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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, read-
       ing, 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	consult	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 provide the most convenient interface for that  functional-
       ity.  More  sophisticated interfaces are	expected to be built on	top of
       either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of  the  not-
       much  library interface.	See https://notmuchmail.org for	more about al-
       ternate 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 [command-name]
	      Print a synopsis of available commands and  exit.	 With  an  op-
	      tional command name, show	the man	page for that subcommand.

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

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

       --uuid=HEX
	      Enforce that the database	UUID (a	unique identifier  which  per-
	      sists until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an
	      error if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modifi-
	      cation  counts  on  messages.  You can find this UUID using e.g.
	      notmuch count --lastmod

       All global options except --config can also be specified	after the com-
       mand.  For example, notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to not-
       much --uuid=HEX subcommand.

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 alternate email addresses you use, and the directory  con-
       taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu-
       ration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}	(if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config  .
       This configuration file will be created with descriptive	comments, mak-
       ing 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-directo-
       ries and	should primarily contain only files with individual email mes-
       sages  (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  cur-
       rently 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 previously been completed.

   OTHER COMMANDS
       Several	of the notmuch commands	accept search terms with a common syn-
       tax. See	notmuch-search-terms(7)	for more details on the	supported syn-
       tax.

       The  search,  show,  address  and  count	commands are used to query the
       email database.

       The reply command is useful for preparing a template for	an  email  re-
       ply.

       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.

   CUSTOM COMMANDS
       If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to  execute
       the external notmuch-<subcommand> in ${PATH} instead. This allows users
       to have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch  com-
       mand. By	design,	this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be over-
       ridden using external commands.

   OPTION SYNTAX
       All options accepting an	argument can be	used with '=' or ':' as	a sep-
       arator.	Except for boolean options (which would	be ambiguous), a space
       can also	be used	as a separator.	The following are all equivalent:

	  notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
	  notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
	  notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name

ENVIRONMENT
       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
       of notmuch.

       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
	      Specifies	 the  location of the notmuch configuration file. Not-
	      much will	use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this  variable  is  not
	      set.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
	      Location	to  write a talloc memory usage	report.	See talloc_en-
	      able_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-address(1),    notmuch-compact(1),    notmuch-config(1),	  not-
       much-count(1),  notmuch-dump(1),	 notmuch-hooks(5),  notmuch-insert(1),
       notmuch-new(1),	notmuch-properties(7), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-re-
       ply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),
       notmuch-show(1),	notmuch-tag(1)

       The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org

CONTACT
       Feel  free to send questions, comments, or kudos	to the notmuch mailing
       list <notmuch@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.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).

AUTHOR
       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT
       2009-2020, Carl Worth and many others

0.31.3				 Feb 28, 2021			    NOTMUCH(1)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTE | OPTIONS | COMMANDS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | CONTACT | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT

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