# Account customisation

## Basic preferences

The first tab of the account preferences, Basic, contains, as its name indicates, basic account data. In this tab you can specify your name, email address, organization and basic connection information. The name of the account is just the name Claws Mail will use when referring to this account, for example, in the account switcher at the lower right-hand corner of the main window. The server information lets you specify the receiving protocol to use (which is not modifiable for existing accounts), the server(s) used to receive or send your emails (usually `pop.isp.com` and `smtp.isp.com`) and your login on the receiving server.

In the Receive tab you are able to change the default behaviour of Claws Mail. For example, leaving messages on the server for a while, preventing downloading of mails that are too large, or specifying whether you want the filtering rules to apply to this account's mails. The Receive size limit is used to limit the time spent downloading large emails. Whenever you receive a mail larger than this limit, it will be partially downloaded and you will later have the choice to either download it entirely or delete it from the server. This choice will be presented to you while viewing the email.

The Send tab contains preferences for special headers that you might want to add to your outgoing emails, like X-Face or Face headers, and authentication information for sending emails. Most of the time, your ISP allows its subscribers to send email via the SMTP server without authenticating, but in some setups, you have to identify yourself before sending. There are different possibilities for doing that. The best one, when available, is SMTP AUTH. When not available, you'll usually use POP-before-SMTP, which connects to the POP server, (which is authenticated), disconnects, and sends the mail.

The Compose tab holds options for changing the behaviour of the Composition window when used with the account. You can specify a signature to insert automatically, and set default Cc, Bcc or Reply-To addresses.

In the Privacy tab you can choose the default level of paranoia for your account. You might want all outgoing emails to be digitally signed and/or encrypted. Signing all outgoing emails, not only important ones, will for example allow you to protect yourself from faked mails sent on your behalf to coworkers. This can help solve embarrassing situations.

The SSL tab is also security related, although this time its settings apply to the transport of your emails and not their content. Basically, using SSL encrypts the connection between you and the server, which prevents people from snooping on your connection and being able to read your mails and your password. SSL should be used if it is available.

Finally, the Advanced tab allows you to specify ports and domains if the defaults are not used. Normally you can leave these empty. You can also specify folders for sent, queued, draft, and deleted messages here.

## Account types

We saw earlier that once an account is created, you can't change its type (protocol) anymore. This is because preferences for these different types are not quite the same, most of the POP3 related options are irrelevant for IMAP, for example.

### POP3

POP3 is one of the two most used protocols and is available at almost every ISP on Earth. Its advantage is that it allows you to download email to your computer, which means that accessing your mail will be really fast once you have it on your hard disk. The disadvantage of POP3 is that it is more difficult to keep your mail synchronised on multiple computers, (you'll have to keep the mail on the server for a few days), and you won't be able to easily keep track of which mails you have read, or which mails you have replied to, etc., when using another computer.

Mail received from a POP3 account will be stored in an MH mailbox in the folder tree.

### IMAP

IMAP is the second most used protocol and its goal is to address the shortcomings of POP3. When using IMAP your folder list and your emails are all kept on a central server. This slows down navigation a little as each mail is downloaded on demand, but when you use another computer, or email client, your emails will be in the same state that you left them, including their status (read, unread, replied, etc.).

When you create an IMAP account an IMAP mailbox is created for it in the folder tree.

### News

News (NNTP) is the protocol for sending and receiving USENET articles. Messages are held on a central server and downloaded on demand. They cannot be deleted by the user.

When you create a News account a News mailbox is created for it in the folder tree.

### Local

The Local mbox file type of account can be used if you run an SMTP server on your computer and/or want to receive your logs easily.

Mail received from a Local account is stored in an MH mailbox in the folder tree.

### SMTP only

The account type None, (SMTP only) is a special type of account that won't retrieve any mail, but will allow you to create different identities that can be used to send out emails with various aliases, for example.

## Multiple accounts

You can easily create multiple accounts in Claws Mail. For POP accounts, you can choose to store all email from your different accounts in the same folder(s), using the Receive tab preference. IMAP and News accounts each get their own mailbox in the folder tree.

You can choose which accounts get checked for new mail when using the Get All command (or "Get Mail" in the toolbar) by checking the relevant box in the Receive tab of their preferences or in the G column of your accounts list.

## More filtering

By default filtering rules are global, but they can also be assigned to a specific account. When fetching mail, any rules that are assigned to a specific account will only be applied to mails that are retrieved from that account.

Mail from any account can be filtered into another account's folders, for example, a mail received by POP3 could be filtered into an IMAP account's folder, and vice-versa. This is either a useful feature or an annoying one, depending on what you want to achieve. If you'd rather avoid that, but still want to automatically sort your incoming mail, the best thing to do is to disable Filtering on certain accounts, and use Processing rules in the Inbox folders that you specified, as Processing rules are automatically applied when entering a folder and can be manually applied from a folder's context menu.