Heipei

I’m sure I could come up with 5 of these every day if I read the whole user-manual religilously and followed dozens of blogs, but I don’t, so here goes:

mutt supports threading (duh!) through

set sort="threads"
set strict_threads="yes"

But you want threads which have new mails appear at the top/bottom (whichever way you work):

set sort_browser="reverse-date"
set sort_aux="last-date-received"

Voila! Additionally it doesn’t hurt to unset

unset collapse_unread

The default-keybinding for threads isn’t the best, so it’s best to rebind it to something unused but easy:

bind index - collapse-thread
bind index _ collapse-all

Don’t wonder about the absence of “uncollapse”, in mutt there is only toggle (like it or not).

One of the most useful features when communicating with people who don’t give a crap about mail is the split and link-feature for threads: Use the key ‘#’ to break apart a thread, or tag some mails (using ‘t’ for example) and the use the ampersand ‘&’ to link them to another mail (because some people see the “Reply” button as a cheap way to get an address into the To-field).

Another feature of mutt (that’s worth using it over TB alone) is the quickness and ease with which it deletes attachments from mails without breaking the threading or anything else. Just press ‘v’ on mail, select the attachment, mark it deleted with ‘d’, go back to your mailbox and hit ‘$’ to write the changes to the mailbox. This will keep your mailbackups lean.