Daniel
Naber

    daniel.naber@t-online.de

2004-09-24
1.7.50

# Using &kmail;

## The Main Window

The main window is the window that appears when &kmail; is started. It is by default divided into three panes:

Folder list (on the left)

  This pane contains the list of your message folders (other email programs may call them mailboxes). To select a folder, simply click on it. The messages contained in the folder will now appear in the Headers pane. The folder list can be displayed in both a short view, which takes up only a small portion of the left side of the screen, and a long view, which takes up the entire left side of the screen but is able to show more mailboxes. You can toggle between these two views under Appearance/Layout in the Settings Configure &kmail;... dialog. Also see the Folders Section for more information about how to use folders.

Message list (in the upper right by default)

  This pane lists header information (message Status Flags, Sender, Subject, Date, and other optional columns like Size, Attachment Flag, Important Flag, etc.) for the messages in the currently selected folder. Clicking on a header will select that message and display it in the Message pane; you can also select more than one message by holding down the &Ctrl; key when clicking on messages. You may sort the messages by clicking on the column that you wish to sort; if you click on the same column more than once, sort order will toggle between ascending/descending and some alternative sorting criteria will become available (like sorting by Status when you click on the header of the Subject column). Clicking the right mousebutton on the list header shows a popup menu, which allows to show or hide several columns in the list.

Message preview pane (in the lower right by default)

  This pane displays the currently selected message. Attachments appear at the bottom of the message, either as icons or embedded in the message, depending on View Attachments. For complex messages the structure of the message is shown in the message structure viewer below the preview pane. The placement of the preview pane as well as the placement of the structure viewer can be changed under Appearance/Layout in the Settings Configure &kmail;... dialog. Moreover, you can disable the preview pane and you can choose when the message structure viewer should be shown. You can scroll through the message page-by-page using the Page Up and Page down keys, or line-by-line using the up arrow and down arrow keys; you can also use key shortcuts to skip through your messages without having to use the mouse.

## Keyboard Shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the main window:

Keyboard Shortcut | Action
--- | ---
Space | Scroll down in the current message or go to the next unread message if you are already at the bottom.
Right Arrow or N | Go to the next message in the current folder.
Left Arrow key or P | Go to the previous message in the current folder.
+ | Go to the next unread message in the current folder.
- | Go to the previous unread message in the current folder.
&Ctrl;+ | Go to the next folder with unread messages.
&Ctrl;- | Go to the previous folder with unread messages.
&Ctrl;Up Arrow | Go to the next folder in the folder list (if the folder list has focus.)
&Ctrl;Down Arrow | Go to the previous folder in the folder list (if the folder list has focus.)
&Ctrl;Left Arrow | Walk upwards in the list of folders. Use &Ctrl;Space to actually enter the folder.
&Ctrl;Right Arrow | Walk downwards in the list of folders. Use &Ctrl;Space to actually enter the folder.
&Ctrl;Space | Enter the folder that has focus, &ie; the folder that you navigated to using &Ctrl;Left Arrow or &Ctrl;Right Arrow.
&Shift;Left Arrow and &Shift;Right Arrow | Select messages in the header pane, starting with the current message.

For more keyboard shortcuts have a look at the Settings Configure Shortcuts... dialog.

## The Composer Window

The composer window is used to write new messages; it can be invoked via Message New Message... menu or from the New Message icon on the main window.

### Composing a Message

To write your message, fill in the appropriate fields in the composer window. Use the View menu to select which header fields are displayed. The Identity field offers a Sticky option; if it is checked, the current identity will become the default identity when you open a new composer next time.

There are a variety of shortcuts to help you with writing your messages. The ... buttons next to the To:, CC:, and BCC: fields will call up the address book so that you can select addresses from there.

When you start typing an address in the To:/CC:/BCC: fields, a popup will appear that offers matching addresses that have been used recently and matching addresses from your address book; if you do not like the automatic popup you can disable it by clicking with the &RMB; on the field and choosing a different completion mode.

Whenever you want to add more than one recipient in one of the fields, use a comma to separate each address from the next one. You may need to specify fully qualified addresses (&ie; `user@example.com`) even for local users, depending on your system configuration.

When you are finished with your message, click the Send Now icon (the envelope) to send the message now, or click the Send Later icon to put the message in the outbox. If your message is not finished yet, select Message Save as Draft.

### Signing and Encrypting Messages

If you want to send an encrypted or digitally signed message, select the Sign Message or Encrypt Message icons in the toolbar. Moreover you can select the format that should be used to sign and/or encrypt the message. Depending on the installed encryption programs you can choose between:

Any

  &kmail; will use a format which is understood by all recipients of the message. The preferred format of the recipients can be specified in the KDE Address Book.

Inline OpenPGP (deprecated)

  This format is outdated. If you use this format then only the message text will be signed and/or encrypted. Attachments will neither be signed nor encrypted. HTML messages cannot be signed with this format. You should only use this format if necessary, &ie; if you send messages to users of email clients that cannot handle the more advanced formats.

PGP/MIME

  This format is the successor of the inline OpenPGP format. If you use this format then the message text and all attachments will be signed and/or encrypted (at least by default). This is the recommended format if you use OpenPGP.

S/MIME

  This format is an alternative format to PGP/MIME. If you use this format then the message text and all attachments will be signed and/or encrypted (at least by default). This format is mostly used by corporations.

S/MIME opaque

  This format is a variant of the S/MIME format. It should only be used if necessary.

### Creating HTML Messages

Note that HTML messages are often regarded as an annoyance; therefore, you should avoid sending HTML messages if possible. Particularly, you should never send HTML messages to a mailing list unless HTML messages are explicitly allowed.

In order to be able to create HTML messages you first have to enable the markup tools. To do this enable Formatting (HTML) in the Options menu. A toolbar with several tools to format the message will appear. Via the drop down box you can select between standard text and six different types of lists (three bulleted lists with different symbols and three numbered lists with different numbering). Moreover, you can select the font family, the font size, the font style (bold, italic, underlined) and the text color. Last but not least, you can select the alignment of the text (left aligned, centered, right aligned).

Creating tables and embedding images is currently not possible.

