Chapter 6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Problem: You want to click on a link in KMail and have the link opened in Firefox. At the moment, another browser is used. You want to change this.

Solution: This change will affect all of KDE, not just KMail. Select System Settings → Default Applications → Web Browser → Mozilla Firefox.

If you are an administrator and want to make this setting automatically for your users, do this.

You can also try the script in Tutorials/ Modify_KDE_Software_Defaults

Problem: You set up a Roaming profile so you can access your home server while you are on the road, but it keeps trying to connect even when you are at home. Auto-connection is disabled in the setup screens.

Solution: Navigate to Settings → Configure KMail → Accounts → Receiving (tab) → (select the account to exclude) → Retrieval Options, then uncheck Include in Manual Mail Check. This will exclude that profile when you hit the download icon, but the account will still be available from the drop-down list, making it easy to retrieve your mail when away from home.

Problem: You want to store the messages you have sent in a special folder. Maybe you are using an IMAP server and wish to store your sent mail on the server, not in a local folder.

Solution: In KMail, navigate to Settings → Configure KMail → Identities → (Choose an identity) → Modify → Advanced → Sent-mail folder and select the folder you want to use.

Alternatively, you can use the Sent-Mail Folder field (accessible via the View menu in the composer window) to override the default sent mail folder for a particular message.

Problem: You want to store trash in a special folder. Maybe you are using an IMAP server and want trashed email messages to be stored on the server, not locally.

Solution: In the settings dialog select an IMAP account on the Accounts page. Click on Modify and change the trash folder location via the Advanced tab.

Problem: You exchange encrypted mail with a friend, but would like to store your own copy unencrypted, once you have opened the message.

Solution: To store emails that have been decrypted once in unencrypted format thereafter, add this item to your kmail2rc configuration file, in the [Reader] section:

store-displayed-messages-unencrypted=true.

Problem: You intend to read your mail from an IMAP server, and wonder how filtering and spam handling will occur.

Solution: The machine that already has your mail can become your IMAP server. You will have to configure a server application. Dovecot is one such, and the guidance on the project web pages make it relatively simple to set up. That still leaves you with the problem of filtering, as it makes sense to do that on the server (when you point KMail at the server you will see the folders that have been created on that system). There are several options. One of the best known is Procmail. Another one is Imapfilter. There is plenty of information on the internet about setting these up. Further discussion of these OSS packages is beyond the scope of KMail's documentation.

Problem: You are using KMail on a laptop or notebook, and find that the new Aggregation display leaves you too little screen space.

Solution:If you want to change the message list so each message uses a single line instead of two lines, go to View → Message List → Theme and change the theme to Classic. If you want to disable grouping by date, change the aggregation using View → Message List → Aggregation to Standard Mailing List. Now your KMail will look exactly like it did in early versions of the program.

In Settings → Configure KMail → Appearance → Fonts you can select Use custom fonts to change the setting for the message list. You can also set the font size in the Use custom fonts dialog.

Problem: You are using KMail on a laptop or notebook, and find that the tooltips that pop up hide too many folder names

Solution: Right-click on the "Name" header above the Folder List and check Never under Display Tooltips.

On KMail, Settings → Configure KMail → Appearance → Message List tab, uncheck General → Display tooltips for messages and group headers

Alternatively, right-click one of the headers above the message list and clear the check box labeled Display Tooltips.

Use Tools → Import/Export KMail Data... to import and export settings and data. Please see PIM Setting Exporter for details.

Problem: You are setting up a new computer and want to transfer all your mail. You decide to copy everything to a USB stick. The job starts, then you get a failure message:

Unable to copy ............ Invalid argument

Solution: Your usb stick is VFAT formatted, and therefore it can't handle maildir folder names (nor can it handle permissions, which can cause many other problems). You have two choices. Either format your USB stick as ext2 (or ext3 / 4 -- in which case you should be aware it can't be read by Windows® without installing additional software) or create a .tar or .zip file of your mail, then copy that to the stick and extract the archive on the new host.

