1NOTMUCH(1)                          notmuch                         NOTMUCH(1)
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NAME

6       notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
7

SYNOPSIS

9       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       Notmuch  is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read‐
13       ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.
14
15       This page describes how to get started using notmuch from  the  command
16       line,  and  gives  a brief overview of the commands available. For more
17       information on e.g. notmuch show consult the notmuch-show(1) man  page,
18       also accessible via notmuch help show
19
20       The  quickest  way  to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
21       notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively  guide  you
22       through the process of indexing your mail.
23

NOTE

25       While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality,
26       it does not provide the most convenient interface for that  functional‐
27       ity.  More  sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
28       either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of  the  not‐
29       much  library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for more about al‐
30       ternate interfaces to notmuch. The  emacs-based  interface  to  notmuch
31       (available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
32       the most widely used at this time.
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OPTIONS

35       Supported global options for notmuch include
36
37       --help [command-name]
38              Print a synopsis of available commands and  exit.  With  an  op‐
39              tional command name, show the man page for that subcommand.
40
41       --version
42              Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
43
44       --config=FILE
45              Specify  the  configuration file to use. This overrides any con‐
46              figuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}. The empty string
47              is  a  permitted and sometimes useful value of FILE, which tells
48              notmuch to use only configuration metadata from the database.
49
50       --uuid=HEX
51              Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier  which  per‐
52              sists until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an
53              error if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modifi‐
54              cation  counts  on  messages.  You can find this UUID using e.g.
55              notmuch count --lastmod
56
57       All global options except --config can also be specified after the com‐
58       mand.  For example, notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to not‐
59       much --uuid=HEX subcommand.
60

COMMANDS

62   SETUP
63       The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for  first  use,
64       (or to reconfigure it later).
65
66       The  setup  command  will prompt for your full name, your primary email
67       address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory  con‐
68       taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu‐
69       ration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config  .
70       This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak‐
71       ing it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration.  Or  you
72       can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.
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74       The  mail  directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directo‐
75       ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes‐
76       sages  (eg.  maildir  or  mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
77       non-email files (such as indexes maintained by  other  email  programs)
78       then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
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80       Mail  storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
81       messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is  cur‐
82       rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
83       with a utility such as mb2md before running notmuch setup .
84
85       Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if  the  setup
86       command has not previously been completed.
87
88   OTHER COMMANDS
89       Several  of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syn‐
90       tax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syn‐
91       tax.
92
93       The  search,  show,  address  and  count commands are used to query the
94       email database.
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96       The reply command is useful for preparing a template for an  email  re‐
97       ply.
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99       The tag command is the only command available for manipulating database
100       contents.
101
102       The dump and restore commands can be used to create a textual  dump  of
103       email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
104
105       The  config  command  can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch
106       configuration file.
107
108   CUSTOM COMMANDS
109       If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to  execute
110       the external notmuch-<subcommand> in ${PATH} instead. This allows users
111       to have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch  com‐
112       mand. By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be over‐
113       ridden using external commands.
114
115   OPTION SYNTAX
116       All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a sep‐
117       arator.  Except for boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a space
118       can also be used as a separator. The following are all equivalent:
119
120          notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
121          notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
122          notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
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ENVIRONMENT

125       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
126       of notmuch.
127
128       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
129              Specifies  the  location of the notmuch configuration file. Not‐
130              much will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this  variable  is  not
131              set.
132
133       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
134              Location  to  write a talloc memory usage report. See talloc_en‐
135              able_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.
136
137       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
138              If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print  (to
139              stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
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SEE ALSO

142       notmuch-address(1),    notmuch-compact(1),    notmuch-config(1),   not‐
143       much-count(1),  notmuch-dump(1),  notmuch-hooks(5),  notmuch-insert(1),
144       notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-properties(7), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-re‐
145       ply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),
146       notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
147
148       The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org
149

CONTACT

151       Feel  free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
152       list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is  not  required  before
153       posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
154
155       Real-time  interaction  with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
156       (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
157

AUTHOR

159       Carl Worth and many others
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162       2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others
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1670.32.1                           May 17, 2021                       NOTMUCH(1)
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