1MU-EASY(1)                  General Commands Manual                 MU-EASY(1)
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NAME

6       mu easy - a quick introduction to mu
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DESCRIPTION

10       mu  is  a  set  of  tools for dealing with e-mail messages in Maildirs.
11       There are many options, which are all described in the  man  pages  for
12       the  various sub-commands. This man pages jumps over all of the details
13       and gives examples of some common use cases. If the use cases described
14       here do not precisely do what you want, please check the more extensive
15       information in the man page about the sub-command you are using --  for
16       example, the mu-index(1) or mu-find(1) man pages.
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18       NOTE:  the  index command (and therefore, the ones that depend on that,
19       such as find), require that you store your mail in the  Maildir-format.
20       If you don't do so, you can still use the other commands, but you won't
21       be able to index/search your mail.
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23       By default, mu uses colorized output when it thinks  your  terminal  is
24       capable of doing so. If you don't like color, you can use the --nocolor
25       command-line option, or set either the MU_NOCOLOR or the NO_COLOR envi‐
26       ronment variable to non-empty.
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INDEXING YOUR E-MAIL

30       Before you can search e-mails, you'll first need to index them:
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32         $ mu index
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34       The process can take a few minutes, depending on the amount of mail you
35       have, the speed of your computer, hard  drive  etc.  Usually,  indexing
36       should be able to reach a speed of a few hundred messages per second.
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38       mu  index  guesses  the  top-level Maildir to do its job; if it guesses
39       wrongly, you can use the --maildir  option  to  specify  the  top-level
40       directory  that  should  be processed. See the mu-index(1) man page for
41       more details.
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43       Normally, mu index visits  all  the  directories  under  the  top-level
44       Maildir; however, you can exclude certain directories (say, the 'trash'
45       or 'spam' folders) by creating a file called .noindex in the directory.
46       When  mu  sees such a file, it will exclude this directory and its sub-
47       directories from indexing.  Also see .noupdate in the mu-index(1)  man‐
48       page.
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SEARCHING YOUR E-MAIL

52       After  you  have  indexed  your  mail,  you  can start searching it. By
53       default, the search results are printed on standard  output.   Alterna‐
54       tively,  the output can take the form of Maildir with symbolic links to
55       the found messages. This enables integration with e-mail  clients;  see
56       the  mu-find(1)  man page for details, the syntax of the search parame‐
57       ters and so on. Here, we just give some examples for common cases.
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59       First, let's search for all messages sent to Julius (Caesar)  regarding
60       fruit:
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62       $ mu find t:julius fruit
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64       This should return something like:
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66         2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST John Milton <jm@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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68       This means there is a message to 'julius' with 'fruit' somewhere in the
69       message. In this case, it's a message from John Milton. Note  that  the
70       date format depends on your the language/locale you are using.
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72       How  do  we know that the message was sent to Julius Caesar? Well, it's
73       not visible from the results above, because the default fields that are
74       shown  are  date/sender/subject.  However, we can change this using the
75       --fields parameter (see the mu-find(1) man page for the details):
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77         $ mu find --fields="t s" t:julius fruit
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79       In other words, display the 'To:'-field (t) and the subject  (s).  This
80       should return something like:
81         Julius Caesar <jc@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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83       This  is the same message found before, only with some different fields
84       displayed.
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86       By default, mu uses the logical AND for the search parameters  --  that
87       is, it displays messages that match all the parameters. However, we can
88       use logical OR as well:
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90         $ mu find t:julius OR f:socrates
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92       In other words, display messages that are either sent to Julius  Caesar
93       or are from Socrates. This could return something like:
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95         2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST Socrates <soc@example.com> cool stuff
96         2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST John Milton <jm@example.com> Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
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98       What  if we want to see some of the body of the message?  You can get a
99       'summary' of the first lines of the  message  using  the  --summary-len
100       option, which will 'summarize' the first n lines of the message:
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102         $ mu find --summary-len=3 napoleon m:/archive
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104         1970-01-01T02:00:00 EET Napoleon Bonaparte <nb@example.com> rock on dude
105         Summary: Le 24 février 1815, la vigie de Notre-Dame de la Garde signala le
106         trois-mâts le Pharaon, venant de Smyrne, Trieste et Naples. Comme
107         d'habitude, un pilote côtier partit aussitôt du port, rasa le château
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109       The  summary  consists  of  the  first  n lines of the message with all
110       superfluous whitespace removed.
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112       Also note the m:/archive parameter in the query.  This  means  that  we
113       only match messages in a maildir called '/archive'.
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MORE QUERIES