Normal IMAP mode does not support filtering, but the new disconnected IMAP account type does. You could try to use server-side filtering (ask your admin how to install filters on the server, and in which format), since IMAP is all about managing your email on the server. See Settings → Configure KMail... → Receiving → (some IMAP account), then click Modify... and the Filtering tab to configure server side filtering using the Sieve programming language (if your IMAP server supports it).

KMail provides a simple and easy-to-use interface for the basic functions of these programs; still, you should understand how these programs work, and what might make their use insecure. Some important issues:

Most KMail settings are stored in ~/.config/kmail2rc .

The Akonadi-controlled entries are stored in these folders:

Note that some of the files are hidden: remember to also copy those if you want to backup or archive your mails. To be safe, use PIM Data Exporter to back up your mail and your settings.

KMail regenerates the index of a folder whenever the index appears to be out of date, i.e. whenever the contents of a folder are newer than the index. KMail regenerates the index in this case in order to prevent the loss or corruption of messages.

An outdated index can have several causes; these are the most common.

Problem: You want to start KMail from a minimal desktop environment like fvwm2. It does not start.

Solution: This happens because you are missing dbus functionality. Start KMail from a terminal window using dbus-launch, like this:

# dbus-launch kmail

If you're using the mbox format for your folders it is not possible to use a different email client while KMail is running. With mutt, there may also be problems even if both programs are not running at the same time. We recommend you use the maildir format if you want to use mutt with KMail.

There is no automated way to do that. You must create a new folder in maildir format, then copy the messages from the mbox folder into this new folder. Remember to adapt any filter rules connected with the old folder before you delete it.

Open the context menu with a right mouse button click on an attachment and select Delete Attachment.

If KMail should always check for new messages at startup then enable Check mail on startup on the Accounts configuration page. Alternatively, start KMail with kmail --check.

The welcome screen lists all important changes for your version. It is displayed when you select Help → KMail Introduction.

Sure. Just select a short, relevant piece of the original message with the mouse before you click "reply". Only this part of the original message will be quoted by the composer.

Most likely, the "Date:" header of these messages is broken and KMail cannot interpret it. That is not a bug in KMail, but in the software that sent the mail.

Separating the signature from the message body with two dashes and a space on a single line is common usage. These symbols permit mail clients that recognize them to trim the signature from a reply. If your signature does not include this separator, KMail will automatically add it.

There are quite a few, as you can see by querying the KMail Bugzilla page. As of this writing (April, 2021) roughly 70% of the reported bugs are unconfirmed, or irreproducible. All in all we think KMail is a robust piece of software.

References to external content, like images, are disabled by default, as spammers can use them to track whether and when you read a message. Loading external references can be activated in the Security tab in KMail's configuration dialog. Plugins (like Adobe® Flash), Java™ and JavaScript will not be displayed in KMail for security reasons, and there is no way to activate them.

You should only run one instance of KMail at a time. We also recommend that you stick to a certain version and not switch back and forth between different versions. Downgrading to an older version may work, but will probably cause problems because, for instance, the index file formats have been changed. Upgrading should never be a problem.

Uuencoded attachments are not supported. Save mail with uuencoded attachments, then use uudecode to decode the attachments.

KMail tries to save your mail to ~/.local/share/kmail2/autosave/ in case of a crash. The next time you start KMail the mail composer should appear with your message again; If it does not, try to open the files in ~/.local/share/kmail2/autosave/ with an editor. If there are no files in that folder then the crash was so bad that KMail could not save your message.

Associating a folder with a mailing list has nothing to do with filtering the mailing list messages — you have to add a new filter rule manually. However, once you have associated a folder with a mailing list you can use Message → Reply to Mailing-List... or Message → New Message to Mailing-List... and the mailing list address will be set in the To: field.

Authentication can be set in the Advanced tab of the SMTP configuration dialog.

Yes, but it is important to do it the right way or you might lose mail. To use procmail and KMail you must set up KMail to fetch new mail from the spoolfiles in which procmail drops your mail. Do not set up procmail to deliver mail to a KMail folder. This cannot work.

