emacs.d/emacs_mu4e.org

Collection of interesting articles related to emacs and email.

* [[https://www.chrislockard.net/posts/o365-mail-emacs-mbsync-mu4e/][Manage o365 mail with emacs, mbsync, and mu4e | Unl0ckd]]           :website:

[2021-12-05 Sun 21:45]

** Article

One of these days, this blog will be used for more than just notes to myself
again.

*** Why?

For the past year, I have been enraptured with Emacs. I've embraced the idea of
extending it into as many facets of my workflow as possible. This post details
how I was able to get my work email setup in mu4e for easy task creation via
org-mode.

For several years, I've been using my inbox as a todo list, filing email into a
complex folder hierarchy. Once I discovered [[https://orgmode.org/][org-mode]], I realized that I should
use email as an interface for correspondence only. If a message came in that I
should act on at some future point, it should be captured in my org todo and
then discarded. I believe this follows in the principles of [[https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/][GTD]].

I'm using:

- [[http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html][mbsync]] - mailbox synchronizer
- [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html][mu4e]] - mail client
- [[https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs][Doom Emacs]] - Text editor and org-mode host

**** mbsync

=mbsync= is a mailbox synchronizer that retrieves messages via IMAP from a remote
mailstore and saves them as flat files locally.

***** mbsync Configuration

mbsync configuration is performed in =~/.mbsyncrc= (and in fact requires this
file to run). Here's my =~/.mbsyncrc=:

#+begin_example
 IMAPAccount work
Host outlook.office365.com
User  [email protected]
PassCmd "security find-generic-password -s NoMAD -w"
SSLType IMAPS
SSLVersion TLSv1.2
AuthMechs PLAIN
# Increase timeout to avoid o365 IMAP hiccups
Timeout 120
PipelineDepth 50

IMAPStore work-remote
Account work

MaildirStore work-local
# Note the trailing slash on the Path statement!
Path ~/.mail/work/
Inbox ~/.mail/work/Inbox
SubFolders Legacy

Channel work
Master :work-remote:
Slave :work-local:
#Include everything
Patterns *
# Sync changes (creations/deletions) with the server
Create Both
Expunge Both
Sync All
#+end_example

Verify mbsync is working correctly with =$ mbsync work=. This will pull down work
mail to =~/.mail/work/= with a folder layout mimicking Exchange's mail folder
structure.

Some items to note:

- =Create Both= and =Expunge Both= means mbsync can *delete* messages on your mailserver. If you want to try this configuration out in read-only mode, set these values to =Create Slave= and =Expunge Slave= instead.
- The trailing slash on the local =MaildirStore= =path= statement is critical!
- My experience with Exchange 365 has been chaotic. I've set a =Timeout 120= value to try to ensure there are no sync hiccups. This value has proved useful to me, but you can change it or remove it as you see fit.
- mbsync will /not/ delete mail folders on the server. Before you use this tool, it might be wise to ensure your Exchange folder hierarchy is as flat as possible. This can be done using the Outlook or OWA client.
- =PassCmd= allows you to retrieve credentials from a CLI password manager tool

Now email can be synced and retrieved from the mailserver.

**** mu4e

=mu= is a command-line mail client that provides superior mail search
capabilities. Installing this package will automatically pull down mu4e (mu 4
Emacs) as well.

***** mu4e Prerequisites

On macOS, install =mu= (which includes mu4e) and =mbsync=. Note that =mbsync=
is part of the /isync/ homebrew collection. These are both installed in the
terminal using homebrew:

#+begin_example
 brew install mu
brew install isync
#+end_example

Installing from homebrew should place the required files in
=/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/mu/mu4e= that will be loaded in the
configuration below.

***** Run mu

Before using =mu4e= it's a good idea to verify that =mu= works as expected,
after all, =mu4e= uses =mu= as its engine.

To validate, =mu= must first create a mail index. Run:

=$ mu index --maildir=~/.mail/work=

Once this completes, give =mu= a spin:

=$ mu find timecard=

=$ mu find from:myboss=

At this point, mail is synced, indexed, and searchable from Exchange.

**** Doom Emacs

I am thoroughly impresed with [[https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs][Doom
Emacs]], and use it as my base. Configuring this distribution is slightly
different from configuring =mu4e= in vanilla Emacs.