117       Let's list a few more queries that may be interesting; please note that
118       searches for message flags, priority and date ranges are only available
119       in mu version 0.9 or later.
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121       Get all important messages which are signed:
122         $ mu find flag:signed prio:high
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124       Get all messages from Jim without an attachment:
125         $ mu find from:jim AND NOT flag:attach
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127       Get all messages where Jack is in one of the contact fields:
128         $ mu find contact:jack
129       This uses the special contact: pseudo-field which matches (from, to, cc
130       and bcc).
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132       Get all messages in the Sent Items folder about yoghurt:
133        $mu find maildir:'/Sent Items' yoghurt
134       Note how we need to quote search terms that include spaces.
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137       Get all unread messages where the subject mentions Ångström:
138         $ mu find subject:Ångström flag:unread
139       which is equivalent to:
140         $ mu find subject:angstrom flag:unread
141       because does mu is case-insensitive and accent-insensitive.
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143       Get all unread messages between March 2002 and August 2003  about  some
144       bird (or a Swedish rock band):
145         $ mu find date:20020301..20030831 nightingale flag:unread
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147       Get all messages received today:
148         $ mu find date:today..now
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150       Get all messages we got in the last two weeks about emacs:
151         $ mu find date:2w..now emacs
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153       Another powerful feature (since 0.9.6) are wildcard searches, where you
154       can search for the last n characters in a word. For  example,  you  can
155       search for:
156         $ mu find 'subject:soc*'
157       and  get  mails  about soccer, Socrates, society, and so on. Note, it's
158       important to quote the search query, otherwise the shell will interpret
159       the '*'.
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161       You  can also search for messages with a certain attachment using their
162       filename, for example:
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164         $ mu find 'file:pic*'
165       will get you all messages with an attachment starting with 'pic'.
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167       If you want to find attachments with a certain MIME-type, you  can  use
168       the following:
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170       Get all messages with PDF attachments:
171         $ mu find mime:application/pdf
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173       or even:
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175       Get all messages with image attachments:
176         $ mu find 'mime:image/*'
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179       Note  that (1) the '*' wildcard can only be used as the rightmost thing
180       in a search query, and (2) that you need  to  quote  the  search  term,
181       because  otherwise  your  shell will interpret the '*' (expanding it to
182       all files in the current directory -- probably not what you want).
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DISPLAYING MESSAGES

186       We might also want to display the  complete  messages  instead  of  the
187       header  information.  This can be done using mu view command. Note that
188       this command does not use the database; you simply provide it the  path
189       to a message.
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191       Therefore,  if  you  want  to display some message from a search query,
192       you'll need its path. To get the path (think location)  for  our  first
193       example we can use:
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195         $ mu find --fields="l" t:julius fruit
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197       And we'll get someting like:
198         /home/someuser/Maildir/archive/cur/1266188485_0.6850.cthulhu:2,
199       We can now display this message:
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201         $ mu view /home/someuser/Maildir/archive/cur/1266188485_0.6850.cthulhu:2,
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203            From: John Milton <jm@example.com>
204            To: Julius Caesar <jc@example.com>
205            Subject: Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
206            Date: 2008-07-31T21:57:25 EEST
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208            OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
209            Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
210            Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
211            [...]
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FINDING CONTACTS

215       While  mu  find  searches  for messages, there is also mu cfind to find
216       contacts, that is, names + addresses. Without any search expression, mu
217       cfind lists all of your contacts.
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219         $ mu cfind julius
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221       will  find all contacts with 'julius' in either name or e-mail address.
222       Note that mu cfind accepts a regular expression.
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224       mu cfind also supports a --format=-parameter, which sets the output  to
225       some  specific format, so the results can be imported into another pro‐
226       gram. For example, to export your contact information to a mutt address
227       book file, you can use something like:
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229         $ mu cfind --format=mutt-alias > ~/mutt-aliases
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231       Then, you can use them in mutt if you add something like source ~/mutt-
232       aliases to your muttrc.
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AUTHOR

236       Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@djcbsoftware.nl>
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SEE ALSO

240       mu(1), mu-index(1), mu-find(1), mu-mkdir(1), mu-view(1), mu-extract(1)
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244User Manuals                     December 2012                      MU-EASY(1)
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