### Adding Attachments

You can attach files to your message by using one of the methods below:

- Click the Attach File (paper clip) icon and select the file you wish to attach;

- Drag a file from the desktop or another folder into the composer window;

- Drag a message from &kmail;'s message list into the composer window -- that message will then be attached;

- Select one of the options in the Attach menu.

Once a file is attached to your message, it appears in the attachments pane at the bottom of the composer window. You can use the &RMB; on each attachment to View, Save or Remove the attachment.

Use the Properties item to open the Message Part Properties dialog. The first field contains the attachment's &MIME; type. Just like the Name field, it should be automatically filled with an appropriate value. Sometimes the &MIME; type value may be wrong. You can then type in any &MIME; type or choose from the list of common &MIME; types. You can also select an encoding method for your file from the list of encoding options (normally, the default value works fine). Check the Suggest automatic display option if you want to suggest to the recipient the automatic (inline) display of this attachment. Whether this works or not depends on the recipient's email client and on his settings.

You can also attach public keys to the message by using the appropriate options in the Attach menu. PGP key attachments are handled like file attachments.

### Checking the Spelling of your Message

&kmail; will automatically check the spelling of your message (in HTML mode this currently does not work) and display unknown words using red color. If there are too many unknown words &kmail; will disable its checking. To select the language used for checking, select View Dictionary. You can disable automatic spellchecking in the Options menu.

To check the spelling of your message using a dialog, select Tools Spelling.... &kmail; uses &sonnet; to check spelling, which is the &kde; frontend to the ispell or aspell spelling checker. Note that you may first need to configure the spellchecker using Settings Spellchecker....

### Setting Up the Text Snippets Tool

When editing in the composer window you can store often used parts of text as snippets. To configure the capabilities of the mail snippets part select View Snippets from the menubar. A new panel will appear on the right side of the composer.

To add a new snippet to Snippet Panel, right click on panel, click on Add Snippet in the context menu. A snippet editor dialog will appear, in which new text can be added and the snippet can be given a name. Also a Shortcut can be associated with the snippet. Snippets can be grouped together as well by creating groups and adding snippets to particular group. If you want to view the stored text in a tooltip window whenever you keep the mouse cursor over the title of that snippet.

The Snippets tool allows for a variable text in predefined places any time you insert a snippet into a file. To accomplish this Snippets provides its own variables' mechanism. You can set up its behavior in the snippet text itself by using separators ( $ ) that enclose the variable names. For example : $variablename$, $invoicenumber$, $weekno$.

The variable separator can be changed to some other character by changing "snippetDelimiter" in [SnippetPart] section. The Text Snippet configuration file can be found here $KDEHOME/share/config/kmailsnippetrc .

    snippetDelimiter=$

## Message Folders

Message Folders are used to organize your email messages. By default, if you have no existing message folders, messages are stored in the folder `$`KDEHOME`/share/apps/kmail/`. If you have existing message folders in `~/Mail`, these will be used instead. When you first start &kmail; the inbox, outbox, sent-mail, trash and drafts folders are created. These folders each have special functions:

inbox:

  Where &kmail; by default puts your new messages when you ask it to check your mail.

outbox:

  Where messages are put while they are waiting to be delivered. Note that you should not drag and drop messages here to send them, use the Send icon in the composer window instead.

sent-mail:

  By default copies of all messages that you have sent are put into this folder.

trash:

  By default all messages that you have moved to trash are moved into this folder.

drafts:

  Contains messages you started to edit but then saved to this folder instead of sending them.

You may find that the standard folders are fine for your needs; eventually, though, you will probably need folders to help you organize your messages. To create a new folder, select Folder New Folder...: the folder properties dialog will then prompt you for the necessary information. If you ever need to change the settings for a folder, select the folder you wish to modify in the Folders pane and select Folder Properties .

To move messages from one folder into another, select the message(s) you want to move and press the M key or select Message Move To. A list of folders will appear; select the folder from the list that you want to move the messages to. Messages can also be moved by dragging them from the Message list to a folder in the Folder list.

If you want to clear all of the messages out of a folder choose Folder Move All Messages to Trash. You can use Folder Delete Folder to remove a folder and all its messages and subfolders.

### Folder Properties

The folder's Properties dialog lets you rename and move a folder and specify all of its properties. Note that most properties are only available for your own folders and not for default folder like inbox &etc;. Default folders also cannot be moved or renamed.

#### General

Rename a folder by changing the entry in the Name: field.

You can make a folder a subfolder of another folder by choosing a new parent folder using the Belongs to selection.

The Folder Icons section lets you choose icons that are different from the default ones in the folder list.

See the Folder Format section for information about the Mailbox format.

With the Identity section you can set the default identity that should be used for new messages if this folder is selected. Replies to messages that were sent directly to you will still default to the message's To address if an according identity is found.

With Show Sender/Receiver you can set the visible columns in the header pane. This is useful if you use a folder to save your own sent messages.

Check Ignore new mail in this folder if you do not want to be informed about new mail that arrives in this folder. This is for example useful for the folder where you move all detected spam messages to.

Check Keep replies in this folder if you want replies to messages in this folder to be filed also into this folder rather than into a special sent-mail folder.

#### Old Message Expiry

Here you can select what should happen with old messages in this folder. If you enable Expire old messages in this folder then &kmail; will regularly, depending on your choice, either delete old messages or move old messages to another folder. You can also start expiration of old messages manually via Folder Expire and via File Expire All Folders

Messages that are deleted during expiration of old messages cannot be restored, so be careful with this setting.

#### Mailing List

If you are going to use the folder for a mailing list then you should check Folder holds a mailing list to associate this folder with the mailing list. Next you should click on Detect Automatically. &kmail; will then try to guess some information about the mailing list from the currently selected message. If &kmail; could not determine some addresses then you can add the missing information manually. To do this first select the Address type for which you want to add an address. You can choose between:

Post to List

  This address is used for sending messages to the mailing list. This is usually an email address.

Subscribe to List

  This address is used for subscribing to the mailing list. This can be an email address or the address of a webpage.

Unsubscribe From List

  This address is used for unsubscribing from the mailing list. This can be an email address or the address of a webpage.

