NOTMUCH(1) General Commands Manual NOTMUCH(1)
NAME
notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
SYNOPSIS
notmuch command [args ...]
DESCRIPTION
Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.
This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
information on e.g. notmuch show consult the notmuch-show(1) man page, also accessible via notmuch help show
The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you
through the process of indexing your mail.
NOTE
While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality, it does not provide the most convenient interface for that func-
tionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of
the notmuch library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to not-
much (available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably the most widely used at this time.
COMMANDS
SETUP
The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use, (or to reconfigure it later).
The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory con-
taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configuration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config
. This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or
you can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.
The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directories and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes-
sages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other, non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs)
then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format with a utility such as mb2md before running notmuch setup .
Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if the setup command has not previously been completed.
OTHER COMMANDS
Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syntax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported
syntax.
The search, show and count commands are used to query the email database.
The reply command is useful for preparing a template for an email reply.
The tag command is the only command available for manipulating database contents.
The dump and restore commands can be used to create a textual dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
The config command can be used to get or set settings int the notmuch configuration file.
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior of notmuch.
NOTMUCH_CONFIG
Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Notmuch will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not set.
SEE ALSO
notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-new(1), notmuch-reply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-
search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
The notmuch website: http://notmuchmail.org
CONTACT
Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
Notmuch 0.13.2 2012-06-01 NOTMUCH(1)