Sorting Messages
****************

In order to make numerous related messages easier to cope with, VM
provides the command `G' (`vm-sort-messages'), which sort all messages
in a folder using one or more sort keys.  By default the actual order
of the messages in the folder is not altered; that is if you looked at
the folder file outside of VM the message order would be unchanged.
VM numbers and presents the message in a different order internally.
If you want the message order to be changed in the folder so that
other programs can see the change, you can either invoke
(`vm-sort-messages') with a prefix argument, or you can set
(`vm-move-message-physically' non-`nil' before sorting.  Either way,
VM will shift the actual messages around in the folder buffer, and
when you save the folder, the order change will be visible to other
programs.

Valid sort keys are: "date", "reversed-date", "author",
"reversed-author", "subject", "reversed-subject", "recipients",
"reversed-recipients", "line-count", "reversed-line-count",
"byte-count", "reversed-byte-count", "physical-order", and
"reversed-physical-order".

When sorting by subject (or threading using subjects, or killing
messages by subject) the subject of the message is "normalized" before
comparisons are done.  A "normalized" subject has uninteresting
prefixes and suffixes stripped off, and multiple consecutive
whitespace characters collapsed to a single space.  The variable
`vm-subject-ignored-prefix' should be regular rexpression that matches
all strings at the beginning of a subject that you do not want to be
considered when message subjects are compared.  A `nil' value means VM
should not ignore any prefixes.  The analagous variable for subject
suffixes is `vm-subject-ignored-suffix'.

Once the subject has been normalized, the variable
`vm-subject-significant-chars' controls how much of what remains is
considered significant for matching purposes.  whitespace has been
collapsed into single spaces.  The first
`vm-subject-significant-chars' will be considered significant.
Characters beyond this point in the subject string will be ignored.  A
`nil' value for this variable means all characters in the subject are
significant.

If you want to move messages around by hand, use `C-M-n'
(`vm-move-message-forward') and `C-M-p' (`vm-move-message-backward').
The default is to move the current message forward or backward by one
message in the message list.  A prefix argument N can specify a longer
move.  The value of `vm-move-messages-physically' applies to these
commands.

Menu

Threading

Using subjects and message IDs to group messages.