1NOTMUCH(1)                          notmuch                         NOTMUCH(1)
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3
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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
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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.
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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 is
47              a permitted and sometimes useful value of FILE, which tells not‐
48              much to use only configuration metadata from the database.
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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(1) 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.
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93       The  notmuch-search(1),  notmuch-show(1),  notmuch-address(1)  and not‐
94       much-count(1) commands are used to query the email database.
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96       The notmuch-reply(1) command is useful for preparing a template for  an
97       email reply.
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99       The notmuch-tag(1) command is the only command available for manipulat‐
100       ing database contents.
101
102       The notmuch-dump(1) and notmuch-restore(1) commands can be used to cre‐
103       ate  a  textual  dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore
104       from that dump.
105
106       The notmuch-config(1) command can be used to get or set settings in the
107       notmuch configuration file.
108
109   CUSTOM COMMANDS
110       If  the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to execute
111       the external notmuch-<subcommand> in PATH instead. This allows users to
112       have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch command.
113       By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be  overridden
114       using external commands.
115
116   OPTION SYNTAX
117       All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a sep‐
118       arator. Except for boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a  space
119       can also be used as a separator. The following are all equivalent:
120
121          notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
122          notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
123          notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
124

ENVIRONMENT

126       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
127       of notmuch.
128
129       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
130              Specifies the location of the notmuch  configuration  file.  See
131              notmuch-config(1) for details.
132
133       NOTMUCH_DATABASE
134              Specifies the location of the notmuch database. See notmuch-con‐
135              fig(1) for details.
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137       NOTMUCH_PROFILE
138              Selects among notmuch configurations. See notmuch-config(1)  for
139              details.
140
141       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
142              Location  to  write a talloc memory usage report. See talloc_en‐
143              able_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.
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145       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
146              If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print  (to
147              stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
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SEE ALSO

150       notmuch-address(1),    notmuch-compact(1),    notmuch-config(1),   not‐
151       much-count(1),  notmuch-dump(1),  notmuch-hooks(5),  notmuch-insert(1),
152       notmuch-new(1),  notmuch-properties(7), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-re‐
153       ply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),
154       notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
155
156       The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org
157

CONTACT

159       Feel  free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
160       list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is  not  required  before
161       posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
162
163       Real-time  interaction  with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
164       (server: irc.libera.chat, channel: #notmuch).
165

AUTHOR

167       Carl Worth and many others
168
170       2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others
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1750.34.1                           Nov 03, 2021                       NOTMUCH(1)
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