GNUMail.app User's Guide

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


Contents

Managing Mailboxes
The Mailboxes window
Opening mailboxes
Moving messages
Creation of mailboxes
Removal of mailboxes
Renaming mailboxes

Advanced lection: Moving/copying mailboxes




Managing Mailboxes [top of page]

The Mailboxes window [top of page]

Usually all your received mail gets stored in the local Inbox mailbox which GNUMail.app opens on startup by default. But over some time, when having a huge amount of messages, the ability to sort all your mail into different folders gets important. And as you might have already expected, with GNUMail.app that's as easy as managing your email contacts using the Address book as explained above.

You can reach the Mailboxes window by using the menu ('Mailbox' -> 'Mailboxes'), by clicking the Mailboxes button in a mailbox window (i.e. the Inbox window) or invoking the keyboard shortcut with CTRL+ALT+M.

The Mailboxes window mainly consists of five buttons on the top and a browser list where all local mailboxes and remote IMAP folders (if IMAP servers are specified in the preferences) are displayed. Additionally there is a 'Close' button on the bottom of the window to close the Mailboxes panel.

The Mailboxes window
(Click the image for a full size view)

Opening mailboxes [top of page]

Clicking this button will open the selected mailbox

You can open a mailbox by double clicking its name in the list or by selecting it from the list (using a single click) and pressing the first button which has the envelope on it.

Moving messages [top of page]

Move messages by clicking this button You can move messsages between mailboxes by exercising these steps: 1. select one or multiple messages in a mailbox window (i.e. Inbox), then 2. select the target mailbox from the mailboxes list (using one click) and 3. click the button with the arrow on it to finally move the messages.

Creation of mailboxes [top of page]

Creating new mailboxes is very easy: Clicking the button with the plus on it will bring up a small panel where you can enter the name of your new mailbox. Then click 'OK' to finally create the mailbox or 'Cancel' to close the panel without creating a new mailbox.

The add button Mailbox creation panel
Add button Mailbox creation panel

Removal of mailboxes [top of page]

Remove button Again, removing mailboxes is as simple as adding new ones. Select the mailbox you want to remove and click the button with the minus on it. Removal of mailboxes will be confirmed as seen below:
Confirmation of mailbox removal
(Click the image for a full size view)

Renaming mailboxes [top of page]

GNUMail.app now allows you to rename mailboxes using the user interface.

Rename button This is done by selecting a mailbox from the mailbox list and clicking the button with the three dots on it. A little dialog will popup and ask you for the new mailbox name.



Advanced lection: Moving/copying mailboxes [top of page]

As you may already know, GNUMail.app usually stores its local mailboxes in the ~/gnumail folder. When viewing the contents of that directory you will see that every mailbox is a common file on its own which contains the messages. So if you want to create a backup of your Inbox mailbox you can simply copy it to another location.

For example, you may like to move your Inbox mailbox to Inbox.<date> if it gets too big (the bigger it gets the longer it takes GNUMail.app to list the messages). You can simply do this by executing mv Inbox Inbox.`date +%y-%%m-%d`. That will move the Inbox file to e.g. Inbox.01-02-03 where 01 is the year, 02 the month (Feb) and 01 the day. Next, you should create a new, empty Inbox file by typing touch Inbox.

You can also automate this procedure using cron. The size of the Inbox file can be retrieved using du ~/gnumail/Inbox. (The given size is in kilobytes.)

As always, you should backup your data first before playing around with the files... don't blame me :-)