Each menu item is discussed below. When there is a keyboard shortcut that performs a menu item function, it is listed with the menu item.
Saves the currently displayed message to a text file, including all the headers and attachments.
Will compact all folders, i.e. it will really move and delete the messages on disk according to how you have moved and deleted them in KMail.
Checks for new messages in all your accounts, except those that have Exclude from "Check Mail" enabled.
Submenu that lets you check for new messages from a particular account.
Opens up the Address Book.
Starts up kmailcvt (which is part of kdenetwork). This application lets you import messages from several proprietary mail clients to KMail.
Closes the current main window or exits KMail if there's only this one window.
Revoke you last move or delete action. Note that you cannot undo a deletion in the trash.
Moves the selected messages in the trash folder. If the selected messages are already in the trash folder, they will really be deleted.
Opens up a search window that lets you search for messages with certain characteristics, e.g. a certain subject. Start the search by entering some values and press Search. Click on one of the resulting messages and it will appear in the Message pane.
Changes the number of headers that are displayed and the format of the headers in the Message pane.
Changes the way that attachments appear in the Message pane.
Opens the Create Folder dialog which lets you create a new folder. You can make this new folder a sub folder if you choose a parent folder using the File under selection. If you're going to use this folder for a mailing list you may want to add the mailing list address in the Associated Mailing List tab. You can then use the Message->Reply list... menu item. It will open a reply with the mailing list address in the To: field (i.e. it will ignore the Reply-To of the message). You can also click the middle mousebutton in the Folders pane to post to a mailing list that is associated with that folder.
Opens up the Modify Folder dialog which lets you change the settings for the selected folder.
Compacts the folder file to reduce its disk space usage. Use this command if your mailboxes seem to be much larger than they ought to be.
Moves all of the messages in the selected folder into the trash folder. If the selected folder is the trash folder, the messages are permanently deleted.
This will show HTML messages using HTML rendering. For security reasons, we recommend to only activate this for trusted messages.
Shows the messages in the Header pane in a tree-like list, with replies showing up directly under the message they reply to.
Opens the Composer window so you can write a new mail. If the current folder holds a mailing list and has a Post Address defined, this address will be default To: address.
Selects the next message in the Headers pane. The keyboard shortcut Right Arrow also performs this action.
Opens up the Composer window with the contents of the selected message's Reply-To field in the To: field.
Opens up the Composer window and copies the contents of the selected message's Reply-To: and To: fields into the To: field, and the Cc: field into the Cc: field of the Composer window.
Opens up the Composer with the To: field set to the mailing list address. Of course this will only work if you configured the current folder to be associated with a mailing list. Otherwise the To: field will be empty.
Opens up the Composer to reply but does not quote the text of the original message.
Forwards the message to a new recipient. The message's text will be copied into the body of the new message with a text marking the forwarded part. Attachments will be forwarded, too.
Forwards the message to a new recipient as an attachment. Attachments in the original message will also be in the forwarded message's attachment.
Works like forward, except that the message stays the same (even the From field). The user who redirected the message is added in special header fields (Redirect-From, Redirect-Date, Redirect-To, etc.).
Sends the message back to the sender with a notice that it cannot be delivered. This is nearly exactly the message you get from a mail relay if the user does not exist. Some people use this option to “reply” to spam.
Lets you choose the character encoding to be used in the Message Pane.
Edits the selected message if it is editable. Only messages in the outbox and drafts folder can be edited.
Opens up the Filter dialog with a new filter added. This new filter is based on the fields of the current mail.
Allows you to change the status of the selected message to one of the below (more than one status per message is currently not supported):
Copies all of the the selected messages to a certain folder.
Shows the message and its complete headers in plain text format in a new window. This can be useful to find out the origin of a mail. You should know that it's easy to fake the From: header of a mail, but one can still find out which mail servers have been used by looking at the Received: lines in the header.
If enabled, the Toolbar is visible (the Toolbar is the one with the icon to compose a new message etc.).
If enabled, the Statusbar is visible (the Statusbar is the small one on the bottom which shows useful short messages and link targets).
Opens a window that lets you configure the keyboard shortcuts for many menu commands.
Opens a window that lets you choose which icons are visible in the toolbar.
Opens the Configure window.
Opens the Configure Filters... window.
Invokes the KDE help system with the KMail help pages displayed.
Selecting this option changes the cursor to an arrow with a question mark. If you now click on any component of the control panel pane, you get short context sensitive help about that item (sorry, this feature is not implemented yet for most parts of KMail).
Opens a window for you to report a bug. You have to be connected to the Internet to send the bug report.
Displays information about KMail (version, authors, license agreement).