Forward This button lets you forward the selected message(s).
Adresses By clicking this button you can quickly bring up the Address Book.
Find GNUMail.app features a powerful function to search mails which even support regular expressions. Click the Find button to bring up the corresponding dialog.

The Message List [top of page]

The Message List contains all the mail that is contained in the mailbox. Above the list there is a small line resembling some statistical figures about the mailbox: The total number of messages in this mailbox, the number of unread letters and last the amount of mail you have currently selected. Beneath the figures, the size of the messages is given within braces.

Some statistics

The Message List composites of several columns. At the top of the list field there is a header giving names to the different columns. You can resize the columns by pointing to the borders of the header cells and dragging them smaller or bigger.

Header of the Message List

Id: Every message in the mailbox has an unique id number to be correctly and individually treated by GNUMail.app. The numbers are generated when you open the mailbox, starting with the first message up to the last one.

Status: This field can show you additional information on the status of a message by containing one ore several letters:

N: the message is new and yet unread.
A: you have replied to this message.
D: the message has been marked to be deleted when the mailbox is closed.

Date: The fields of this column tell you the date on which the message has been sent.

From: Usually shows the name of the author; if no name is given, it shows the source email address.

Subject: Presents the subject header of the message.


Selecting a message in the list will show its contents in the Viewing Pane. You can select multiple lines by holding the mouse button and dragging the cursor up or down extending the selection. Also you can add single lines to the selection by clicking on the given line while pressing the SHIFT key on your keyboard. - This actually works in all GNUstep apps. Selecting messges can be simply done by using the menu: "Message -> Select All Messages."



The Viewing Pane [top of page]

As said before the Viewing Pane shows you the contents of a selected message. On the top of the pane, GNUMail.app shows you some of the headers of the message. Normally, the Date:, From:, To: and Subject: headers are shown but, as you know, you can change the define which headers to show in the Viewing preferences. Additinally you can easily make GNUMail.app show you all headers by using the menu function "Message -> Show All Headers" and switch back to the defined ones by using "Message -> Show Filtered Headers".



Additional Functions [top of page]

Saving to a file [top of page]

In some cases you may want to have the text of a message in a text file, maybe for further editing or special backup purposes. You can easily save the content of the selected message to a file using the menu function "Messag -> Save text from message".



Mark as read/unread [top of page]

You can easily mark new messages as read or already read messages as unread by using the menu. On the one hand, marking mails as read is especially useful if you want to quickly discard mails without having to read/select them one by one. Just select them using the mouse and click "Message -> Mark as read."

On the other hand you can also mark mails as unread. E.g. mails you want reply to next day or important messages you want to reread carefully.



Viewing the raw source of a message [top of page]

If you want to see the raw source of a message (including all headers, HTML-code etc), just use the menu function "Messag -> Show RAW Source". A small window will pop up showing you the entire and unformatted contents of the message.

Showing the raw source of a message


Directly adding addresses to the Address Book [top of page]

GNUMail.app has a nice feature that allows you to quickly add addresses to the Address Book: When selecting a message in the Message List, GNUMail.app parses the headers of the message for email addresses and presents those addresses in a submenu called "Send to address book" (located under the "Message" menu). If you click an address in that menu it is directly added to the Address Book.

GNUMail.app allows you to easily add addresses to the Address Book
(Click the image for a full size view)