NOTMUCH(1)                                   notmuch                                   NOTMUCH(1)



NAME
       notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging

SYNOPSIS
       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]

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 con‐
       sult 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  pro‐
       vide  the  most convenient interface for that functionality. 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 notmuch (available under emacs/ in the
       Notmuch source distribution) is probably the most widely used at this time.

OPTIONS
       Supported global options for notmuch include

          --help Print a synopsis of available commands and exit.

          --version
                 Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.

          --config=FILE
                 Specify  the  configuration  file  to use. This overrides any configuration file
                 specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}.

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 alter‐
       nate email addresses you use, and the  directory  containing  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  com‐
       ments,  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  pri‐
       marily  contain  only files with individual email messages (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 pre‐
       viously been completed.

   OTHER COMMANDS
       Several  of  the  notmuch  commands  accept  search  terms  with a common syntax. See not‐
       much-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 in 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.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See  talloc_enable_leak_report_full
              in talloc(3) for more information.

       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
              If  set  to  a  non-empty  value, the notmuch library will print (to stderr) Xapian
              queries it constructs.

SEE ALSO
       notmuch-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1),
       notmuch-new(1),     notmuch-reply(1),    notmuch-restore(1),    notmuch-search(1),    not‐
       much-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 AT 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.freen‐
       ode.net, channel: #notmuch).

AUTHOR
       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT
       2014, Carl Worth and many others




0.18.2                                   October 25, 2014                              NOTMUCH(1)