Pine Email - What Basics Should I Know?

You can display the current message (which is either underlined or in reverse video) by pressing > or the enter key while viewing the FOLDER INDEX screen. Here's an example of what you'll see when you view a message in Pine:

From either this MESSAGE TEXT screen or the FOLDER INDEX screen, you can press one of the following keys to act on the current message. (Pine doesn't care about upper or lower case when entering commands.)

R Reply to the current message.

D Delete a message. (Messages don't actually go away when you ask to delete them--they're just flagged with a D and expunged later when you exit Pine, just in case you change your mind and don't want the message deleted.)

U Undelete a message (remove the D flag).

If you press O to display more Pine commands, the legend at the bottom of the screen changes to the following:

From here, you can use the following:

C Compose a new message.

< Return to the FOLDER INDEX screen.

W Search for text in the current message.

% Print the message.

T Add the sender to your address book.

S Save the message in a folder.

For more information on the pine command, see the pine manual.

Previous Lesson: The Pine Inbox
Next Lesson: Pine Email Folders