Saving Mail to Local Folders with Pine

This document details the configuration specific to move your email to a local computer using Pine.

You may move email stored on email.usc.edu into a local folder or export it into your home directory in a text format.

To save a message into another folder, follow these steps:

1. View the message you want to save, or highlight the message in the message index, and type s.
2. Pine will ask what folder you want to save the message in: type the name of the folder you want to move the message to, or type ^t (Ctrl-t) to bring up the folder listing. Select the folder from the listing, and press Enter (or Return). Press Enter again to save the message in the new folder.
3. Saving a message in another folder will automatically delete the message from the current folder. From the message index, type x to remove the message entry from the index.

To save (export) a message into a text file:

1. View the message you want to save, or highlight the message in the message index, and press e.
2. If you would like to select every message in a particular folder, type a ; (semicolon) and an a to select all messages. Then type an a again followed by an e to apply an export to all of the selected messages.

3. Pine will ask what file you want to save the message in: type the name of the file you want to save the message to, or type ^t (Ctrl-T) to bring up the file browser. Select the file from the listing, and press Enter. Press Enter again to save the message in the file.
4. If the file selected already exists, Pine will ask if you want to overwrite or append to the file contents. Press o to overwrite, or a to append.

Once mail is in your UNIX account you may download your email to a local computer by using an secure FTP (SFTP) program such as Filezilla.

In order to read email backed up to your UNIX account from email.usc.edu, you will need to set up Pine to look for email folders/files in both places. This can be done by making the following addition or modification to your .pinerc file (found in your home directory):

Getting Help

Pine provides a rudimentary help system that can be accessed by pressing ? from the Main Menu, or by typing ^g in any window. Context-sensitive help may be displayed by pressing ^g while entering information in fields.