Power Up Your E-Mail with Mutt

So, what is all this tagging about? Mutt allows you to tag messages that you then can act on in one fell swoop. Think of it as a batch queue. Press T to tag messages into the queue, or use T to tag using regular expression matching. Then, use ; to prefix any command normally available to a single message, and all tagged messages will be affected in a batch.

Figure 6. Tagging Mail Matching a Regex

Once messages are tagged, press ;-D to delete all tagged messages, ;-F to flag and so on. Again, pressing ? shows all available keystrokes. Imagine how quickly you now can delete the hordes of unread mailing-list messages.

Now, let's send a test message using the Gmail SMTP server. Press M to compose an e-mail message. Fill in the To: line, then the Subject: line. Your e-mail editor opens automatically. Write your message, save and quit. You will see a page that allows you to edit the Cc, Bcc and other fields. Finally, press Y to send the message.

Figure 7. The Final Screen before Sending Mail in Mutt

Need an address book? No problem. By default, Mutt has support for alias, or contact, files. To start using aliases, create an empty ~/.mutt-alias file, then source and reference it inside your ~/.muttrc. Press A to save contacts while using Mutt. You can access contacts using Tab from the To, Cc or Bcc entry fields:

source ~/.mutt-alias
set alias_file=~/.mutt-alias

Alternatively, you can use abook. By design, the abook address book program integrates with the Mutt e-mail client. Install abook using your standard distribution tools, or compile the source code available at abook.sourceforge.net.

Set up a macro for A that calls abook. Macros are powerful tools in Mutt. They can pipe data into shell scripts or executables and allow for the customization of any keystroke:

set query_command= "abook --mutt-query '%s'"
macro index,pager A "<pipe-message>abook --add-email-quiet<return>" 

With the new macro in place, press A to add a contact into your address book. You can query the abook contacts using Q.

Like most Linux power tools, Mutt is specialized. It manages e-mail very well and lets other programs worry about most of the rest. Editors and spell-checkers live outside of Mutt.

I prefer to use Vim. But, do you want to use GNU Emacs, GNU nano or another editor? Simply set it as your editor inside ~/.muttrc. By default, Mutt uses the $EDITOR environment variable if no editor is defined.

For spell-checking, I like Vim's spell-check as-you-type feature. Use these settings in your ~/.vimrc to underline misspelled words in red:

set spell
set spell spelllang=en_us
set spellfile=~/.vim/spellfile.add

highlight clear SpellBad
highlight SpellBad term=standout ctermfg=1 
highlight SpellBad term=underline cterm=underline
highlight clear SpellCap
highlight SpellCap term=underline cterm=underline
highlight clear SpellRare
highlight SpellRare term=underline cterm=underline
highlight clear SpellLocal
highlight SpellLocal term=underline cterm=underline

Once Vim's spell-checking is enabled, you have these options available to you when your cursor is over a misspelled word:

Mutt has too many interesting features to outline in the scope of one article. However, one last feature I want to share with you is the bounce command. Bounce lets you resend a message to a new recipient. The message arrives at the new recipient from the original sender, not the bouncer. Why is this useful? Well, what if a ton of e-mail was sent to your work address instead of your personal e-mail address? Don't just forward the messages in bulk—bounce them. First, tag all the messages you want to bounce by pressing T and providing a regex search string that matches your selection. Use the sender's name, for example. Then, act on the queue by pressing B. Fill in your personal e-mail address, and press Enter to execute the bounce.