The Mail Reader window is the window that appears when Kmail is started. The Mail Reader window is divided into three panes:
This pane contains a list of your message folders. (other email programs call them mailboxes) To select a folder, simply click on it. The messages contained in the folder will now appear in the Headers Pane. See the Folders Section for more information about how to use folders.
This pane lists header information (message Status Flags, Sender, Subject, and the Date the message was sent) 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 a series of messages by clicking on one message, holding down the SHIFT key, and clicking on another message. The two messages you just clicked on will be selected, along with all the messages in between. You may sort the messages by clicking on the column that you wish to sort.
Displays the header and body of the currently selected message. You can scroll through the message page by page using the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys, or line by line using the up and down arrow keys. You can also use the following key shortcuts to skip through your messages without having to use the mouse:
Messages can have several status flags, which can be changed from the Message | Set Status submenu. The status flags are described below:
The Composer window is used to write new messages. It can be invoked from the File Menu or from the document icon on the Mail Reader window button bar. If you have not set the location of your signature file and you have Automatically Append Signature checked in the Composer tab of the Settings dialog, you will be prompted for the location of your signature file before the Composer window opens.
To write your message, fill in the appropriate fields in the Composer window. There are a variety of shortcuts to help you with writing you messages. The ellipses buttons next to the To:, cc:, and Bcc: fields will call up the addressbook so that you can select addresses from there instead of trying to remember them. When you are finished with your message, hit the Send button (the envelope) to queue or send the message.
You can attach files to you message by using one of the methods below:
The Message Part Properties dialog will appear to prompt you for information about your attachment. The mime-type and file name fields are automatically filled in with the appropriate values. You should then select an encoding method for your file from the list of encoding options.
Once a file is attached to your message, it appears in the Attachments pane at the bottom of the Composer window. You may remove, save, or get information about an attachment by selecting its line in the Attachments pane and selecting Remove, Save, or Properties from the Attach menu.
PGP keys may also be attached to your message by using the appropriate options in the Attach menu. PGP key attachments are handled like file attachements.
To check the spelling of your message, press the ABC checkmark button in the button bar or select Edit | Spellcheck... Kmail uses KSpell to check spelling, which is the KDE frontend to the the ispell spelling checker.
Message Folders are used to organize your email messages. When you first start Kmail the inbox, outbox, sent-mail, and trash folders are created. These folders each have special functions:
You may find that the standard folders are fine for your needs. However, if you receive a large number of messages a day, you will probably need folders to help you organize your messages. To create a new folder, select Folder | Create... A window will then prompt you for the name of the folder and allow you to associate or disassociate the folder with certain accounts. 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 | Modify... Kmail will then prompt you for the changes you wish to make to the selected folder.
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... A list of folders will appear. Select the folder from the list that you want to move the messages to and hit OK. Messages can also be moved by dragging a message from the Headers pane into the Folders pane.
You may find that your folders are taking up a lot of disk space after they have been used for a while even though they may not have very many messages in them. To fix this problem, select the folder and choose Folder | Compact.
If you want to clear all of the messages out of a folder choose Folder | Empty. All the messages in the selected folder will be moved to the trash folder. If the selected folder is the trash folder, all of the messages will be permanently deleted.
Kmail does not currently support hierarchical folders.
The addressbook is a place to store your commonly used email addresses. You can call up the addressbook from the File menu, the addressbook button on the Main window, or the addressbook button in the Composer window.
To add addresses to the addressbook, type an email address into the lower section of the window and hit the Add button. The address will then appear in the list. To remove an address, select it from the list and hit the Remove button.
Addresses can also be added to the addressbook from the Mail Reader window by right-clicking on an email address in the To: or From: fields and selecting Add to Addressbook.
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.
The actions section of the Filter Rules window lets you perform up to eight actions in one filter. You can use the "Skip Rest" option to skip the rest of the actions in the list.
The "Transfer" action is used to move a message into a specific folder. It is useful to add "Skip Rest" as second action after "Transfer" to avoid that filters down the list move the message into another folder.
The "Execute" action executes the given program. The program has to be in the path to be found.
The "Forward-to" action forwards a copy of the message to the given email address.
Usually, filters are used on incoming messages, but they can also be applied to a message or group of messages. To selectively filter messages in a message folder, select the messages you want to filter and type CONTROL-J or select Message | Apply Filters. Note that this will apply all of your filters to that message; there is no way to apply only certain filters to a message.
If you ever need to remove a filter, select it from the Filter Rules window and press the Delete button.
If I am subscribed to the KDE User List, I could create a folder for the list (I'll call it KDE-User) and use a filter to automatically transfer new messages from my inbox to my KDE-User folder if they are from the KDE User List. Here is how to create this filter:
You may find that you need to use more complicated criteria to properly filter your messages. For example, you may only want to save the KDE User 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:
You now have a filter that transfers all KDE User List messages that are from Fred Johnson.
Multiple accounts are used to check mail from more than one email address and/or mail server. Select File | Settings... and click on the Network tab to add or change your account settings. See the Customizing Kmail section for more information on the settings in the Network tab.
To check mail from a particular account, use the Check Mail in... submenu to select the account to use to check your mail. It not currently possible to tell which account is active, so if you have created multiple accounts, use the Check Mail in... submenu instead of the Check Mail menu item.
To use the PGP features of Kmail, you will need to have public-key encryption software such as GNU Privacy Guard or PGP installed and have your keys created. To configure PGP, select File | Settings... and click on the PGP tab. Type in your PGP user identity in the space provided and select any other options that you want before pressing the OK button to save your settings.
If you want to use PGP 5.x you have to set PGP's language to English. Otherwise Kmail won't be able to use it.
Once PGP is configured, you can use it to sign and encrypt messages. To sign an email message, toggle the quill button on the button bar. When you send your message, you will be prompted for your PGP password. The message will then be signed with your PGP signature and sent.
Encrypting a message is also easy. You must have the public key(s) of the recipient(s) of your message in order for encryption to work. Toggle the key button in the button bar to enable encryption. The message will be encrypted once you send it.