If you're looking for a specific email (or a group of emails) once, the search engine in KMail is perfect. But if you want to see emails matching certain criteria more frequently -- all messages from a certain sender, for example --, such an ad hoc collection is not ideal.
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KMail has a solution, though. You can save any search as a folder. This search or virtual folder will automatically collect all emails matching the criteria you have set up for it. Using such virtual folders, you can conveniently have an email appear in any context that makes sense, not just in the folder you have moved it to. A message from your mother to a mailing list about management that came in yesterday could show up in the virtual folder that collects family emails, in the management mailing lists search folder and in the virtual folder where all messages from the past three days are listed.
To set up a virtual folder in KMail:
- Select Tools | Find Messages... from the menu.
- Specife the desired search criteria.
- Type the name you want to give the virtual folder under "Search folder name:".
- By default, KMail saves searches under Last Search.
- Click Search.
- Now click Open
