Comments on: Make your own Apple Mail shortcuts

By: t0d0r

t0d0r — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:23:14 +0000

Do you have idea how I can set shortcut for “Message -> Move to -> custom email folder”

By: Aaron Marks

Aaron Marks — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:49:34 +0000

Tried to get clever and use a Command symbol, but it came out as ? instead. Oh well.

By: Aaron Marks

Aaron Marks — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:48:34 +0000

Thanks so much!! That’s a brilliant tip.

As you mentioned, the default keyboard shortcut to send a message is ?-Shift-D. This is possibly one of the worst annoying-little-blunders I’ve found in OS X.

In the finder, I use that shortcut ALL THE TIME. It goes to your desktop. Lets say I’m in the middle of composing a critical message to my boss. Normally, when I want to attach a file, I can click over to the finder, hit ?-Shift-D to get to my desktop, and then drag it in. If I should happen to miss when switching over to the finder, and then hit ?-Shift-D, I just sent an unfinished email to my boss!

Thanks for your tip. I decided to use ?-Return, which I believe is the default command that my fingers remember from my Entourage days.

By: ph

ph — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:12:06 +0000

It appears that if you want to replace an existing shortcut “x” with a key combination “y” that is assigned elsewhere, you must also explicitly replace “y” before your new “x” will appear. If you don’t it just removes the default assignment for “x.” (OS X 10.4.11, Mail 2.1.3)

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 01:49:02 +0000

I tried to put a “Add Hyperlink…” keyboard shortcut but it doesn’t seem to work. I used command-shift-H. I tried using command-option-H but that’s assigned to hiding all applications except for the current one. I typed Add Hyperlink… exactly but no go. Using Tiger by the way.

By: Michael Neale

Michael Neale — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:34:41 +0000

Ah, Tim, that’s more like it! MsgFiler is a nice package. Apple-9 foldername enter enter is *much* faster than using the mouse.

With some modifications, it ought to be able to ‘learn’ where messages are likely to be filed, so that it would suggest the likely folder to go to without the user having to type in the foldername.

Many thanks, to you & the developers of msgfiler.

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:22:02 +0000

@Michael: Just released — MsgFiler

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:51:25 +0000

Hmmmm….. Not really. There is an extension for Thunderbird that does what you describe, but nothing exactly like that for Mail.app.

I use Mail Act-on for my keystroke-savvy filing, but I don’t have a thousand folders.

By: Michael Neale

Michael Neale — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:46:29 +0000

I would like to recreate the pine shortcut for saving messages which saves me an enormous amount of time. If I press the save key, I am prompted for a folder to which the messages should be saved. When the sender is in my addressbook, the default folder name is the same as the nickname of the sender. Otherwise it is ’saved-messages’. Now, since I have folders corresponding to nicknames, the entire save message to folder typically only takes s followed by the return key. What with 100’s of emails a day (and over 1000 folders - I have been emailing for over 20 years), this feature is essential for keeping my inbox in a reasonable state.

Any ideas how to implement the automatic folder-name prompting in response to a single key press?

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 03:39:00 +0000

Paul — I don’t think that there is a way to do this. It only works with the default, “hardcoded” mailboxes.

But I would be very pleased to be proved wrong.