For each procmail spoolfile you must then create an account from which KMail will fetch new mail. You also need to specify the right lockfile name for this account. When setting up an account, KMail will do some minimal parsing on your .procmail file, and will try to list every spoolfile it has found, and also the lockfiles next to the procmail lockfile item. Procmail lets the user specify lockfiles in three different ways, so there is no way to establish a correspondence between the spoolfiles and lockfiles; it's really up to you to make sure the right lockfile for each spoolfile has been specified.

Before you can use spellchecking, you must configure it. You can do so in the composer window, under Settings → Spellchecker.... You can choose a dictionary there.

See the section Restore and Import in KMail.

If your POP3 server runs an ssh daemon, you can use ssh to tunnel your POP3 connection using the following command:

ssh -L 11000:127.0.0.1:110 user@host

Modify your KMail configuration to fetch the mail via POP3 from localhost and ssh will tunnel the connection for you.

For more details on setting up ssh, see this web page.

KMail does not lock the files in ~.local/share.

To avoid the risk of losing mail when using a local account, it is necessary to ensure that KMail uses the same locking mechanism as your mail delivery agent.

There are five different locking options you can use:

Procmail lockfile uses a small utility that comes with procmail called lockfile. You can use this if your mail folder is in a folder where you have write permission. This will not work on your /var/spool/mail/user file in most cases. It will create .lock files on your account when KMail is checking for new mail. Please note that this will only work if procmail is installed on your system.

Mutt dotlock and Mutt dotlock privileged both use a small utility that comes with mutt called mutt_dotlock. Mutt dotlock can be used in the same way as the Procmail lockfile option, with the same limitation with respect to the /var/spool/mail/ folders. The Mutt dotlock privileged option can create lock files in the /var/spool/mail folder. mutt_dotlock is a setgid program and this option will run it in setgid mode. Please note that these options will only work if mutt is installed on your system.

FCNTL uses the fcntl() system call.

If you do not want to use any locking, the none option is available. However, there are risks of losing mail when no locking is used.

If you want to leave all messages on the server, open the Settings → Configure KMail... window. Click on the Accounts page. Select your account from the account list and click the Modify... button. This dialog contains the Leave fetched messages on the server setting (Advanced tab) which you can enable.

The text footer is also called a signature (not to be confused with a cryptographic signature). Select Settings → Configure KMail.... Look in the Identity page for the Signature tab and add your signature there. Then go to the General tab on the Composer page and enable Automatically insert signature .

First you should check to see if your distribution can do this for you. It probably has already been set up during installation.

If that is not the case, you may want to have a look at the Mail Queue HOWTO.

You can get a list of functions by using this command in a shell: qdbusorg.kde.kmail /KMail. Then you can control KMail like this: qdbus org.kde.kmail /KMail org.kde.kmail.kmail.folderList. You can also use qdbusviewer to browse available methods in a graphical interface.

This can happen when the message contains two dashes and a space on a single line. This is seen as the start of a signature. The remainder of the message will not be quoted, because when you reply to a message, KMail strips the signature.

No, you cannot get rid of them. The local folders function as a fallback when the IMAP server is unreachable. Although you only use IMAP, KMail uses the outbox for sending the messages. If we hide all local folders you will not be able to fix messages in the outbox which cannot be send for some reason. But it is possible to keep the local folders collapsed. What you have to do is go to Settings → Configure KMail... and go to the section Misc. There you can set up the folder on startup. If you change that to a folder on the IMAP account, the Local Folders will stay collapsed when KMail starts.

If you want to follow a thread, right click and choose Mark Thread → Watch Thread.

From this point on all messages on the thread that starts in this message will be marked as Watched.

This is useful in case you are registered to a mailing list such as kdepim-users@kde.org and want to filter out the threads you participate in.

To translate text in the composer window read the section Using the Built-in Translator

In the message preview pane highlight the text you would like to translate and select Translate (Ctrl+Alt+T) from the right mouse button context menu.