art's abode

To sort your messages so that the newest is at the top, edit your .muttrc:

set sort = reverse-date

By default my distribution displays the message index with the date that messages are sent, but I find that it’s extremely useful to show the actual time of the day that it was sent. You can modify your .muttrc like so:

set index_format = "%4C %Z %{%b %d %R} %-15.15L (%4l) %s"

The critical part of that format string which will show the time as well as the date is the part marked in red (%R is the variable to show time).

Update 08Nov07:

"set sort_browser = reverse-date" sorts items in the file browser only, not in the main message index. Message indexes are sorted using the $sort variable. Thanks Dr Guildo from 16hz.net for pointing out the error.

Update 11Nov07:

If you want to sort newest-to-oldest while enabling threading, use these lines instead, for example:

set sort = threads
set sort_aux = reverse-last-date-received

Note that inside a thread, messages are still sorted oldest-to-newest.

Edit your ~/.muttrc, append the following somewhere:

set record=+sentbox

Where ’sentbox’ is the (path and) filename where mutt will record sent message. Thanks Dr Guildo from 16hz.net!

Update 08Nov07:

I forgot to mention that this will automatically create/append into the $folder variable directory (usually ~/Mail/sentbox, for example). You can also set this variable inside your .muttrc file if you wish to change it (i.e., by adding into .muttrc: set folder = "~/Mizzle").