The messages are either the msgs in the named folder, or the draft if invoked with the -draft option.

Usually, annotation is performed by the commands dist, forw, and repl, if they are given the -anno switch. This allows you to keep track of your distribution of, forwarding of, and replies to a message.

By using anno, you can perform arbitrary annotations of your own. Each message selected will be annotated with the lines

    field: date
    field: body

The -nodate switch inhibits the date annotation, leaving only the body annotation.

By default, anno prepends the annotations to the message. Annotations are instead appended if the -append option is specified.

If a -component field is not specified when anno is invoked, anno will prompt the user for the name of field for the annotation.

The field specified must be a valid 2822-style message field name, which means that it may only consist of alphanumerics and dashes, The body specified is arbitrary text.

Normally anno does the annotation inplace in order to preserve any links to the message. You may change this by using the -noinplace switch.

The -list option produces a listing of the field bodies for header fields with names matching the specified component, one per line. The listing is numbered, starting at 1, if the -number option is also used. A tab character separates the number and the field body. The field body is treated as if it is a file name, and only the final path name component is listed. The complete field body is listed if the -text option is used, the contents of the text are ignored.

The -delete option removes header fields from messages. The first header field whose name matches the component is deleted if no other options are specified. If the -text option is used in conjunction with the -delete option, the first header field whose name matches the component and whose body matches the text is deleted. The text is treated as if it was a file name; if it begins with a slash, the entire field body must match the text, otherwise just the last path name component of the field body must match. If the -number option is used in conjuction with the -delete option, header field num whose name matches the component is deleted. The number matches that which is produced by the -list option. The special value all can be used for the number, and causes all components that match the name to be deleted.

By default, anno changes the last-accessed and last-modified times on annotate messages to the time at which the annotation occurs. Anno preserves the original times if the -preserve option is used. A matching -nopreserve option exists that allows time preservation to be turned off if enabled in the profile.