[lug] Mutt Questions and Tips/Tricks

[David Morris]

Well, I have finally made the leap and graduated from Pine to Mutt for
my email reading.  I know at least a few people on the list use Mutt,
so I was hoping to get some quick answers to my most pressing
questions.

Also, if anyone has any tips or tricks for Mutt, speak up....I'd 
love to hear the cool things people are doinging, and I'm certain some
others on the list would be interested too!

These are questions I haven't found an instant answer to, so thought
I'd post a message to the group before I scour documentation on the
web in detail (limited time and such).  They are listed in rough order
of personal importance, with the first being the only that I must have
an answer to if I stay with mutt...which would be a good thing as it
offers a lot of great features.

- I receive a lot of email from, and need to sort it to mailboxes to
  make reading it manageable.  How do I specify an arbitrary list of
  folders that Mutt can easily search through for new mail?  In Pine,
  this is "Incomming Folders", and you just use the tab key to search
  the folders for new messages.  There must be a mutt equivalent.

- How do I keep Mutt from asking to move read messages to a saved
  messages folder?  Those that I sort to my primary inbox
  (/var/mail/username) I darn well want to stay there.

- How do I expunge (get rid of) messages I have marked for deletion
  without quitting Mutt or switching to a different folder?

- Is there a way to hide message headers that are non informative to a
  human reader when reading my mail?  Some mailing lists have a list
  of headers that go on for several screens, and it would be nice to
  hide the stuff I don't need to see most of the time.  Preferably
  with an option to bring said headers at will when I need them for
  reference.

- How does one change the color choices?  Dark blue for subject lines
  just does NOT work when a black background is used. 

- I use several email addresses for different purposes (junkmail,
  work, personal, lists, etc.).  Is there an easy way to setup rules
  to use a certain email address in the "From" and "Reply-To" fields
  based on values of headers I specify?

If anyone can give a quick solution to any of these, I'd appreciate
it!

--David