List Archives

  This is the address of the archive of the mailing list. This is usually the address of a webpage.

List Help

  This address is used for requesting help for this mailing list. This is usually an email address.

After selecting the appropriate Address type you enter the email address or the address of the webpage and then click on Add. With Remove you can remove addresses.

If all addresses have been added then you can execute an action, &eg; go to the list archives, by selecting the appropriate Address type and then clicking on Invoke Handler. If there is an email address and an address of a webpage for the desired action then you will have to select the Preferred handler prior to clicking on Invoke Handler. Select KMail; if you want to send a message to the email address and select Browser if you want to go to the webpage.

Alternatively to invoking the handler for Post to List you can send a new message to the mailing list via Message New Message to Mailing-List... or by clicking with the middle mousebutton on the folder in the folder list.

#### Access Control tab (&imap; only)

Here you can manage the access control lists (&acl;s) of &imap; folders.

The currently active &acl; is shown in the list. It consists of pairs of User Ids and the Permissions granted to users identified by that User Id. Note that a single User Id might refer to more than one user. Depending on the &imap; server and its configuration, there may be User Ids that correspond to groups of users, anonymous users, or any user. Consult the manual of your specific &imap; server implementation for more information. &acl;s are settable per-folder.

As with everything else when using disconnected &imap;, you need to sync with the server for the changes to be transferred to the server.

&imap; &acl;s define a lot of fine-grained permissions that you can grant or deny other users. For the sake of clarity, &kmail; will present them as the following five categories that you can choose from (see for the details if you already know &imap; &acl;s).

None

  Grants the users identified by User Id no rights at all. This is also the default for users not explicitly (or implicitly, as a group) listed in the &acl;. These users will not see this folder in the list of &imap; folders presented to them by their mail clients.

Read

  Grants the users identified by User Id reading rights for this folder. This also includes the ability for their mail clients to mark mails as read and store this information on the server. Every user has its own list of read mail, so none of your unread mails will suddenly be marked as read just because someone else has already read them.

  These users will see this folder in the list of &imap; folders presented to them by their mail clients.

  Use this to create a shared folder that others can read, but not modify.

  If you were the editor of a company's news letter, you could create a folder for the purpose of distributing the news letter, grant everyone reading rights, and save the letter to this folder instead of sending it out by email to a catch-all address.

Append

  (also known as Post)

  Grants the users identified by User Id reading (see above) and posting rights for this folder.

  Use this to create a shared folder that others can read and post messages to, but can not otherwise modify.

  If you wanted to create a company-wide discussion forum, instead of using a web-based form or a separate company-private usenet server, you could create a bunch of folders (one per topic), and grant everyone reading and posting rights. Instead of posting to an &nntp; server or writing their messages into a web form, people would just write emails and store them in the folder suiting the topic of the message.

Write

  Grants the users identified by User Id reading, posting (see above), and writing rights for this folder.

  The right to write to a folder includes deleting of messages, creating subfolders, and storing other attributes than read/unread on the server (&eg; answered).

  Use this to create a shared folder that everyone has (almost, see ) the same rights for.

  In the example, you could assign write rights to a group of people acting as moderators, which would then be able to remove off-topic posts, and create sub-topic-folders for high-traffic folders.

All

  Grants the users identified by User Id reading, posting, writing (see above), as well as administration rights, &ie; the right to modify the &acl; of this folder.

  This is the default set of rights for the owner of a folder.

summarizes the &imap; &acl; rights associated with each permission level.

##### &acl; Rights Summary

&acl; right |  |  |  |  |
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Lookup |  | x | x | x | x
Read |  | x | x | x | x
Store Seen |  | x | x | x | x
Insert |  |  | x | x | x
Post |  |  | x | x | x
Write Flags |  |  |  | x | x
Create |  |  |  | x | x
Delete |  |  |  | x | x
Administer |  |  |  |  | x

### Folder Format

A message folder can be either in mbox or in maildir format. mbox saves all messages of a folder to one file, whereas maildir saves each message to its own file. maildir, which is the default format, can be considered more robust, but it can be slower on some file systems. If you are unsure, choose maildir.

Note that there is currently no feature in &kmail; that allows you to convert between both formats automatically, but you can just move all messages from an old mbox folder to a new maildir folder or vice-versa.

## Message Filters

After using &kmail; for a while, you may find that you have trouble sorting out the new messages in your inbox when they arrive. Filters allow you to automatically perform certain actions on incoming messages and to manually perform actions on selected messages in a folder.

Please note that the filters described in this section are applied after the messages have been downloaded from your account -- if you want to filter messages on the server, see Download Filters.

Filters consist of: filter criteria, whose rules are used as criteria to determine whether this filter should be applied to a given message; and a list of filter actions, which describe what is to be done with, or to, the message if the search pattern matches. Read more about filter criteria and filter actions in the following subsections.

Filters are considered one after the other, starting with the first filter in the list. The first one whose pattern matches the given message gets executed; you can request that the remaining filters also be applied, but the default is to stop processing at the first matching filter.

Usually, filters are used on incoming messages, but they can also be applied to sent messages or to an arbitrary message or group of messages. To selectively filter messages, select the messages you want to filter in the message list and either type &Ctrl;J or select Message Apply Filters: this will apply all filters that have been marked for manual filtering in the filter dialog to those messages.

### Fast Filter Creation

There are two methods for creating a filter; the quick method is to use Message Create Filter: this will call the filter dialog and present you with a new filter which has the first rule of the search pattern and the first action (as Move into Folder) preset. In most cases, all you have to do is select the folder where the message should be moved to; but you can, of course, edit the filter as you like.

When creating a filter on mailing list messages this method will try really hard to find a criterion that uniquely identifies messages from that list; If it succeeds, the guessed name of the list is presented in the Message Create Filter Filter on Mailing-List... menu entry.

The second method is to manually construct a filter from scratch by calling the filter dialog through Settings Configure Filters.... The filter dialog is described in detail in the following subsection.

### The Filter Dialog

This dialog allows you to manage and edit your list of filters.

You can reach it either via Message Create Filter or Settings Configure Filters....

