MuttGuide/Folders

Knowing where everything is, is a good start for finding the right things.

Organizing / managing emails

Mutt keeps emails in folders (collections of individual emails), which you can use to "change" to (for viewing) or to "save / move / copy" to in the UI, or specify in configuration files as targets of operations. For a typical use you need some standard folders:

folder "callsign"	location configuration in muttrc	use feature or not	purpose
"inbox"	$spoolfile	always	This is the startup folder assumed to contain all new email that arrives for you.
"mbox" or "received"	$mbox	$move	If you want to save (move) mails out of the inbox which you've read instead of deleting them right on (or cluttering up your inbox).
"sent"	$record	$copy	Sometimes it's good to keep a copy of sent out messages in case you need to resend them or verify discussions.
"postponed"	$postponed	$postpone	When you begin a new email but then decide to continue later, you don't have to discard everything to start over next time. Mutt can postpone your work for later completion.
"personal folders"	--	--	If you get a lot of mail, it's better to have several folders to keep messages separate for different uses (by topic, sender, recipient, subject). However, you use them by specifying the pathname each time, there is no mutt-internal management for those. Make up your mind about a folder structure before they get overloaded (bad overview & performance for too big folders).

The "inbox" is provided by the system at a specific place. Default location is the $MAIL shell variable. Unless mutt is compiled to assume "inbox" in your $HOME dir, it will probably be something like "/var/spool/mail/USER".

All other folders can be located anywhere you can write to. However, the recommended default for them is to reside in a common subdir in your $HOME (like "~/Mail").

Easy access for convenience: folder collections

Depending on your directory structure, pathnames for the folders can get quite lengthy and/or cumbersome to type each time. Mutt provides shortcuts to save some typing, especially in the UI dialog prompts. If you have a common subdir for all folders, then you can specify it in "$folder", and replace all path references to this common subdir with "=" or "+". Example:

 in muttrc:
 set record="$HOME/Mail/sent"; set mbox="$HOME/Mail/mbox"; set postponed="$HOME/Mail/postponed"
 =>
 set folder="$HOME/Mail"; set record="+sent"; set mbox="+mbox"; set postponed="+postponed"

Note: do not end "folder" path with a "/", because mutt automatically inserts one when you use "=" or "+". An extra one would break some functionality because of "//".

This easy access works for your personal folders in "$folder", too (like "+girlfriend" or "+sexmail"). It pays off when you use it in many more places in the config and interactively, like when you have many personal folders.

IMPORTANT Note: "+" & "=" are replaced with the expanded value of $folder at the time used with "set" (or hook). There is no dynamic link between them, so if you change $folder afterwards, then the "set" defined var (or hook-pattern) keeps its static value as defined before. Typically you set "$folder" first and all its dependencies after that, this means: the order matters. For advanced setups where you work with several different "$folder" values it can be useful to change it after you used it for some relative assignments. But there should always be some desired value before you use it the first time.

Shortcuts overview for mutt internal folders

Here are some more:

refers to	typical place	mutt-var	shortcut
"inbox"	/var/spool/mail/USER	$spoolfile	"!"
$HOME dir	/home/user	no-mutt var	"~" or "$HOME"
folders dir	/home/user/mail	$folder	"+" or "="
"mbox"	/home/user/mail/received	$mbox	">"
"sent"	/home/user/mail/sent	$record	"<"
unfinished	/home/user/mail/postponed	$postponed	"+postponed"
personal	/home/user/mail/personal		"+personal"
repeat the last for all your personal folders
last visited	varies		"-" or "!!"
default folder for alias	varies		"@alias"
currently open folder (*)	varies		"^"

(* Note: you need the "current_folder" patch from PatchList, or mutt 1.5.10+ for this)

Note: not all those vars are set by default, or maybe point to "untypical" places. Make sure you set them all as you want them!

Remote folders

Wherever you have to specify a folder, you are not limited to folders located on your local filesystem. You may use IMAP and POP folders on remote servers, too. Beware however, don't use it for folders that get used automatically by mutt (like "inbox" or "sent"), because if you have a slow network connection to the remote server, it can slow down performance significantly.

The syntax for paths to remote folders is:

 imap[s]://[user[:pw]@]imapserver[:port]/path
 pop[s]://[user[:pw]@]popserver[:port]/   (no path, POP can handle only 1 mailbox)

Note: the "user", "password" and "port" parts are optional. imaps and pops are SSL-encrypted variants of imap and pop. More about IMAP & POP access configuration later.

"$folder" works for IMAP, too:

 in muttrc: set folder="imaps://user@server.dom"

to be used in UI for "change folder" cmd:

 in mutt UI: c+sent<enter>

See also /Actions about Macros + TAB-completion.

Storage format

How a folder is organized technically (filesystem internally) has some impact on performance. Like in many other cases, you have to decide between security, stability, performance, ease of use. There exist 4 formats that mutt understands: MBOX, MAILDIR, MH, MMDF (the order doesn't correlate with the previous qualities!). For an in depth discussion have a look at FolderFormat & MuttFaq/Maildir. If you are not much into technicalities, leave that for later.

It's recommended (although not required) to use the same format as the MDA, which places the new incoming emails into your "inbox". If you can't change the MDA-format but prefer to use some other with mutt, just do so: mutt autodetects the mailbox formats when reading them. When you create new folders, mutt will use the format specified in $mbox_type (you have to create them all yourself, except "inbox", which should be provided by the system).
For now without further reasons, let's stick with MBOX format, the simple "classic". Please be aware of confusion by OverloadedNames!