Everyone’s talking about it, so why not join in? Mail Act-on is everyone’s plug-in of the moment. Reviews on 43 Folders, MacOSXHints, About.com, Amit Gupta’s Blog and MacWorld rave about the time it saves and the neatness it brings to your inbox.
Mail Act-on is a plug-in that allows you to create rules, which at the press of a keystroke move emails out of your inbox into any folder that you set. It’s amazingly flexible. Any action you can set in an Apple Mail rule, you can get this thing to do – moving, copying, setting the colour of the subject line, the list goes on and on. Hit a configurable “hot-key” (set to “`” by default) and a list of your rules pops up. Hit the relevant key and the highlighted message has gone to its new home.
Some reviewers recommend combining its use with a “Respond-Action-Hold-Waiting-Archive” schema of folders for sorting mail and getting über-efficient. That’s not for me. I soon forget about the emails I moved into the Action folder, or worry about which of the folders a particular email should be in. But even without this extra step, my inbox is smaller and I deal with things faster.
Mail Act-on is free, although the creator, Scott Morrison, accepts donations. You can download it from his web site.
[...] 1. Create a Smart Mailbox with everything in your inbox and outbox. (Assuming you don’t clean out your inbox into an ordered archive with Mail Act-on). Select “Organize by thread” from the View menu, and – hey presto – conversations, ordered by subject! [...]
[...] « Mail Act-on – Getting sorted, saving time. Onyx now cleans your Mail folder » [...]
[...] MailTags was released today by Scott Morrison, the same developer who brought Mail Act-on to Apple Mail. And the new plug-in is just as good. What Act-on does for sorting, MailTags does for email management. After you install it, a small tag appears in the top right-hand corner of your emails. Clicking on that opens a pane to the right of the message with a number of options (as you can see in the screenshot). You can specify due dates for any tasks the email might contain, give the email a priority level or add comments. You can also add it to a list of current projects that you can specify in Mail’s Preferences Pane. Also, you can make a donation for the software via PayPal (the developer suggests around $20). The tags are fully searchable in Spotlight and Mail. You can make smart folders based on the tags, and you can integrate them with Act-on’s rules. You could, for example, create a smart folder based on the ‘due date’ tag that contained all the emails which require a response from you within the next three days. [...]
[...] After blogging this, I occurs to me that you can also do the same thing with Mail Act-on, creating a rule with a keyboard shortcut that colours the selected email. [...]
[...] Using Mail Act-on and MailTags I set up a “Getting things done”-esque Inbox after the jump. If you need to be more efficient, spend some time checking it out. [...]
[...] He likes the integration of Spotlight, although wishes he could perform more complicated searches. He likes Mail.app’s rules. He misses labels, but could get them back using MailTags and Mail Act-on. His account of the reasons why other clients fall a little short is a good read. [...]
[...] I don’t have a secretary. In my earlier postings on trying to run GTD in Apple Mail, I simply created a mailbox that I called a ‘Tickler file’ in which Mail Act-on dumped all my “deferred” things, but I had to remember to sort them through manually at the start of every week. But no more! [...]
[...] Set up rules in Mail Act-on that will colourise the background of emails in Mail.app on the fly with a keystroke conbination. This is what I do, also setting a MailTags keyword which tells my smartmailboxes what to display. [...]
[...] Mail Act-on. Sorting emails on the fly with user-defined rules. [...]
[...] The end result seems complicated to me and hard work, but it is interesting to see Thunderbird users groping after the functionality that Mail.app users can easily enjoy through MailTags and Mail Act-on. Technorati Tags: Thunderbird, Gmail, Mail.app [...]
[...] This script was written before Mail Act-on existed. Along with Jonathan Nathan’s MailMover, it provides a slightly more laborious and involved alternative. [...]
[...] Designed to be run via a Mail.app rule or through Mail Act-on, it will need a little bit of obvious tweaking if you plan to use it yourself. [...]
[...] A poster in the kGTD discussion forum has written an AppleScript that will transfer the body of email into kGTD’s Inbox using a Mail Act-on rule. [...]
Email Management…
I’m a user of Apple’s Mail application, but not a super-heavy user. Generally, it will be a handful of emails from coworkers in addition to a large number of messages from mailing lists to which I’m subscribed (some internal company …
[...] Scott Morrison has released an updated version of Mail Act-On, a plugin that quickly files and flags Mail.app messages. [...]
[...] These tips can save you time as you learn to move around without the need for a mouse. You can save yourself more scrolling and dragging and dropping by using Mail Act-on to file emails with a keyboard shortcut. [...]
[...] Brian Fling has written up a terrific post on using MailTags and Mail Act-on to stay on top of your email. [...]
Great article, very helpful. Also: it’s not the only one on the site – good stuff Hawk Wings !
[...] She’s decided to try stemming the flow with Mail.app and MailTags and Mail Act-on , two of the very best plugins for Apple Mail. [...]
[...] I’m in two minds. Whether or not this is useful for you will depend on your workflow. Mail Act-on rules for filing can be executed with a single keystroke. They are much faster than this. But I have pretty much abandoned folders. “One archive to rule them all and let Spotlight (and MailTags) sort ‘em out” is now my motto. Mail Act-on is the faster filing solution for people like me. [...]
Will your system work with pc’s?? I want to move my OUTLOOK EXPRESS inbox and sent items email files to my external hard drive so I can delete all this from my “c” hard drive and speed up my computer.
Help!!
Bruce, sadly the email client on which this site is focussed only runs on Mac OS X, that is, on Apple computers.
I’m afraid I have no idea how to advise you, but, Good luck!
[...] Mail Act-on – Getting sorted, saving time [...]
[...] ago I blogged about the mail add-on site Hawk Wing, well I have now been using one app, called Mail Act-on its an ausom application that adds function to the mail program, and I for one like it. I got it [...]