The dialog is divided into four main sections:

Available Filters

  This group contains the list of filters and some action buttons to modify the filters, namely: to create new filters; to move them up or down the list; to delete them; or to rename them. If you select a filter from the list, its properties are shown in the right-hand half of the dialog.

Filter Criteria

  In this group you can edit the pattern that messages must match for the filter to be applied to them. You can select here whether all of the defined rules must match or whether it suffices that any one of them matches. See Search Patterns below for a detailed description of each search rule type.

  You can click on More to get an additional (initially empty) rule if you want to define more-complex patterns and on Fewer to remove the last rule. Clear clears the pattern, &ie; it removes all but two rules from screen and resets those two.

  Invalid or empty rules are not evaluated.

Filter Actions

  In this group you can edit the list of actions that are applied to all messages that match the defined filter criteria. See Filter Actions below for a detailed description of each action type.

  You can click on More to get a new, empty action (if you want to define more than one action) and on Fewer to remove the last action. Clear clears the list, &ie; it removes all but one action and resets that one.

  Invalid or empty actions are not executed.

Advanced Options

  In this group you can define a few advanced options for filters that allow you to refine your filtering.

  Using the first row of check boxes, you can toggle when the filter is applied: the to incoming messages option means that the filter is applied to messages when you receive them (&ie; on Check Mail); the to sent messages options means that the filter is applied to messages when you send them and the on manual filtering option controls whether to apply this filter when filtering is specifically selected (&ie; via Message Apply Filters.)

  The If this filter matches, stop processing here check box in the second row controls whether or not the filters after the current filter will be applied, if the current filter matches.

  If the Add this filter to the Apply Filter menu check box in the third row is selected, this filter will be inserted in the Message Apply Filter submenu. You can then apply this filter to a message. Another way of applying filters is to use Message Apply Filters menu option, which applies all the filters - one after another until they are all used or one of the filters that matches has the If the filters matches, stop processing here.

Filters are automatically named unless you explicitly rename them using the Rename... button. The dialog assumes that it should continue auto-naming the filter as long as the filter name starts with <.

If you apply filter changes, via OK or Apply, only valid filters are actually copied to the internal filter manager.

Similarly, empty rules and actions are removed from the pattern and action list respectively, before the filter is saved.

### Search Patterns

The most common use of filters is to filter on the sender of messages; this can be done by choosing From. A good bet for a mailing list would be <recipients>, but there are other criteria a filter can search for (note that all patterns are interpreted case-insensitively):

<message>

  Searches the whole message (&ie; headers, body and attachments, if any);

<body>

  Searches the body of the message (&ie; the whole message except the headers);

<any header>

  Searches the headers of the message;

<recipients>

  Searches the To and CC header fields of the message;

<size in bytes>

  Sets upper or lower bounds on the message size;

<age in days>

  Sets upper or lower bounds on the message age;

<status>

  Sets restrictions on the status of the message;

Any other name

  Searches the header field that is given by that name.

The list of possible rules depends on what you selected in the first drop down box. The available rules are:

Rule | Available for | Description
--- | --- | ---
contains/does not contain | all textual search items | Matches if the searched item contains (or does not contain) the given text.
equals/does not equal | most textual search items | Matches if the searched item is equal to (or not equal to) the given text.
matches regular expr./does not match reg. expr. | all textual search items | Matches if a part of the searched item matches the given regular expression (or does not match it). If the regular expression editor is installed then you can edit the regular expression by clicking on the Edit... button.
has an attachment/has no attachment | <message> | Matches if the message has an attachment (or does not have an attachment).
is in address book/is not in address book | most textual search items | Matches if the searched item contains an address that is in your address book (or if the searched items contains only unknown addresses). Of course, this rule makes only sense for address fields like From or <recipients>
is in category/is not in category | most textual search items | Matches if the searched item contains an address that is in the specified category in your address book (or if the searched item contains no address that is in the specified category). Again, this rule makes only sense for address fields.
is equal to/is not equal to | numerical search items | Matches if the value of the search item is equal to (or not equal to) the specified value.
is less than | numerical search items | Matches if the value of the search item is less than the specified value.
is greater than | numerical search items | Matches if the value of the search item is greater than the specified value.
is less than or equal to | numerical search items | Matches if the value of the search item is less than or equal to the specified value.
is greater than or equal to | numerical search items | Matches if the value of the search item is greater than or equal to the specified value.
is/is not | <status> | Matches if the message has (or does not have) the specified status.

### Filter Action

The most common use of filters is to sort incoming messages to certain folders; this can be done by choosing Move into Folder. Here is a list of all possible actions:

Move into Folder

  This will file the message into another folder, removing it from its current folder if necessary; you cannot, currently use &imap; folders as a target.

Copy to Folder

  This will copy the message to another folder.

  You currently cannot use &imap; folders as a target.

Set Identity To

  This will set the identity that will be used if you reply to this message.

Mark As

  This allows you to mark the message as read or important (flagged), but also as forwarded, replied, &etc;

Send Fake MDN

  This will send a faked message disposition notification (&ie; a read receipt) to the sender of the message.

Set Transport To

  This will set the method of transport (&eg; SMTP) that will be used if you reply to the message.

Set Reply-To To

  This will modify the Reply-To field of this message. This can be useful for mailing lists that automatically set a Reply-To which you do not like.

Forward To

  This will forward the message inline (&ie; as if you selected Message Forward Inline...) to another email address. You can select the template to be used when forwarding with this filter with the drop down list.

Redirect To

  This will redirect the message as-is to another email address.

Confirm Delivery

  Will try to return a message to the sender that indicates successful delivery of their message, if the sender requested that.

  This action allows you to select who will get delivery receipts from you. Though you can globally enable the sending of delivery confirmations in the Configure &kmail;... dialog (Security page) we recommended not to send them to everyone, since this makes tracking of spam messages, for example, very easy for the sender.

Execute Command

  This will execute a program, but will not modify the message. Specify the full path to the program you want to execute; &kmail; will then block until the program returns. If you do not want &kmail; to block then append '&' to the command. You can feed the program with the parts of the mail: &percnt;0, &percnt;1, &etc; stand for files representing the message parts; for common messages &percnt;0 is the text, &percnt;1 the first attachment and so on. Additionally, the whole message is fed into the program's stdin; and every occurrence of &percnt;{foo} is replaced by the content of the foo header. If you need to identify the message via its storage location in the Akonadi store, you can use the %{itemid} or %{itemurl} placeholders to achieve that.

