add support for Ayatana indicator to Notification plugin

[claws.git] / manual / en / handling.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<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
        Claws Mail, 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="imap_subscriptions">
    <title>IMAP subscriptions</title>
    <para>
        The IMAP protocol allows one to store a list of subscribed folders. Most
        mail user agents hide the unsubscribed folders away from the GUI, and have
        a little window allowing to subscribe to these unsubscribed folders. In
        Claws Mail, subscriptions are respected by default, and only subscribed
        folders will be displayed. If you want to see all your folders, you can just
        uncheck <quote>Show subscribed folders only</quote> in the IMAP mailbox'
        contextual menu or the account preferences. You'll be able to subscribe and 
        unsubscribe folders from this contextual menu too. If the unsubscribed 
        folders are hidden from the list, you will have two ways to subscribe to 
        a folder: either show all folders, subscribe the ones you want, and hide 
        unsubscribed folders again; or, if you know the folder's name, use 
        <quote>Create new folder</quote> in its parent'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
        Claws Mail 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, regardless of the account from which it was
        retrieved, (see paragraph below). The condition format is an expression
        defining what Claws Mail should look for when filtering mail, for
        example: <quote>to matchcase claws-mail-users</quote> is for messages
        sent to any address containing <quote>claws-mail-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 Claws Mail 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 applied 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 Claws Mail 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
        Claws Mail. <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 clicking 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,
        whether it should reset itself when you change folders, and whether to
        use Type-ahead search (this is a search which results update dynamically
        if you pause in the typing).
    </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>