Don't Ask - Administration

By default, Mutt assumes that your mailboxes are stored in a directory named "Mail" under your home directory. If this isn't to your liking (it annoyed me immensely until I found out how to change it), you can specify a different location:

set folder=~/mail               # mail folder

While you're at it, you should also define the locations for your inbox, outbox and postponed-messages box:

set mbox=~/mail/inbox           # location of inbox
set record=~/mail/outbox        # location of outbox
set postponed=~/mail/postponed  # location of postponed messages

You already know that the

a

key is used to capture email addresses and create aliases for them. You can specify the location of the file which stores these aliases:

set alias_file=~/mail/aliases.mutt       # location of alias file

If you'd like this file read into memory every time Mutt starts up, you'll need to source it, like this:

source ~/mail/aliases.mutt               # read all my aliases into memory
source ~/mail/aliases.personal
source ~/mail/aliases.business

Once these aliases are loaded into memory, you can address messages to recipients using the alias instead of the full email address - Mutt will automatically expand the alias before sending the message.

Next, you'll have noticed that Mutt frequently prompts you for confirmation before deleting or moving messages. This is incredibly useful when you're first getting used to the client, but becomes tedious after a while. Which is why my configuration file also has these lines:

set postpone=ask-yes            # ask me before postponing
set delete=ask-yes              # ask me before deleting
set quit=yes                    # skip exit prompt

With this in place, Mutt skips the exit confirmation message, but asks for confirmation prior to deleting or postponing messages.

You can also control how Mutt handles composing new messages,

set askcc                       # display CC field
set askbcc                      # display BCC field
unset edit_headers              # don't allow me to edit headers while
composing

and replying to existing ones.

set include=yes                 # include body of previous message in reply
set fast_reply                  # skip prompts before replying
set reply_to=yes                # use Reply-To field for reply address

>>> More Site Administration Articles          >>> More By Vikram Vaswani, (c) Melonfire

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