  This currently only works if the message has at least one attachment. No, not even &percnt;0 will work in the general case!

  You can enter arbitrarily-complex shell commands here, since &kmail; uses a sub shell to execute the command line; therefore, even this command will work (within its limits): ``uudecode` `-o` `$(mktemp kmail-uudecoded.XXXXXX)` && `echo` `$'\a'``

Pipe Through

  This will feed the message to a program: if the program returns output, the entire message (including the headers) will be replaced with this output; if the program does not return output or exits with a return code other than 0 (indicating an error occurred), the message will not change. Specify the full path to the program. The same substitutions (&percnt;n, &percnt;{foo} as with execute command are performed on the command line.

  Be cautious with this action, as it will easily mess up your messages if the filter program returns garbage or extra lines.

Remove Header

  Will remove all header fields with the given name from the message. This is useful mainly for removing bogus Reply-To: headers.

Add Header

  If no such field is already present this will add a new header field with the given name and value to the message; if there already is a header field with that name, it is overwritten with the given value; if there are already multiple headers with the given name (&eg; Received: headers), an arbitrary one of them is overwritten and the others are left unchanged -- this is a known limitation. You may want to combine this filter with the remove header filter above to make sure that there are no other headers with that name in the message.

Rewrite Header

  Will scan the given header field, modify its contents and write it back. The search string is always interpreted as a case-sensitive regular expression. The replacement string is inserted literally except for occurrences of `\n`, `$n` and `${nn}`, where `n` is a positive (single-digit, except for the third form) number or `0`. These constructs are interpreted as back references to substrings captured with parentheses in the search string.

  Analogous restrictions as in the add header action apply here, too.

Play Sound

  Will play the specified sound.

### Filter Examples

As of yet &kmail; does not highlight or mark mails, that are having an extra Priority: header. If I want to flag all urgent messages as being important, I can use a filter:

#### Tagging urgent messages as important

1. Open up the Settings Configure Filters... dialog and click the New icon below the Available Filters list.

2. In the Filter Criteria area, type `Priority` in the text field of the first drop-down box, and type `urgent` in the text field of the second drop-down box.

   So your filter will match all messages containing a Priority: urgent header field.

3. Skip down to the Filter Actions area. Select Mark As from the first drop-down box. A new drop-down box containing a list of marker flags is shown to the right. Select Important from the drop-down box.

4. Since you want this filter to not prevent other filters message rules from being applied, carefully uncheck the If this filter matches, stop processing here option.

5. Click on OK, and you are done.

   Just keep in mind to move the Priority: urgent filter entry to the top of the Available Filters list, each time, when you have added another filter, so your non-stopping filter will always be applied first.

If I am subscribed to the (general) &kde; List, I could create a folder for the list (I will call it KDE-General) and use a filter to automatically transfer new messages from my inbox to my KDE-General folder if they are from the &kde; List. Here is how to create this filter:

#### Filtering a mailing list

1. Try if Message Create filter Filter on Mailing-List... can identify the mailing list (the name of the list should then appear in the menu item); in this case, this works and I am presented a filter that has List-Idcontains <kde.kde.org> preset. You select the desired destination folder from the folder pull-down menu in the Filter Action group and that is it.

   If that does not work, think of a unique way of identifying the messages you want to filter. The (almost) unique property of my &kde; List messages is that they always contain kde@kde.org in the To: or CC: field. It is only almost unique, because this fails for cross-posted messages.

2. Select Settings Configure Filters....

3. Press the New button to create an empty filter. It will appear as <unknown>.

4. In the Filter Criteria area, select <recipients> from the first drop-down box, contains from the second drop-down box, and type `kde@kde.org` in the text field.

5. Skip down to the Filter Actions section. Select file into folder from the first drop-down box. A new drop-down box containing a list of folders will appear. Select the folder that you want the filtered messages to be transferred to. For this example, you would select KDE-General from the drop-down box.

You may find that you need to use more powerful criteria to properly filter your messages; for example, you may only want to filter the &kde; List messages that are written by your friend Fred Johnson <fj@anywhere.com>. This is where the rest of the matching criteria section comes into play:

#### Extending the filter

1. Open up the Configure Filters... window and select the filter you just created.

2. Since you want to filter all messages that have kde@kde.org in the To: or CC: field and that are from Fred, check the Match all of the following radio button.

3. Now, go to the second search rule and select the following from the pull-down menus: From, contains. Now, type `fj@anywhere.com` in the text field.

You now have a filter that transfers all &kde; List messages that are from `fj@anywhere.com`.

### Filter Optimization

It is important to know that, for example, the order of the filters has an impact on the speed of the filter process. Here are some ideas which can help you to improve the filtering:

Stop filter processing as early as possible:

  If you know that a filter finally processes a certain class of messages, please make sure to check the option If this filter matches, stop processing here for the filter. This will avoid the evaluation of the filter rules of all subsequent filters. (See the advanced options in the Filter Dialog).

  An example is filtering messages from mailing lists via List-Id header into separate folders. Having found out that a message came from list A means that you can avoid checking the next filter for messages from list B.

Consider the costs of the evaluation of filter rules:

  The time required to evaluate a filter rule depends on the way the rule is constructed. In particular, scanning for a substring using the contains operation is faster than a pattern matching using the matches regular expr. operation.

  Another dependency is on the amount of data which is used for the evaluation of a filter rule. If the rule is based on a message header, its evaluation should normally be much faster than the evaluation of a rule based on the complete message.

  You should try to keep the filter rules as simple as possible.

Check the order of your filters:

  All the different filter actions have a different complexity. The most expensive filter actions are pipe through and execute command, because both need external programs to be run. Placing filters containing these filter actions behind other filters that can reduce the number of times these complex actions are required is useful, if the filter logic does allow this.

  An example is filtering messages from a mailing list and detecting spam messages. For the spam detection you will usually use an external tool via a pipe through action. Filtering the messages for the mailing list is done via the List-Id header. If you do not want to check the messages from the mailing list for spam too, it is better to use the filter for the mailing list messages before the filter for the spam detection. This way you avoid the expensive and slow spam check for all messages which were identified as mailing list messages.