First, security:

***** Securely Store SMTP Credentials

SMTP is used to transfer outbound messages. I store my o365 creds in a
gpg-encrypted file, =~/.emacs.d/.authinfo.gpg=

****** Create authinfo file

Enter the credentials for the SMTP server in =~/.authinfo= using the format:

=machine mail.example.com login myusername port 587 password mypassword=

*Use quotes to contain the password*, for instance:

=machine smtp.office365.com login [email protected] password "mypassword" port
587=

****** Encrypt authinfo file

Use gpg to encrypt the authinfo file. (macOS users, install
[[https://gpgtools.org/]]. This will place a symlink to the =gpg= CLI tool in
your =/usr/local/bin= so make sure that's in your shell's =$PATH=.

I won't cover the process of creating a keypair in this article, but you can
find more information [[https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/c14.html][here]]
and [[https://help.runbox.com/creating-key-pair-on-os-x/][here.]]

Find the gpg key you want to encrypt this file with using =$ gpg --list-keys=:

#+begin_example
 ----------------------------------
...
pub   rsa4096 2019-01-22 [SC] [expires: 2023-01-22]
      315998993D8B8B1BA4AD5D209332E13A9A79C3D5
uid           [ultimate] Chris Lockard < [email protected]>
sub   rsa4096 2019-01-22 [E] [expires: 2023-01-22]
sub   rsa4096 2019-09-09 [S] [expires: 2023-09-08]
sub   rsa4096 2019-09-09 [E] [expires: 2023-09-08]
sub   rsa4096 2019-09-09 [A] [expires: 2023-09-08]
#+end_example

Now encrypt =~/.authinfo= using the following:

=$ gpg -se ~/.authinfo=

This prompts for the key to use, so either enter = [email protected]= or the
key signature - =A9A79C3D5=. The output of this program is an encrypted file,
=~/.authinfo.gpg=. For added security, set the permissions on this file to
=chmod 600 ~/.authinfo.gpg=.

Finally, move this file with =mv .authinfo.gpg ~/.emacs.d= and cleanup the file
containing cleartext credentials with =rm .authinfo=. Emacs will automatically
know to look for =~/.emacs.d/authinfo.gpg= which will help later when
configuring SMTP.

***** Doom Emacs Configuration

I store my Doom configuration files in my github and link them thusly:

=ln -s ~/Documents/dotfiles/Emacs/.doom.d ~/.doom.d=

Doom defines packages in =~/.doom.d/init.el= with user configuration in
=~/.doom.d/config.el= (or =config.org= for literate config-ers like me :))

***** ~/.doom.d/init.el

As =mu4e= is a package only available on the local filesystem, Doom needs to
know from where to load it. The following line is added at the top of the file:

#+begin_example
 ;; enabled and in what order they will be loaded. Remember to run 'doom refresh'
;; after modifying it.
;;
;; More information about these modules (and what flags they support) can be
;; found in modules/README.org.

;; This is needed because emacs won't pick up mu4e otherwise:
(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/mu/mu4e/")
(doom! :input

       :completion
...
#+end_example

This mu4e path is where Homebrew installed mu4e (from the =mu= package) by
default on macOS Mojave.

Further down =init.el=, uncomment mu4e from the =:email= block:

#+begin_example
 ...
       :email
       mu4e       ; WIP
...
#+end_example

***** ~/.doom.d/config.org{el}

mu4e configuration is placed in =config.org= or =config.el=. Mine looks like
this:

#+begin_example
 (after! mu4e
  (setq! mu4e-maildir (expand-file-name "~/.mail/work") ; the rest of the mu4e folders are RELATIVE to this one
         mu4e-get-mail-command "mbsync -a"
         mu4e-index-update-in-background t
         mu4e-compose-signature-auto-include t
         mu4e-use-fancy-chars t
         mu4e-view-show-addresses t
         mu4e-view-show-images t
         mu4e-compose-format-flowed t
         ;mu4e-compose-in-new-frame t
         mu4e-change-filenames-when-moving t ;; http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/fixing-duplicate-uid-errors-when-using-mbsync-and-mu4e/
         mu4e-maildir-shortcuts
         '( ("/Inbox" . ?i)
            ("/Archive" . ?a)
            ("/Drafts" . ?d)
            ("/Deleted Items" . ?t)
            ("/Sent Items" . ?s))

         ;; Message Formatting and sending
         message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it
         message-signature-file "~/Documents/dotfiles/Emacs/.doom.d/.mailsignature"
         message-citation-line-format "On %a %d %b %Y at %R, %f wrote:\n"
         message-citation-line-function 'message-insert-formatted-citation-line
         message-kill-buffer-on-exit t

