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, reading, 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  functionality.  More  sophisticated
       interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line interface,  or  more
       likely, on top of the notmuch library interface. See http://notmuchmail.org for more about
       alternate 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 optional 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  configuration  file
                 specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}.

          --uuid=HEX
                 Enforce  that  the  database UUID (a unique identifier which persists until e.g.
                 the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an error if  it  is  not.  This  is
                 useful  to detect rollover in modification 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 command.  For  example,
       notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to notmuch --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 containing your email archives. Your
       answers will be  written  to  a  configuration  file  in  ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}  (if  set)  or
       ${HOME}/.notmuch-config  .  This  configuration  file  will  be  created  with descriptive
       comments, making 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-directories and should
       primarily contain only files with individual email messages (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 currently 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  syntax.   See
       notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syntax.

       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 reply.

       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.

ENVIRONMENT

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

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

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location  to write a talloc memory usage report. See talloc_enable_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-config(1), notmuch-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1),
       notmuch-new(1),       notmuch-reply(1),       notmuch-restore(1),       notmuch-search(1),
       notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1), notmuch-address(1)

       The notmuch website: http://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

       2009-2015, Carl Worth and many others