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33.9 Rmail Attributes

Some labels such as ‘deleted’ and ‘filed’ have built-in meanings, and Rmail assigns them to messages automatically at appropriate times; these labels are called attributes. Here is a list of Rmail attributes:

‘unseen’​

Means the message has never been current. Assigned to messages when they come from an inbox file, and removed when a message is made current. When you start Rmail, it initially shows the first message that has this attribute.

‘deleted’​

Means the message is deleted. Assigned by deletion commands and removed by undeletion commands (see Rmail Deletion).

‘filed’​

Means the message has been copied to some other file. Assigned by the o and C-o file output commands (see Rmail Output).

‘answered’​

Means you have mailed an answer to the message. Assigned by the r command (rmail-reply). See Rmail Reply.

‘forwarded’​

Means you have forwarded the message. Assigned by the f command (rmail-forward). See Rmail Reply.

‘edited’​

Means you have edited the text of the message within Rmail. See Rmail Editing.

‘resent’​

Means you have resent the message. Assigned by the command M-x rmail-resend. See Rmail Reply.

‘retried’​

Means you have retried a failed outgoing message. Assigned by the command M-x rmail-retry-failure. See Rmail Reply.

All other labels are assigned or removed only by users, and have no standard meaning.