         ;; Org mu4e
         org-mu4e-convert-to-html t
         ))
(set-email-account! " [email protected]"
                    '((user-mail-address      . " [email protected]")
                      (user-full-name         . "Chris Lockard")
                      (smtpmail-smtp-server   . "smtp.office365.com")
                      (smtpmail-smtp-service  . 587)
                      (smtpmail-stream-type   . starttls)
                      (smtpmail-debug-info    . t)
                      (mu4e-drafts-folder     . "/Drafts")
                      (mu4e-refile-folder     . "/Archive")
                      (mu4e-sent-folder       . "/Sent Items")
                      (mu4e-trash-folder      . "/Deleted Items")
                      (mu4e-update-interval   . 1800)
                      ;(mu4e-sent-messages-behavior . 'delete)
                      )
                    nil)
#+end_example

**** Usage

Everything is in place to use Doom Emacs as a mail client!

Start Emacs and run =M-x mu4e=:

[[/images/2019/11-14-1.png]]

***** Compose a message

Press =C= to bring up the message composition window:

[[/images/2019/11-14-2.png]]

To send a message, place the cursor in the header section ( =gg =) and then
=SPC m s=. You'll be prompted to enter the passphrase for your gpg key
(sometimes twice) and then your message will send once Emacs decrypts your
=~/.emacs.d/authinfo.gpg= to retrieve SMTP credentials.

***** Reply to a message

From the inbox view, press =R= to reply to a message. Fill out your response,
then send the message by again placing point in the message header section (
=gg =) and then =SPC m s=.

***** Capture a message as a task in orgmode

From the inbox view, select a message with == to open the message view. With
point in the header section (it should be there by default) and press =SPC X=
or =M-x org-capture=. With an appropriate
[[https://orgmode.org/manual/Capture-templates.html][capture template]], this
message will be linked into org mode for use in your GTD workflow.

*** References

This specific configuration required referencing many resources. I've included
these below:

Doom Emacs configurations:

- [[https://github.com/ragone/.doom.d/blob/master/config.org]]
- [[https://gitlab.com/agraul/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs-doom/.doom.d/config.org]]
- [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/issues/4669#issuecomment-232273131]]

Mbsync configurations:

- [[https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/122773/mbsync-move-subfolders-to-root]]
- [https://pastebin.com/h5iW6j87]
- [[https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/8q84dl/tip_how_to_easily_manage_your_emails_with_mu4e/]]
- [[https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/bfsck6/mu4e_for_dummies/]]
- [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/migrating-from-offlineimap-to-mbsync-for-mu4e/]]
- [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/master-your-inbox-with-mu4e-and-org-mode/]]
- [[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mu-discuss/ezd3Wyghhgc]]
- [[https://github.com/kzar/davemail/blob/master/.mbsyncrc]]
* [[https://skeptric.com/emacs-email/][Don't manage work email with Emacs ·]]                              :website:

[2021-12-05 Sun 21:44]

** Article

I do a lot of work in Emacs and at the command line, and I get quite a few
emails so it would be great if I could handle my emails there too. Email in
Emacs can be surprisingly featureful and handles HTML markup, images and can
even send [[https://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/10/29/Sending-html-emails-from-org-mode-with-org-mime/][org markup with images and equations]] all from the comfort of an Emacs
buffer. However it can be a whole /heap/ of work, and as you get deeper into the
features your mail client provides the amount of custom integration required
grows very rapidly. It's a good way to appreciate all the features of your
current mail client, but you may be able to find a better use of your time.

Getting the basics of synchronising emails from an IMAP or Exchange server may
take some time to setting up (and in some circumstances take a /lot/ of time),
but once they're working it will be pretty smooth. Dealing with HTML and images
and attachments works pretty well out of the box, unless you get a lot of
custom office drawings in your email. Building an address book of frequent
contacts is a bit of a pain, but with some work is possible. Synchronising
email addresses from the server can be difficult, and may need to be done in
batches - but you might be able to manually. Getting calendar invites is
possible with a bit of hacking, but seeing other people's calendars is very
difficult. Finally if the server configuration is changed (like changing an
authentication provider) you may have to spend a lot of time setting it up all
over again.

The benefits are that it tends to be faster to get through emails (because they
are on the local filesystem), you don't need to change environments to use them
and you can use all your favourite CLI tools on them. But unless email is a
very large part of your working life (and it seems to be slowly losing out to
instant messaging clients) it's probably not worth the investment (unless you
want to build a custom email automation tool one day!).

