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Opera Mail Tutorial

Sorting Messages

One of the first things you may notice when starting to use Opera for handling your messages is that you will be spending less time organizing them. Opera does a lot of the work for you, automatically.

"Views" form the foundation of the way Opera handles messages. Contrary to traditional folders, views are merely collections of links to messages, which means that one message can appear in any number of views without being copied or moved. Opera automatically groups messages with attachments, mailing lists, threads you have recently participated in, contacts you have recently received mail from, and spam into separate views. Users can additionally organize messages using message labels, static keyword searches, and filters.

Example: A message that is part of a thread you have participated in, and that also has a document attached to it, will appear under the "Received", "Active contacts", "Active threads", and "Attachments > Documents" views.

The Mail Panel

The Mail panel is the key to seeing how messages are sorted. Use F4 or the Mail button on the panel selector to open it. Opera Mail comes with a set of default views to help users access their messages more efficiently. The views are organized into groups under headings. These views and headings are described below.

Unread

New messages are delivered to your "Unread" view. If the messages are considered spam they will also show in the "Spam" view. By default, new newsgroup messages are not shown in the "Unread" view.

All messages

All messages end up in one of the views in this access point. However, this usually isn't the best place to access your messages. Labels, contact views, mailing list views, and the "Unread" view are all easier places to get to your messages. Messages cannot be removed from one of the All messages views without being deleted from all views.

Received

The "Received" view is the message database where all received messages are stored and from which most other views retrieve the messages. Messages in "Drafts", "Outbox", and "Sent" are not accessible via this view.

Outbox

Queued messages awaiting sending are temporarily stored in the "Outbox" view.

Sent

Messages sent from Opera Mail are displayed in the "Sent" view. From this view, you can resend messages and cancel newsgroup postings.

Drafts

All message drafts are stored in this view. See the section on drafts for additional details.

Spam

All messages identified as junk mail will be sent to "Spam" automatically. See the section on spam for more details.

Trash

The "Trash" view stores all messages that you have deleted from Opera Mail's views. When you delete a message in "Trash" or empty the trash view, it is removed from all views and, for IMAP accounts, deleted from the server. You can undelete a message from the trash to restore it to its previous views, but once a message is deleted from the trash, it cannot be recovered.

You can undelete a message by pressing the "Undelete" button on the "Trash" view toolbar. Empty the trash by selecting "Empty Trash" from the Mail panel context menu.

Active threads

Using the "Active Threads" view, Opera keeps track of message threads you have participated in. You will not see the "Active threads" heading in the panel until you have actually participated in a thread.

Active contacts

Active contacts are automatically added when you create a new contact or send a message to a contact. Clicking on the contact will display messages from his or her e-mail addresses from the "Received" view, including messages posted in newsgroups, as well as messages written by you to the contact. These messages can be displayed in threaded view, so you can follow the whole conversation in order.

The "Active contacts" heading will not appear until you have corresponded with someone who appears in your list of contacts.

Labels

The "Labels" views help you further categorize your e-mail. From any message list window, you can add a label to a message to have it show in the specified label's view: just choose the desired lable from the pull-down menu on the far right of the message list. The default labels are Important, Todo, Mail back, Call back, Meeting, Funny, and Valuable.

Searches

When you run a search through your mail, it acts as a sticky search and is automatically saved under the "Searches" access point in the Mail panel. Future messages will be sorted through these filters. See the section searches for more details.

Attachments

Messages with attachments automatically show up in the "Attachments" views. The attachment categories are Documents, Images, Music, Video, and Archives.

Mailing lists

Mailing lists you are subscribed to are automatically recognized by Opera (as long as they contain an "X-Mailing-List", "List-ID", "List-Post", or "Mailing-list" in combination with "Delivered-to" header) and are shown in individual views under the "Mailing lists" heading.

Newsfeeds

When you subscribe to an RSS or Atom newsfeed, the "Newsfeeds" heading will appear in your Mail panel with individual views for each subscribed feed. See the tutorial section on Newsfeeds for more details.

