Creating and Using Local Folders in Pine

Creating Local Folders

To create local mail folders in Pine:

• Create a directory within your home directory to house your mail folders.
  
  Note: Most users have a subdirectory called 'mail' previously used for local mail folders. It is recommended that you use this folder, if it already exists.


• Edit your .pinerc file so that the folder-collections property reads:
  
  folder-collections={email.usc.edu}[], mail/[]
  
  where mail is the name of the subdirectory you want to use for your mail folders.

Saving to Local Folders

To save messages in other IMAP folders to local mail folders in Pine:

1. Select the messages you want to move (either by marking each message with an X by highlighting the message and pressing the colon key, or by pressing the semicolon key to select from different selection criteria)
2. Press A to Apply, and S to Save messages
   
   Note: To move only one message at a time, you can press S once the message is highlighted in the Message Index without having to press the colon key to mark it with an X, select a range, or Apply.


3. At the SAVE prompt, press ^T (Control-T) to View Folders
4. Press < to move to the Collection List.
5. Highlight Mail (Local folders in mail/), where mail is the name of your local mail subdirectory
6. Select the folder that you want to save messages to, and press Enter
   
   Note: If you do not have any local mail folders, you should press E to Exit the selection window and press ^N (Control-N) to rotate through the next collections, so that the SAVE prompt eventually reads [Mail] [saved-messages]: . At this point, you can enter a new folder name to save your messages in. Pressing Enter will cause Pine to prompt you for folder creation.


7. Once you have made your folder selection, press Enter, and Pine will transfer your messages to your local folder. To read from your local folders, you can open them through the Mail (Local Folders in .../) option within the Collection List (Folder List).

Note: Saving mail in local folders within Pine uses part of your UNIX disk quota. You must have enough disk space to save the messages, or the save operation will fail.