I'll share some of my experience doing this for those who are hard to
discourage.

*** Operating Environment

If you want to set up email from the command line or Emacs you'll want to be
working in a POSIXy environment, because that's where all the tooling is. If
your working environment supports Linux or Mac computers then it's happy times.
However if you're working in Windows you have a few options.

The best Windows option is [[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq][Windows Subsystem for Linux]] - it lets you run a
whole Linux environment and works pretty well with Windows. There are a couple
of creaky edges, mainly the filesystem is slow (which should be fixed in [[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-index][WSL2]]),
but overall it's the best solution *if* you can get the [[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10][feature enabled]].

If you can't then working in a [[https://www.virtualbox.org][Virtualbox VM]] for Linux is the next best option;
and you can configure it to be fairly seamless. However you can't use it if
there's any other virtualisation on your machine like Docker for Windows. In
fact some organisations use security software that uses virtualisation making
it impossible to install Virtualbox. But if you can get Virtualbox running (or
your organisation supports another virtualisation product) then it's generally
a good solution.

When all else fails there is good ol' [[https://www.cygwin.com/][Cygwin]]. It doesn't require any special
permissions, so as long as you can run external applications on your computer
it should work. It's a bit clunky, and you may need to build some utilities
(like =isync=, see below) yourself, but with a bit of work you can get a usable
environment. I've heard [[https://www.msys2.org/][msys2]] is better but have never taken the time to
understand it.

*** Synchronising email

You now need a way to pull email to your local filesystem and push emails back
out. For pushing emails [[file:www.postfix.org][Postfix]] works great (and has a =sendmail= interface) and
I've never needed anything else. For pulling emails you can run a email server
like [[https://www.dovecot.org/][Dovecot]], but it's quite a bit of effort to set up. The easiest solution is
to use [[http://isync.sourceforge.net/][isync/mbsync]], or it's slower cousin [[http://www.offlineimap.org/][offlineimap]].

Both [[http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html#CONFIGURATION][mbsync]] and [[https://github.com/OfflineIMAP/offlineimap/blob/master/offlineimap.conf][offlineimap]] have gnarly configuration options that will make
you learn quite a bit about the low level details of email authentication and
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir][Maildir]]. And if you set the wrong options you might accidentally delete your
whole email; so spend a lot of time reading through them and try it out on a
test account before you run it on your precious emails. To get authentication
details for your email provider the easiest thing to do is to search the web,
and if you have a common email provider (like Gmail, Office365, Fastmail)
you'll likely find a blog with a sample configuration. If you've got an
uncommon provider look in their documentation/settings for SMTP and IMAP; if
the Auth method isn't clear it's best to try to set it up with [[https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/][Thunderbird]]
first because it has some magic to automatically detect these settings and is
more likely to work out of the box.

If your email provider doesn't have IMAP enabled then you're probably out of
luck - unless it's an exchange server. If you can't get app passwords and need
to use two factor authentication you may spend a /lot/ of time trying to get this
set up (and may have to implement the feature!).

If you're on an Exchange server or on Office365 but can't access IMAP then you
can use the fantastic [[http://davmail.sourceforge.net/][Davmail]]. Davmail also supports CalDAV and CardDAV for
calendar and contacts (more on this later). The only issue is finding the
Exchange server settings can take some sleuthing (or a beer with your local
sysadmin). As before it's best to get it working in Thunderbird before trying
another synchronising tool, because it's easiest to get working there.

*** Setting up a mail interface

So now you've got all your emails sitting in a maildir folder it'd be handy to
have a tool for reading and writing email.

If you're a serious vim user [[http://www.mutt.org/][mutt]] may be a good option. [[https://notmuchmail.org/][notmuch]] has a powerful
tag system, but you have to manually sync it yourself between servers (and the
[[https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-emacs/][Emacs mode]] has too many special screens for my liking). In Emacs [[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Maildir.html][gnus]] is
built-in, but has a byzantine configuration system that you could spend the
rest of your life tweaking (like this [[https://github.com/jwiegley/dot-emacs/blob/master/gnus-settings.el][John Wiegley's]]). But gnus is apparently
good if you're on a lot of mailing lists. However for me [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/][mu]] and it's Emacs
counterpart [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e.html][mu4e]] work fantastically well - you just have to take the time to
learn yet another query language (and if you use evil-mode there are mu4e
keybindings in [[https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection/][evil-collection]]).

