Re: How to organize mail in folders?

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Wednesday, July 11 at 05:03 PM, quoth Kai Grossjohann:
> What I'm looking for is some suggestions on how else I might organize 
> my mail, that fits more with what Mutt offers.  I think most of you 
> face the same basic situation as I do:
>
>  - Receive personal mail and mailing list mail.
>
>  - Have different strategies for handling mail depending on the address
>    they were sent to (some mailing lists are less important than most
>    personal mail, so we don't check for new mail there as often).
>
>  - Want to archive a large portion of mail.
>
>  - Want to have an overview of messages that still need action of some
>    type.
>
>  - Don't want the archive to interfere (too much) with this overview.
>
> Right?  So what do you do?

I have my mail delivered via procmail, which puts mailing list mail 
into a folder for each list. Personal mail (i.e. everything else) goes 
to the inbox. Of course, spam is filtered out first.

In mutt I have defined several groups of addresses (using the group 
command or the -group flag to the alias command), including a 'family' 
group, a 'friends' group, a 'work' group, and so forth. Each group 
also has its own folder, and also each has an fcc-save-hook to specify 
that mail to and from that group should go into the group-specific 
folder. I view all folders except the INBOX in threaded view, so all 
the messages and their responses are connected. The INBOX is viewed in 
order by date received. I also have an fcc-hook set so that mail I 
send to mailing lists is not saved (instead, I receive copies from the 
lists, so that I know it was successfully posted).

I have my inbox and my favorite mailing lists added to my list of 
watched mailboxes (using the 'mailboxes' command), so that new mail to 
them gets noticed by mutt.

My archiving is handled by cron, and only on specific folders. Because 
I store my mail all in maildir format, this is really easy to do with 
a simple shell-script. Messages older than a specific age (usually 3 
months) is moved into a large archive folder. About once a year or so, 
I move messages from that archive folder into a year-specific archive 
folder (but I could do that with cron too).

Essentially, messages in my INBOX I consider as "to do" messages, and 
once things get filed (which is easy because of all my save-hooks and 
fcc-save-hooks), they're "out of sight, out of mind".

Is that more what you had in mind?

~Kyle
- -- 
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and 
as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical.
                                                    -- Thomas Jefferson
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