### Filter Log

If you want to verify that your filters work as intended, you can open a viewer for the filter log via Tools Filter Log Viewer....

In the viewer, there you can configure the logging of the filter processing. You can control the detail level of the log, clear the log or save the log into a file. The log can provide valuable information if you need to debug your filtering process.

## Download Filters

Download Filters can be used to filter mail from a POP server, before they are completely downloaded; you can use them to prevent &kmail; from downloading huge messages and save time this way.

In the configuration dialog of the POP account you can enable download filtering by checking the Filter messages if they are greater than box; once you have done that, you can specify a size which is used as a threshold: messages exceeding this size will be checked against the filter rules you defined -- if no filter rule matches, they will be shown in a confirmation dialog and you can decide what to do with them. The default size for filtering is 50,000 Bytes; this is a good value as the overhead is kept to a minimum -- every message that is looked at by the filter causes additional traffic because the header of the message is downloaded twice. The default action is Download mail to prevent the loss of messages.

Be careful with the Delete mail from server option since once a mail is deleted on the server there is no way to get it back.

With a really good set of filter rules, it is possible that all messages that exceed the threshold size are automatically tagged (&ie; downloaded, kept on the server or deleted) and you would never be bugged by the confirmation dialog. Be careful though, since once a message is matched by a filter rule, you have no guarantee that you can change the action before it is executed: the confirmation dialog will be displayed only if there is a message left that was not matched by a filter rule.

### The Configure Pop Filter Dialog

Adding filter rules works similar as for message filters. On the left hand side you can manage the existing filters. Use the New button to add a filter. On the right hand side you can configure under which conditions the current filter should match. Using Filter Action you specify what will happen to a message that is matched by this rule. The available options are:

Download mail

  Will download the messages matched by the filter, just as any other message that does not exceed the threshold size.

Download mail later

  Will tag the messages for later download. This means the messages matched will stay on the POP server until you choose to download them by changing the action manually.

Delete mail from server

  Will delete the message from the server and does not download it. Once you deleted a message from the server, there is no way you can undo this. Be careful, as rules could match messages you actually want, too.

The option Always show matched 'Download Later' messages in confirmation dialog will cause the confirmation dialog to show up during mailbox check if at least one message was tagged for Download Later - even if all messages exceeding the threshold size were matched by a rule. This option is useful in the case you have messages matched by a rule and tagged for Download Later, but you do not get any message exceeding the size limit for a very long time. Without this option, the confirmation dialog would never show up and you would never have a chance to get the queued message by changing the action manually.

### The Confirmation Dialog

This dialog shows up whenever you have POP filtering switched on and messages were found on the server that exceed the threshold size you defined for the POP account. Now you have the chance to decide what you want to do with that message. The options are Download (green), Download later (yellow with egg watch) and Delete from server (red X). Be cautious with the delete option, since once you deleted a mail from the server, there is no way to undelete it again.

In the Filtered Messages section you can check the box if you receive messages that were automatically tagged for a certain action (download, download later, delete) by a filter rule. The checkbox is only enabled if you receive some messages that were matched by a filter rule; once you check it, a list similar to the one for the not-automatically-tagged messages will be displayed and you can change the action for every single message.

Please note that if there is a message exceeding the size limit, but all messages are matched by a filter rule the dialog will not be displayed. One exception occurs if you have checked Always show matched 'Download Later' messages in the Global Options section of the POP filter configuration dialog; then, the dialog will also be displayed if you only have matched messages, but at least one message was tagged for Download later.

## Using Multiple Accounts

Multiple accounts are used to check for messages from more than one email address and/or mail server. Select Settings Configure &kmail;... and click on the Accounts page to add or change your account settings. See the Getting started section for more information on the settings in the Accounts page.

To check for messages from a particular account, use the File Check Mail In submenu to select the account to check for mail. You can also press the mouse button on the Check Mail icon for some time to get a list of accounts.

## Signing and Encrypting Messages with PGP or GnuPG

There have been major changes in the way &kmail; handles signing/encryption. The following introduction applies to the previous version of &kmail;. You can still read the introduction to get an overview about how to sign/encrypt messages, but the details, especially those of the configuration, will differ.

This is a short introduction on how to setup &kmail;'s PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) support; it gives some hints on the use of PGP too. It is written for people who are beginners in this area; if you are familiar with the use of PGP, you can skip most of the steps. This documentation, and the &kmail; user interface, generally talk only about PGP, but it applies to both PGP and GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard), (although some GnuPG command-line parameters may be different.)

Please also check out the &FAQ; item about PGP.

Attachments will not be signed/encrypted if you are using inline OpenPGP: to sign/encrypt attachments, you have to install GnuPG and some necessary libraries; then, you can decide for each attachment whether it should be signed/encrypted or not.

&kmail; has to rely on PGP's output; this output is often different between different versions of PGP, so it is important that you test if encryption really works with your setup before you start using it seriously. &kmail; might not warn you if something fails -- enable Show signed/encrypted text after composing.

To setup and use PGP support in &kmail; it is necessary to have PGP installed and set up properly; of course, we cannot give you a full introduction of PGP here. We will only mention the steps you have to do to get PGP going. For details you should have a look at the excellent PGP documentation or The GNU Privacy Handbook.

It is certainly a good idea to study this documentation as well as an introduction into public key cryptography (&eg; out of the PGP 6.5.x package): there you can learn a lot about the basic concepts, which will help you to understand what is going on; also, many security related issues you should know about are discussed there.

Now, let us start.

### Preconditions

&kmail; expects that your PGP binary is called `pgp`; in the case of GnuPG, it expects the binary to be called `gpg`. If this is not the case for you, just make a symlink.

If you have not done so, you have to generate a key pair (secret and public key) for your identity. You must do this at the command line: use ``pgp` `-kg`` or ``gpg` `--gen-key``: &kmail; has no internal support for pgp's key generation at this time. The identity (normally your name followed by your email address within brackets, such as `John Doe <john@example.com>`) and your passphrase are important for the co-operation between &kmail; and PGP.

