View-only of old Maildir files

[googly.negotiator862 at aceecat.org]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 12:15:42PM +1000, Philip Rhoades wrote:

> > Can you open one by hitting "c" and then typing "=NAME/" ?

> Ah! - that helped - I tried one of the dirs "=.00_caa" and that worked - so
> it appears that it is a display problem, when I use "c" and then "?", I use
> to see a complete list of all the subdirs - now all I see the contents of
> the Maildir itself without any of the "dot" subdirs . .

How do you start mutt?

Unlike many, perhaps most, other MUAs, mutt's starting and main view
is the list of emails in the starting mailbox / folder. *Not* a list
of all mailboxes.

So when you just run "mutt" from the shell, mutt show the list of emails
in the default mailbox that was compiled into it, usually something like
/var/mail/philip. In your case it's likely that mailbox either doesn't
exist or is empty, so you get a (mostly) blank screen. As specified.

As far as I know, it is not possible to change this default via .muttrc.
What you can do is use a different command line:

- if you want to start with viewing a specific non-default mailbox, use
  "mutt -f PATH_TO_MAILBOX". Once running, you can always use the "c"
  command to switch to a different mailbox.

- if you want to see and browse the list of configured mailboxes, use
  "mutt -y"

hth,

-- 
Ian