Emacs Gnus: Searching Mail
Posted: - Modified: | emacs, wickedcoolemacs
There are several ways to find messages in Emacs. From the summary
buffer, you can use / o (gnus-summary-insert-old-articles) to display
all or some old messages. You can then scan through the headers in the
summary buffer by using C-s (isearch-forward), or you can limit the
displayed messages with these commands:
| Messages from a given author | / a | gnus-summary-limit-to-author |
| Messages whose subjects matching a given regular expression | / / | gnus-summary-limit-to-subject |
| Messages that match a given extra header | / x | gnus-summary-limit-to-extra-headers |
| Messages at least N days old | / t | gnus-summary-limit-to-age |
Limits work on the messages that are currently displayed, so you can
apply multiple limits. If you make a mistake, use / w
(gnus-summary-pop-limit) to remove the previous limit. You can repeat
/ w (gnus-summary-pop-limit) until satisfied. To remove all the
limits, type C-u / w (gnus-summary-popl-limit).
If you specify a prefix, the limit’s meaning is reversed. For
example, C-u / a (gnus-summary-limit-to-author) will remove the
messages from the matching author or authors.
You can use Gnus to search the currently-displayed messages by using
M-s (gnus-summary-search-article-forward) and M-r
(gnus-summary-search-article-backward).
If you want to search a lot of mail, you’ll find NNIR handy. NNIR is a
front-end to mail search engines which can index your mail and return
search results quickly. If you want to use NNIR with a local or remote
IMAP server, you will need to use nnir.el and imap.el. If you download
your mail using fetchmail or connect to a POP3 server and use an nnml
backend, you can use NNIR with a search engine such as swish-e to
search your ~/Mail directory efficiently.
1.6.7.1 Setting up IMAP and NNIR
If you use IMAP, then your mail is stored on the mail server and
you’ll need to use the IMAP search interface to search through
it. Download nnir.el from
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/download/nnir.el and save it to
your ~/elisp directory. You will also need an imap.el that is newer
than the one that comes with Emacs 22. Download imap.el from
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/download/imap.el and save it to
your ~/elisp directory as well. Because Gnus comes with an older
version of imap.el, you will need to make sure that the new version of
imap.el is loaded. Add the following to your ~/.gnus:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp") (load-file "~/elisp/imap.el") (require 'nnir)
Restart your Emacs. You can check if the correct version of imap.el
has been loaded by typing M-x locate-library and specifying
imap.el. If Emacs reports “~/elisp/imap.el”, then Gnus is configured
to use the updated imap.el.
1.6.7.2 Setting up POP3 and NNIR
If you use the configuration for POP3 that is suggested in this
chapter, then your mail is stored in the nnml backend, which uses one
file per message. To search this using NNIR, to install nnir.el and an
external search mail engine. The Namazu search engine runs on Linux,
UNIX, and Microsoft Windows, so that’s what we’ll talk about here. To
find and configure other mail search engines supported by NNIR, check
out the comments in nnir.el.
First, you’ll need to download and install Namazu. If Namazu is
available as a package for your distribution, install it that way, as
it depends on a number of other programs. An installer for Microsoft
Windows can be found at http://www.namazu.org/windows/ . If you need
to build Namazu from source, you can get the source code and instructions
from http://www.namazu.org .
After you’ve installed Namazu, create a directory for Namazu’s index
files, such as ~/.namazu-mail. Then index your mail by typing this at
the command-line:
mknmz --mailnews -O ~/.namazu-mail ~/Mail
and add the following to your ~/.gnus:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/elisp") (require 'nnir) (setq nnir-search-engine 'namazu) (setq nnir-namazu-index-directory (expand-file-name "~/.namazu-mail")) (setq nnir-namazu-remove-prefix (expand-file-name "~/Mail")) (setq nnir-mail-backend gnus-select-method)
1.6.7.3 Searching your mail with NNIR
From the group buffer displayed by M-x gnus, you can type G G
(gnus-group-make-nnir-group) to search your mail for a keyword.
If you’re using the Namazu search engine, then you can use more
sophisticated search queries such as:
| Linux Emacs | messages that contain both “Linux” and “Emacs” |
| Linux or Emacs | messages that contain either “Linux” or “Emacs” |
| Emacs not Linux | messages that contain “Emacs” but not “Linux” |
| Emacs and (Linux or Windows) | messages that contain “Emacs” and either “Linux” or “Windows” |
| “apple pie” | messages that contain the phrase “apple pie” |
| {apple pie} | messages that contain the phrase “apple pie” |
| +from:example@example.com | messages with example@example.com in the From: header |
| +subject:”apple pie” | messages with the phrase “apple pie” in the Subject: header |
| +subject:apple +subject:pie | messages whose Subject: headers contain both “apple” and “pie” |
If
matching messages are found, then you will see a temporary group with
the results. Although you can’t delete messages from this view,
reading and replying to these messages is the same as reading and
replying to regular messages.
To see a message in its original context, type G T
(gnus-summary-nnir-goto-thread) from the summary buffer. This opens
the message’s original group. If Gnus asks you how many articles to
load, press RET to accept the default of all the articles.
This is a draft for the Wicked Cool Emacs book I’m working on. =) Hope it helps!