This is generally pretty straightforward (especially if you can crib a
configuration file that is close to what you need), but there are some traps
like if you use mbsync and mu4e you need to set
=mu4e-change-filenames-when-moving= to true or you'll get all sorts of errors
when trying to sync. You can then spend a bunch of time configuring [[https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/9ep5o1/mu4e_stop_emails_setting_backgroundforeground/][how HTML is
rendered]], [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/master-your-inbox-with-mu4e-and-org-mode/][storing links to emails in org-mode]] and [[https://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2016/10/29/Sending-html-emails-from-org-mode-with-org-mime/][sending email from org-mode]].

*** Dealing with contacts

Now you can write email you may want to store the addresses of people you want
to contact. Many email providers support the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CardDAV][CardDav]] format and you can
synchronise it locally with a tool like [[https://asynk.io/][ASynK]] or [[https://github.com/pimutils/vdirsyncer][vdirsyncer]]. You can then
import them into org contacts with [[https://github.com/flexibeast/org-vcard][org-vcard]] and [[https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Maintaining-an-address_002dbook-with-org_002dcontacts.html][configure mu4e]] to use them for
auto-completion. Or use them with [[https://www.jwz.org/bbdb/][BBDB]] for Emacs email clients that support
them, or write a script to convert them to [[https://gitlab.com/muttmua/mutt/-/wikis/MuttGuide/Aliases][Mutt aliases]].

One problem is if you work for an enterprise with thousands of people that's
going to be a lot of email addresses, and the syncing or the interface may
choke. You can probably get away with just manually copying the addresses of
the people you email most often into the configuration of whatever tool you
use. But once in a while you'll want to email someone in your organisation and
you may have to fall back to another tool to get the address book.

*** Calendars and meeting invites

Calendars is something where Outlook groupware really shines. You can see
everyone's calendar and schedule a meeting in free time using the scheduling
assistant (and book meeting rooms!). While this can lead to the problem of
[[https://jack.ofspades.com/calendar-tetris-is-an-antipattern/][calendar tetris]] where other people unilaterally fill the blanks in your
Calendar, it's generally a useful organisational feature and can sometimes even
be used to list and book available meeting rooms.

[[/images/outlook_scheduling_assistant.png]]

I haven't found anything that quite substitutes for it in an office
environment. You could manage your calendar with a command line tool in
[[https://github.com/pimutils/khal][khal]] or in Emacs with
[[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Calendar_002fDiary.html][diary/calendar]]
or [[https://orgmode.org/manual/Weekly_002fdaily-agenda.html][org-agenda]] or
[[https://github.com/kiwanami/emacs-calfw][calfw]] and synchronise it over
iCal. You can probably even get meeting invites into your calendar and respond
to the invitation ( [[https://github.com/djcb/mu/issues/994][mu4e supports
this]]). But I doubt there's anything like the scheduling assistant and if you
organise a lot of meetings in an Outlook office you'll be falling back to
Outlook a lot.

If you get this far you can spend a lot more time smoothing out the rough
edges. It's certainly possible to do, but worth thinking about whether it's
really going to pay off for the time investment. But maybe you can walk the
path and enjoy the journey as much as I did.
* [[https://kdecherf.com/blog/2017/05/01/mbsync-and-office-365/][mbsync and Office 365 | kdecherf ~ %]]                              :website:

[2021-12-05 Sun 21:43]

** Article

[[https://kdecherf.com/][kdecherf ~ %]]

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*** mbsync and Office 365

May 1, 2017 · 1 min

I observed that offlineimap stops working correctly and starts seeing UID
validity issues quite often when syncing my Office 365 account. Considering
that a full folder resync is necessary to get rid of these issues I decided to
give [[http://isync.sourceforge.net/][mbsync]] a try.

After making the configuration of the tool, which is pretty straightforward, I
started it and... It failed with cryptic and random error messages like these:

#+begin_example
 IMAP error: bogus FETCH response
#+end_example

and

#+begin_example
 IMAP command 'UID FETCH x (BODY.PEEK[])' returned an error: UID
FETCH x (BODY.* y FETCH (BODY[] {z}
#+end_example

While trying to find any resource about these errors I [[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Isync#Exchange_2003][found a note]] on the
isync page of ArchLinux's Wiki. It says that Microsoft Exchange 2003 server is
unable to handle concurrent IMAP commands, which is the default behavior of
mbsync. You must add the following line to the mbsync configuration to disable
this feature:

#+begin_example
 PipelineDepth 1
#+end_example

It appears that this solution also solves the issue with Office 365.

