Address Groups

Syntax

group [-group name ...] {-rx regex ... | -addr address ...}
ungroup [-group name ...] {* | -rx regex ... | -addr address ...}

Creating Address Groups

NeoMutt supports grouping addresses logically into named groups. An address or regular expression can appear in several groups at the same time. These groups can be used in patterns (for searching, limiting and tagging) and in hooks by using group patterns.

The :group command is used to directly add either addresses or regular expressions to the specified group or groups. The different categories of arguments to the :group command can be in any order. The flags -rx and -addr specify what the following strings (that cannot begin with a hyphen) should be interpreted as: either a regular expression or an email address, respectively.

Implicit Group Creation

Address groups can also be created implicitly by the :alias, :lists, :subscribe, and :alternates commands by specifying the optional -group option. For example:

alternates -group me address1 address2
alternates -group me -group work address3

This would create a group named “me” which contains all three addresses and a group named “work” which contains only your work address address3. Besides many other possibilities, this could be used to automatically mark your own messages in a mailing list folder as read or use a special signature for work-related messages.

Removing Addresses from Groups

The ungroup command is used to remove addresses or regular expressions from the specified group or groups. The syntax is similar to the :group command, however the special character * can be used to empty a group of all of its contents. As soon as a group gets empty because all addresses and regular expressions have been removed, it will internally be removed, too (i.e. there cannot be an empty group). When removing regular expressions from a group, the regex must be specified exactly as given to the :group command or -group argument.