Saving Messages to Files

Let's say you want to convert an email message to a text file saved somewhere on your computer. You can do so while retaining the message in your mailbox, or convert it to a text file and remove it from your mail.

You can copy it to a text file without removing it from your mailbox by pressing `C' (capital c, since lower case c is the `change directory' command). Mutt will ask you ``copy message to folder?'' Type the address of where you would like to save the file, for example ~/Desktop/New, or equivalent.<sup>3</sup> That file will include the entire set of internet headers that traveled with the message, which is probably more than you wanted. In that case, press esc-C (escape and then capital c) to access the ``save decoded copy'' function, which does the same thing but in a more reasonable format. Both of these functions leave the message in your mailbox.

If you want to simultaneously remove the message from your inbox, use esc-s (escape, followed by a lower case `s') for ``decode save,'' which will remove the message from your inbox once it's created the text file for you. I find this very useful for archiving individual messages.