Mail messages are normally saved to files that contain only mail messages. Such files are called folders.
The VM command to save a message to a folder is s
(vm-save-message); invoking this command causes the current
message to be saved to a folder whose name you specify in the
minibuffer. If vm-save-message is given a prefix argument
n, the current message plus the next n-1 message are saved.
If n is negative, the current message and the previous n-1
messages are saved. Messages saved with vm-save-message are
flagged "filed".
If the value of the variable vm-confirm-new-folders is
non-nil, VM will ask for confirmation before creating a new
folder on interactive saves.
If you have a directory where you keep all your mail folders, you should
set the variable vm-folder-directory to point to it. If this
variable is set, vm-save-message will insert this directory name
into the minibuffer before prompting you for a folder name; this will save
you some typing.
Another aid to selecting folders in which to save mail is the variable
vm-auto-folder-alist. The value of this variable should be a
list of the form,
((header-name (regexp . folder-name) ...) ...)
where header-name and regexp are strings, and folder-name is a string or an s-expression that evaluates to a string.
If any part of the contents of the message header named by
header-name is matched by the regular expression regexp, VM
will evaluate the corresponding folder-name and use the result as
the default when prompting for a folder to save the message in. If
the resulting folder name is a relative pathname it resolves to the directory
named by vm-folder-directory, or the default-directory of
the currently visited folder if vm-folder-directory is nil.
When folder-name is evaluated, the current buffer will contain only the contents of the header named by header-name. It is safe to modify this buffer. You can use the match data from any `\( ... \)' grouping constructs in regexp along with the function buffer-substring to build a folder name based on the header information. If the result of evaluating folder-name is a list, then the list will be treated as another auto-folder-alist and will be descended recursively.
Whether matching is case sensitive depends on the value of the variable
vm-auto-folder-case-fold-search. A non-nil value makes
matching case insensitive. The default value is t, which means
matching is case sensitive. Note that the matching of header names is
always case insensitive becasue RFC 822 specifies that header names are
case indistinct.
VM can save messages to a folder in two distinct ways. The message can be
appended directly to the folder on disk, or the folder can be visited as
Emacs would visit any other file and the message be appended to that
buffer. In the latter method you must save the buffer yourself to change
the on-disk copy of the folder. The variable vm-visit-when-saving
controls which method is used. A value of t cuases VM to always
visit a folder before saving message to it. A nil value causes VM
to always append directly to the folder file. In this case VM will not
save messages to the disk copy of a folder that is being visited. This
restriction is necessary to insure that the buffer and on-disk copies of
the folder are consistent. If the value of vm-visit-when-saving is
not nil and not t (e.g. 0, the default), VM will append to
the folder's buffer if the buffer is currently being visited, otherwise VM
will append to the file itself.
After a message is saved to a folder, the usual thing to do next is to
delete it. If the variable vm-delete-after-saving is
non-nil VM will flag messages for deletion automatically after
saving them. This applies only to saves to folders, not for the w
command (see below).
Other commands:
vm-save-message-sans-headers)
vm-save-message
does. Messages saved this way are flagged "written".
vm-auto-archive-messages)
vm-auto-folder-alist to their appropriate folders. Messages that
are flagged for deletion are not saved by this command. If invoked with a
prefix argument, confirmation will be requested for each save.
vm-pipe-message-to-command)