### PGP-Related Settings in &kmail;

Select the OpenPGP tab on the Security settings page; there you will find the following options:

Encryption tool

  Here you can choose if you want to use PGP, GnuPG or no encryption software at all; of course, the program you select has to be installed on your system (it is also important to select the correct version.)

Keep passphrase in memory

  When this option is off, &kmail; will ask for your passphrase each time you sign a message (before sending) or select an encrypted message; if you turn this option on, &kmail; will remember your passphrase from after your first successful input until you finish your &kmail; session. The passphrase is stored in memory and not written to the hard disk. If you use one of the Crypto-Plugins or if you use GnuPG with the gpg-agent then an external program will ask for your passphrase and optionally remember it for some time.

Always encrypt to self

  If this option is off and you want to send an encrypted message to somebody, then you cannot read this message any longer after you have composed and encrypted it. Turn this option on to keep sent encrypted messages readable for you too.

Show signed/encrypted text after composing

  This will show you the result of encrypting and signing before the message gets sent; this way, you can still cancel sending if encrypting failed. It is strongly recommended to use this option.

Always show the encryption keys for approval

  This will always open a dialog that lets you choose the keys used for each recipient when you are sending an encrypted message; if this option is off, &kmail; will show this dialog only when it cannot find a key for a recipient or when there are conflicting or unset encryption preferences.

Automatically sign messages using OpenPGP

  This lets you toggle whether to automatically sign your messages by default; of course, it is still possible to send unsigned messages by deselecting the icon in the composer window.

Automatically encrypt messages whenever possible

  If this option is on, &kmail; will automatically encrypt messages with the built-in OpenPGP support or the PGP/MIME-Plugin provided that, for every recipient, a trusted PGP key is found in your keyring and you did not tell &kmail; not to encrypt messages sent to certain recipients. If in doubt, &kmail; will ask whether the message should be encrypted or not.

Now that you have setup the encryption tool you have tell &kmail; which OpenPGP key you want to use for signing and for encrypting messages; to do this go to the Identities configuration and set the key that should be used on the Advanced tab of the identity configuration.

Now you are able to sign outgoing messages; to let people send you encrypted messages and to let them verify your signature you must send them your public key or upload your public key to a public PGP key server so that they can fetch your key from there. To send encrypted messages to other people or to verify their signed messages you will need their public keys; you can store your public key(s) on a public PGP key server such as http://www.cam.ac.uk.pgp.net/pgpnet/.

### Sign your Messages

You can compose your message as usual in the composer window of &kmail;. Before you send the message, check the Sign Message icon on the toolbar of the composer window; then, you can send the message. The identity you are using to write the current message needs to be connected to an OpenPGP Key in the Identity section of the Configure dialog. To sign the message, &kmail; needs to know your PGP passphrase: if you did not select Keep passphrase in memory in the Security section, &kmail; will ask you for it; otherwise, if you have already given the phrase to &kmail;, it will sign the message without any further prompt.

### Encrypt your Messages

To send an encrypted message to somebody of whom you have a public key, you simply create the message in the composer window. Before you send the message, check the Encrypt Message button in the toolbar of the composer window; note that you might not have to check the button if Automatically encrypt messages whenever possible is selected in &kmail;'s configuration (see above). Then send the message.

If you checked the Encrypt Message button and &kmail; cannot find a matching key for a recipient, it will display a list containing all available keys in the Encryption Key Selection dialog; if &kmail; finds more than one trusted key for a recipient, it will display a list containing all matching keys for this recipient. In both cases you can select the key(s) which should be used for encrypting this message for the recipient in question. Using the Remember choice checkbox you can save your selection for future messages.

If you are using a key for the first time, there are conflicting Encryption Preferences, or if Always show the encryption keys for approval is selected in the Security section of &kmail;'s configuration dialog the Encryption Key Approval dialog will appear; here, you can select different keys for the recipients and can set the Encryption Preference for each recipient. The default option, Encrypt whenever encryption is possible, will automatically encrypt your message if there is a trusted key for each recipient.

As mentioned above, you will not be able to read your own encrypted sent messages if you do not check Always encrypt to self in the settings' Security page.

### Send your Public Key

Prepare a message to the person to whom you want to send your public key; then, choose, in the composer window's menu, Attach Attach My Public Key: this will attach the public key you defined for the current identity to the message. Now you can send the message.

Remember that it is not safe at all if you sign the message to make sure that the receiver will get the correct key: there can be a man-in-the-middle attack, as somebody can change the key and sign the message with that other key. That is why the recipient should verify the attached key by checking the key's fingerprint against the one he received in a secure way from you; have a look at the PGP documentation for further details.

### You received an encrypted Message

All you have to do is to select the message in &kmail;. You will be prompted for your passphrase; then, &kmail; will try to decrypt the message and show you the plain text if the message had been encrypted with your public key: if not, then you will not be able to read it. &kmail; stores the messages encrypted, so nobody can read these messages without knowing your passphrase.

### Receiving a Public Key

You can receive a public key as an attachment or via http, ftp or a floppy. Before you can use this key to encrypt a message to the owner of the key, you should verify the key (check its fingerprint or look for trusted signatures); then, you can add this key to your public keyring by typing ``pgp` `-ka` filename` at the command line (if you are using PGP) or by typing ``gpg` `--import` filename` at the command line (if you are using GnuPG). If the key is not certified with a trusted signature you cannot use it to encrypt messages unless you have signed the key with your key.

## The Anti-Spam Wizard

### Basics

&kmail; does not have a built-in spam detection solution: the developers believe using external, but specialized, tools is the better approach. &kmail; uses these tools through its flexible filter architecture. The Anti-Spam Wizard helps you with the initial filter setup.

What can the wizard do to help you?

  It will give you some choices about how you want the spam filtering to be set up. Afterwards it will automatically create the appropriate filter rules.

What are the limitations of the wizard?

  It can only initially set up the filters for you; and it will provide a standard setup. Manual modifications in existing filters are not considered. Instead, these filters are overwritten by the wizard.

You can activate the wizard via Tools Anti-Spam Wizard....

