There are two main ways you can customize MacWoof. The first is through the Configure… Preferences… submenu on the File menu:
 
The first item, AutoSort Incoming Messages defaults to On and sorts incoming messages by date sent, oldest first. This is very useful in less active areas, but in more active areas with messages coming in from a variety of directions, unread messages get intermixed with messages you have already read.
The second item automatically opens the Subjects window whenever you open an area. It defaults to Off, since maintaining the Subjects window slows down MacWoof. Whether you use the Subjects Window or not is a question of personal style.
The third item makes MacWoof automatically create a new area whenever you receive messages for an area you have not created. This one defaults to On.
The next one shows Control-A "kludge" lines in messages, and defaults to Off. These lines are used to diagnose routing problems, primarily in EchoMail.
Next, the Create Session Log checkbox, if selected, tells MacWoof to record what happens during a session to a text file.
The next item tells MacWoof to always use MacBinary encoding for all files you “Attach” (send). The default is to use Smart MacBinary which knows not to use MacBinary for TEXT and GIFf (.GIF) files.
The next check box is used to tell MacWoof not to attempt to “unARC” incoming mail bundles. This is useful if you are using a separate compression program, such as unZip, to unpack your mail.
The final check box causes MacWoof to "bark" once a session is complete, even if MacWoof is the "frontmost" window. (MacWoof normally barks when a session ends and it is in the background.)
The last item in the dialog is a Edit Text field that let's you specify the Creator type for most of the TEXT files that MacWoof creates or saves.
Area Info:
The second way to customize MacWoof is through the Area Info dialog. Choose Area Info… from the Areas menu. This way you can set behaviors by area, including creating a custom origin line for a particular area and setting auto-purge parameters by area. If auto-purge is on, MacWoof will automatically purge old messages just before it receives a new batch of messages.
 
The area name is shown at the top of the dialog. Below this is an editable text box that lets you specify an origin line that will appear only on messages created in this area. A new feature introduced in version 1.5.1 lets you add a "Postmark" to be placed at the top of each message you quote. You can customize this message using any of the following special strings:
%date - The date of the message you are quoting
%time - The time of the message you are quoting
%subject - The subject of the original message
%from - The name of who the message was from
%to - The name of the person the message was addressed to
%fromabv - The initials of who the message was from
%toabv - The initials of the person the message was addressed to
Note that case is significant! As is, of course spelling.
Below that is a checkbox that allows you to turn on automatic purging of old messages prior to importing new messages into this area. This is useful for keeping the size of heavily trafficked areas reasonable. You can set the appropriate value in the text fields below.
The final checkbox allows you to designate that this area is a "GroupMail" area. See the section on GroupMail for more details.