Filters

Any custom filters are accessible under the "Filters" heading, that appears as soon as you start adding your own filters. You can manually choose to show certain messages in a view or create a rules to automatically sort your e-mail.

Filters are selections of the messages in the "Received" and "Sent" views. Like all other views, messages in Filters are only stored in one place, so if you delete them from a filtered view, they will be deleted from all other places they were previously displayed. But unlike the default views described above, you have complete control over the messages available in filters. You can move messages into filtered views manually or by defining rules that will sort messages automatically. If you want to remove a message from a Filter, but not delete it, use the "Remove from view" option.

Imported e-mail is initially shown in filters that mimic the folder structure of your previous e-mail client. You may of course continue using your imported folder structure, but we suggest you give Opera's internal organization methods a try. They may just revolutionize the way you handle your messages.

New filters are created by right-clicking in the Mail panel or going to Mail > Filters and choosing "New filter" from the "Filters" menu.

Showing messages in filters

To make a message appear in a filtered view, you have several options:

Open the mail panel and click on the "Filters" heading so that the target filter is visible. Then select the message and drag it from the message list to the target view.
Select the message(s) in the list of messages, right-click on them and choose "Show in", then select the target filter. From this sub-menu, you can also create a new filter, or specify that a rule should be added to the filter to add similar messages to the filter automatically in the future.

Removing messages from filters

Removing messages from Filters will not delete the messages, but will prevent them from being displayed in the currently selected Filter. To remove a message from a filter, highlight it and press Ctrl+X (Cmd+X on Mac) or right-click and choose "Remove from view".

This command can only be performed from within filtered views, including the Spam view. You can also click the "Not spam" button on the message window toolbar to denote that a message is not spam. See the section on spam for details.

Deleting a filter

To delete a Filter, right-click on the Filter with your mouse and select "Delete" from the context menu or highlight the view in the mail panel and press the Del key. Press Enter to confirm deletion or Esc to cancel deletion. Note that only the filter itself is deleted, and messages in the deleted filter will not be moved to the "Trash" for deletion. To delete any or all of the messages in the filter, select all the messages in the filter, then press Del or use the "Delete" button on the message window toolbar.

Rules

You can set up rules for custom filters and for the "Spam" view. Each filter can contain multiple rules. Regular expression ("regexp") rules are also supported. Right-click on a filter and choose Properties to edit its rules and other properties.

Mark messages as filtered

When this option is enabled, the filtered messages will be hidden from all other views (including those under "Labels" and "Attachments", as well as "Unread", and "Received"). This is the easiest means of simulating folder-based organization of messages. If a message appears in two or more filters with this setting enabled, the message will still appear in all of those filters.

Mark matching messages as read

Messages matching the filter rules will automatically be marked read and therefore will not appear in the "Unread" view or cause the filtered view to appear bolded when new messages arrive.

Limit filter to messages in parent

If you make nested filters, that is, filters within filters, enable this option to let the child filter inherit the rules you have added to its parent filter. This setting is not available for filters that are not nested.

Filter existing messages

When enabled, the filter will also apply to messages in your archive, not just incoming messages

A Note about Regular Expression Filters

Opera uses the same Regular Expression (regexp) format that is used in ECMAScript and Perl. For more information see, the ECMAScript Language Specification §15.10. The Regex Coach is a free program that helps you experiment with Regular Expressions and may help you use Opera's regexp support.

Finding your messages

Finding the messages you are looking for is a breeze using the "Quick find" and "Search" functions.

Quick find

"Quick find" boxes are placed throughout Opera's user interface to help you quickly locate specific information. In the Mail panel, typing in the Quick find box will make the Mail panel show only matching views. In a message window, Quick find searches through message bodies and certain headers. Each letter you type will automatically narrow the results as fewer messages match the search term.

Search

The "Search" box searches all message headers and bodies for matches creating a new view in the process under the "Searches" access point. Searches are persistent, i.e. they remain and accumulate new results until you remove the view.

You may also perform a more advanced search using Mail > Search.