How To Use Email Within Emacs: Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners

Setting Up Email in Emacs

Emacs, a powerful and versatile text editor, can be configured to manage your emails efficiently. This guide will walk you through the steps to set up email within Emacs, focusing on the popular mu4e and smtpmail configurations.

Installing Necessary Tools

To start using email in Emacs, you need to install a few tools:

mu: A tool for dealing with email messages stored in the Maildir format on Unix-like systems.
mu4e: An Emacs-based client built on top of mu.
mbsync: An IMAP client that synchronizes your emails between your remote email server and a local folder on your computer.

You can install these tools using your package manager. For example, on Debian-based systems, you can use:

sudo apt-get install mu4e mbsync

Configuring mu4e

Initialize mu4e:

Create a configuration file for mu4e in your Emacs configuration directory. Typically, this is ~/.emacs.d/init.el or ~/.emacs.

Add the following lines to your configuration file to set up mu4e:

(require 'mu4e)
(setq mu4e-maildir "~/Maildir")  ; Path to your Maildir
(setq mu4e-get-mail-command "mbsync --config ~/.emacs.d/.mbsyncrc nameaccount")
(setq mu4e-update-interval 300)  ; Update interval in seconds

Configure mbsync:
- Create a configuration file for mbsync (e.g., ~/.emacs.d/.mbsyncrc) with the following content:
  “`ini
  IMAPAccount account
  Host imap.example.com
  User username@example.com
  PassCmd "gpg2 -q –for-your-eyes-only –no-tty –decrypt ~/.emacs.d/.mbsync-pass.gpg"
  SSLType IMAPS
  SSLCertCheck yes
IMAPStore account-remote
Account account

MaildirStore account-local
Path ~/Maildir/
Inbox ~/Maildir/INBOX

Channel account
Master :account-remote:
Slave :account-local:
Patterns * !Trash !Spam !Junk
Create Both
Expunge Both
Sync All
SyncState 1
Indexing Emails:

To index your emails, you need to run mu index periodically. You can automate this by adding a hook to your Emacs configuration:
```
(add-hook 'after-init-hook (lambda () (mu4e t)))
```

Setting Up SMTP for Sending Emails

Configure SMTP:

To send emails from Emacs, you need to configure the SMTP settings. Add the following lines to your Emacs configuration file:

(setq user-mail-address "[email protected]"
    user-full-name "Your Full Name")
(setq mail-user-agent 'message-user-agent)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
    smtpmail-stream-type 'starttls
    smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp.example.com"
    smtpmail-smtp-service 587)

Create .authinfo File:
- Create an .authinfo file in your home directory to store your SMTP credentials securely:
```
touch ~/.authinfo
chmod 600 ~/.authinfo
```
- Add the following line to your .authinfo file:
```
machine smtp.example.com login [email protected] port 587 password #REPLACE-ME#
```
  Replace #REPLACE-ME# with your email account's app password.

Composing and Sending Emails

Start mu4e:
- To start mu4e, press M-x mu4e or bind it to a key in your Emacs configuration:
```
(global-set-key (kbd "<f2>") 'mu4e)
```
Compose an Email:
- Once in the mu4e dashboard, press C to compose a new email. You will be prompted to select the email account to use if you have multiple accounts configured.
Sending Emails:

After composing your email, press C-c C-c to send it. Emacs will use the configured SMTP settings to send the email.

Handling Email Offline

Using a Local SMTPD:
- For offline email handling, consider using a local SMTP daemon like Exim. This allows emails to be queued and sent when you have an internet connection:
```
sudo apt-get install exim4
```
  Configure Exim to queue emails and send them when the network is available. This approach avoids the complexities of handling email queues within Emacs itself.
Using smtpmail.el:
- Alternatively, you can use smtpmail.el to queue emails within Emacs. This method allows you to run smtpmail.el in a separate Emacs process to attempt to deliver queued emails periodically:
```
(setq smtpmail-queue-dir "~/Maildir/queue/")
(run-with-timer 0 300 'smtpmail-try-to-send-queued-messages)
```

Customizing and Enhancing mu4e

Desktop Notifications:

To enable desktop notifications for new emails, you can use the mu4e-alert package:

(use-package mu4e-alert :ensure t :init
(defun perso--mu4e-notif ()
  "Display both mode line and desktop alerts for incoming new emails."
  (interactive)
  (mu4e-update-mail-and-index 1)
  (mu4e-alert-enable-mode-line-display)
  (mu4e-alert-enable-notifications))
(defun perso--mu4e-refresh ()
  "Refresh emails every 300 seconds and display desktop alerts."
  (interactive)
  (mu4e t)
  (run-with-timer 0 300 'perso--mu4e-notif))
:after mu4e
:bind ("<f2>" . perso--mu4e-refresh)
:config
(add-hook 'after-init-hook #'mu4e-alert-enable-mode-line-display)
(mu4e-alert-set-default-style 'libnotify)
(add-hook 'after-init-hook #'mu4e-alert-enable-notifications)
(setq mu4e-alert-interesting-mail-query (concat "flag:unread maildir:/INBOX" " AND NOT flag:trashed")))

HTML Email Handling:
- To handle HTML-formatted emails, you can configure mu4e to use a text converter like w3m:
```
(setq mu4e-html2text-command "w3m -T text/html")
```

By following these steps, you can set up a robust email client within Emacs, leveraging the power of mu4e and smtpmail to manage your emails efficiently.