Section III - Retrieving Your Messages

The FOLDER INDEX Screen

To retrieve messages, press I (for "Folder INDEX"). When you first start pine, the current folder will be your default mail folder (more commonly called your INBOX). Here's what the FOLDER INDEX screen looks like:

FIGURE 2: The FOLDER INDEX Screen

You can use the arrow keys to move up and down the list, and then press Return to view the message. The FOLDER INDEX screen has a few more items than other screens, so we'll go over each in turn. You should already be familiar with the first line of the screen (the Title Line) and the last three lines of the screen (the Notification Line and the Keyboard Commands). The rest of the lines are devoted to showing pertinent information about each message. Each line of text is a one line summary of an actual message. From left to right, the layout of each message is as follows.

Personal Marker

The "+" sign in the first column indicates the message was directed specifically to you. In this case, the messages marked with a "+" were addressed directly to altitude@umich.edu. The other messages (the ones that do not have the "+" marker) might have been addressed to mailing lists or to address book groups of which this user is a member.

Message Number

This is just the number of the message. Although this can be configured, most people will have their messages numbered in the order in which they were received.

Message Status Flag

There are four message status flags. Each indicates the current status of a message.

N New Message

This flag indicates that you have not seen a message.

A Answered

This flag appears after you have used the R command to reply to a message. (See next Section on the Reply command.)

D Deleted Message

This flag appears when you have deleted a message either by explicitly deleting it, or by saving the message to another folder. (See next Section on Deleting and Saving messages.)

* Important

This flag means a message has been deemed important. It must be explicitly set by the user.

The first three flags will be automatically updated as you read and send your mail.

Date

When the message was sent

From

Who sent the message

Size

The number of characters (bytes) in the message

Subject

The subject of the message

There are many operations that you can perform on your messages. Here are a few.

View (V)

You can view the message by either typing V or by pressing Return when you have selected the message you want to see. See the next section about using the MESSAGE TEXT Screen.

Delete (D)

You can delete the current message with the D key command. This will mark the message to be deleted but will not actually remove it until you either expunge it with the X command or quit Pine. If you change your mind and don't want to delete the message, you can use the U key command to undelete it. Beware: If you do quit pine and/or expunge your messages, they are gone for good. You can't get them back.

Save (S)

This will save a copy of the message into the folder of your choice. If you don't specify which folder, Pine will use saved-messages. The feature of specifying folders allows you to save messages employing any criteria you wish (from a certain user, about a certain subject, etc.). You will notice that the message gets marked for deletion. Don't worry; by that time a copy of your message has already been saved in the intended folder.

Reply (R)

This command allows you to reply to the original author. It's useful when discussing topics via e-mail. Pine will ask if you want to include the original message in your reply. It is a often good idea to re-transmit relevant portions of the text, perhaps using the editor to intersperse your text in the original message. As general e-mail etiquette, delete any non-relevant portions of the text.

Forward (F)

You can forward the message to another person or persons using the F command. Use this if you feel that the message should be looked at by someone else.

Export (E)

This command is subtly different from the Save command. It allows copying the message into a directory other than your mail directory. Use this command if you want to use the message outside of pine, or if you want to reduce the number of mail headers that preface the message. An exported message is not marked for deletion.

Print (Y)

The Print command will print your whole message to a printer.

Help (?)

There are more commands that you can use. At the FOLDER INDEX Screen, press ? to see the Help Screen.

NOTE:

Pine will check to see if you have new mail every two and a half minutes. If you want to check for new mail right NOW, press ^L (Ctrl-L). This will refresh your screen as well.

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