/Enjoy!/

- [[https://kdecherf.com/tags/mbsync/][mbsync]]
- [[https://kdecherf.com/tags/office-365/][office 365]]

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* [[https://xenodium.com/trying-out-mu4e-with-mbsync/][Trying out mu4e with mbsync]]                                       :website:

[2021-12-05 Sun 21:42]

** Article

*** Álvaro Ramírez

****  17 June 2018 Trying out mu4e with mbsync

The email fun in Emacs continues. After a few weeks since I [[../trying-out-mu4e-and-offlineimap][started using mu4e
and offlineimap]], I'm sold. Both are awesome. [[http://isync.sourceforge.net/mbsync.html][Mbsync]] is an [[http://www.offlineimap.org/][offlineimap]]
alternative. Despite resyncing all my mail, the transition was fairly smooth.
Here's how...

***** Install isync (for mbsync)

#+begin_example
brew install isync
#+end_example

***** Configure mbsync

Mbsync uses =~/.mbsyncrc= for configuration. Migrating [[../trying-out-mu4e-and-offlineimap][~/.offlineimaprc]] to
=~/.mbsyncrc= looks like:

#+begin_example
IMAPAccount Personal
Host some.imap.host.com
User your_user_name
PassCmd  "gpg --quiet --batch -d ~/.offlineimap_accountname.gpg"
Port 993
SSLType IMAPS
AuthMechs Login
CertificateFile  ~/.offlineimapcerts.pem
 #  My IMAP provider doesn't handle concurrent IMAP commands.
PipelineDepth 1

IMAPStore Personal-remote
Account Personal

MaildirStore Personal-local
Path ~/IMAP/Personal/
Inbox ~/IMAP/Personal/INBOX

Channel Personal
Master :Personal-remote:
Slave :Personal-local:
Patterns *
Create Slave
Sync All
Expunge Both
SyncState *
#+end_example

***** No concurrent IMAP commands supported

My IMAP provider doesn't handle concurrent IMAP commands. [[https://kdecherf.com/blog/2017/05/01/mbsync-and-office-365/][mbsync and Office 365]]
had the answer:

#+begin_example
PipelineDepth 1
#+end_example

***** Initial sync

Run initial from the command line sync:

#+begin_example
mbsync -Va
#+end_example

While syncing my largest inbox, it sometimes received an unexpected EOF error:

#+begin_example
IMAP error: unexpected EOF from some.imap.host.com (1.2.3.4:993)
#+end_example

First few times, I restarted the syncing manually, but then used a loop to
automatically restart it.

Bash loops:

#+begin_example
 while true;  do mbsync -V Personal; sleep 5;  done
#+end_example

#+begin_example
 for i  in {1..5};  do mbsync -V Personal; sleep 5 done
#+end_example

Eshell loop:

#+begin_example
 for i  in (number-sequence 1 10) {mbsync -V Personal; sleep 5}
#+end_example

***** Create mu index

Reindex using mu, but first remove existing index for offlineimap messages:

#+begin_example
rm -rf ~/.mu
#+end_example

Ok, do index now:

#+begin_example
mu index --maildir=~/IMAP
#+end_example

***** Mu4e tweaks

The /get mail/ command should now point to mbsync.

#+begin_example
(csetq mu4e-get-mail-command  "mbsync -Va")
#+end_example

I had issues with duplicate IDs after moving and deleting messages from mu4e.
[[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/migrating-from-offlineimap-to-mbsync-for-mu4e/][Migrating
from offlineimap to mbsync for mu4e]] had the answer:

#+begin_example
(csetq mu4e-change-filenames-when-moving t)
#+end_example

***** Helpful references


- [[https://webgefrickel.de/blog/a-modern-mutt-setup][A modern mutt setup with neomutt, mbsync, msmtp and mu --- part one | webgefrickel]].
- [[http://pragmaticemacs.com/emacs/migrating-from-offlineimap-to-mbsync-for-mu4e/][Migrating
  from offlineimap to mbsync for mu4e | Pragmatic Emacs]].
- [[https://copyninja.info/blog/email_setup.html][My personal Email setup -
  Notmuch, mbsync, postfix and dovecot]].
- [[https://github.com/jeremy-compostella/org-msg/blob/master/README.org][org-msg:
  Compose and reply to emails in a Outlook HTML friendly style]].
- [[http://www.ict4g.net/adolfo/notes/2014/12/27/EmacsIMAP.html][Reading IMAP
  Mail in Emacs on OSX]].