The wizard scans for known anti-spam tools on your computer. It is as well possible to use results of spam checks made by your provider by evaluating some header information which has been added to the messages. You can let the wizard prepare &kmail; to use one or many of them in parallel. However, note that anti-spam tool operations are usually time consuming. &kmail; can appear to be frozen during the scan of the messages for spam, you may encounter problems with the responsiveness of &kmail;. Please consider deleting the filter rules created by the wizard if the filtering becomes too slow for you. Here are some recommendations regarding the supported tools:

Bogofilter

  Bogofilter is a bayesian filter, that means its spam detection relies on an initial training phase. On the other hand, it's a pretty fast tool. That's why it is recommended to be used by people who primarily want to have a fast spam detection, and who don't worry about the little training in the beginning before the detection rate increases significantly.

SpamAssassin

  SpamAssassin is a pretty complex tool to fight against spam. Although its behavior depends heavily on its configuration, that tool can detect spam quite well without any training. However, scanning a message takes a little longer compared to pure bayesian filters. Let's say it's not the tool of choice for people without some background information about SpamAssassin's capabilities.

Annoyance-Filter

  Perhaps not so often used until distributions pick it up. It's clearly a tool for specialists.

GMX Spam Filter

  Given that you get your mail via the GMX freemail provider, your messages are scanned for spam. The result of that process is documented in a special header field of each message. It's possible to use the content of this header field to sort out spam. There is no slowdown in the filtering if only this tool is used, as the messages have already been processed.

### Advanced

Here are the details of how the wizard works: &kmail; can use several external tools to detect spam messages; it will try to automatically find out which of those tools are installed on your box and will show you these tools in a list. The list is ordered by the average speed of the filtering process of the tools. You can mark the tools which you want to be used by &kmail; to detect spam. Of course, you can close the wizard, install a tool, and restart the wizard again.

If you have marked at least one tool, KMail is able to provide filters which allow the classification of the messages as spam or not spam. It will also provide actions to let you manually classify messages. These actions will be available via the menu and via toolbar icons. If any of the tools you selected support Bayesian filtering (&ie; a method to detect spam based on statistical analysis of the messages) then these messages are not only marked but additionally transfered to the tools to let them learn so they can improve their detection rate.

On the second page, there you will be able to select some additional actions to be done in &kmail; with regard to spam messages: if you want messages detected as spam to be moved into a certain folder, please select the appropriate folder and mark the Move known spam to: option; if messages detected as spam should additionally be marked as read, then mark the Mark detected spam messages as read option.

Having checked at least one of the available tools will allow you to let the wizard finish the filter setup. The wizard will not take any modifications in existing filters formerly created by the wizard into consideration but will either append new filters or replace existing filters in any case; you may want to inspect the result of this process in the Filter Dialog. The wizard will also create toolbar buttons for marking messages as spam or as ham; keep in mind that classifying messages as spam will also move those messages to the folder you had specified for spam messages, if you haven't deselected the appropriate option.

### Some More Details for Experts

The wizard uses information stored in a special configuration file named `kmail.antispamrc` (stored in the global or local KDE config directory). It will first check the global config file and then the local config file: if the local config file contains entries with higher (newer) version numbers per-tool the configuration data from the local file for that tool is used; that way, both administrators and users can update the wizard configuration.

The local detection of spam messages is achieved by creating pipe through actions per-tool within a special filter. Another filter contains rules to check for detected spam messages and actions to mark them and (optionally, depending on the choice in the wizard) to move them into a folder. Both filters are configured to be applied on incoming messages and on manual filtering.

Two filters are needed for the classification of ham and spam. They contain actions to mark the messages appropriately. As mentioned above, the filter for classification as spam can have another action to move the message into a predefined folder. If the selected tools support Bayesian filtering, the wizard will create additional filter actions to pass the messages to the tools (via execute command actions) in the appropriate learn mode.

If you want to fine-tune the filtering process, you might be interested in the chapter about Filter Optimization.

## The Anti-Virus Wizard

### Basics

&kmail; does not have a built-in virus detection solution: the developers believe using external, but specialized, tools is the better approach. &kmail; uses these tools through its flexible filter architecture. The Anti-Virus Wizard helps you with the initial filter setup.

What can the wizard do to help you?

  It will give you some choices about how you want virus filtering to be set up. Afterwards it will automatically create the appropriate filter rules.

What are the limitations of the wizard?

  It can only initially set up the filters for you; and it will provide a standard setup. Modifying existing filters is not yet possible.

You can activate the wizard via Tools Anti-Virus Wizard....

### Advanced

The Anti-Virus Wizard basically works exactly as the Anti-Spam Wizard. Here are the details of how the wizard works: &kmail; can use several external tools to detect messages containing viruses; it will try to automatically find out which of those tools are installed on your box and will show you the result of the search for each tool. You can mark the tools which you want to be used by &kmail; to detect viruses; marking tools which were not found is not possible because the appropriate checkboxes are disabled. Of course, you can close the wizard, install a tool, and restart the wizard again.

If you have marked at least one tool you will be able to select some actions to be done in &kmail; with regard to messages containing viruses: to let &kmail; detect messages containing viruses you definitely should mark the Check messages using the anti-virus tools option; if you want messages detected as virus-infected to be moved into a certain folder, please select the appropriate folder and mark the Move detected viral messages to the selected folder option; if messages detected as virus-infected should additionally be marked as read, then mark the Additionally, mark detected viral messages as read option.

Having checked at least one of these last options will allow you to let the wizard finish the filter setup. The wizard will not take any existing filter rules into consideration but will append new rules in any case; you may want to inspect the result of this process in the Filter Dialog.

### Details

The wizard uses information stored in a special configuration file named `kmail.antivirusrc` (stored in the global or local KDE config directory). It will first check the global config file and then the local config file: if the local config file contains entries with higher (newer) version numbers per-tool the configuration data from the local file for that tool is used; that way, both administrators and users can update the wizard configuration.

The detection of messages containing viruses is achieved by creating pipe through actions per-tool within a special filter. Another filter contains rules to check for detected viral messages and actions to mark them and (optionally, depending on the choice in the wizard) to move them into a folder. Both filters are configured to be applied on incoming messages and on manual filtering.