«
»

Roll your own templates in Mail.app

mailapp100pxTemplates of frequently used messages can be a great time saver.

Although you can create them in Mail.app with MailTemplate or even TextExpander, there is a way to achieve the same thing without using any add-ons or extras.

  1. Create a new message and edit it to your heart’s content.
  2. Save it as a Draft (Command-S or File > Save as Draft)
  3. Drag the message from the “Drafts” folder to whatever folder/mailbox you like, possibly a new mailbox you have created and called “Templates”
  4. In order to create a new message based on a selected template, select the message in the “Templates” folder and select “Message > Send Again” from the Message menu (or hit Command-Shift-D to achieve the same thing).

[With thanks to Andreas Amann (developer of Mail Scripts and Eudora Mailbox Cleaner ) who taught me this on the Apple Discussion Boards today.]mail.app, apple mail, tips, templates, productivity

Similar Posts:

Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Monday, 12th June, 2006 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Apple Mail Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Roll your own templates in Mail.app”

  1. Glenn Samson says:
    June 13th, 2006 at 7:31 am

    Thanks for the tip. Templates are one of the few things I miss since transitioning to Mail from Eudora. This site seems to be a good place to ask the following question, with regards to templates:

    Any ideas how to add a “Reply with…” template solution to Mail similar to that found in Eudora?

  2. Tim says:
    June 13th, 2006 at 8:23 am

    Hmmm… Not really. I am a plain text man and store all my template-like text in TextExpander.

    Certainly MailTemplate lets you do this, but I am guessing that you are looking for a “native” solution.

    Perhaps Andreas will drop by. :)

  3. Andreas Amann says:
    June 13th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

    Perhaps Andreas will drop by. :)

    Sure thing ;-) After your reply on the discussion board I had to see whether you turned this into an entry…

    Any ideas how to add a “Reply with…” template solution to Mail similar to that found in Eudora?

    (Just back from testing what the “reply with template” thing in Eudora even does…)

    I don’t think that this is possible directly – the best solution for this is most probably to use a combination of “reply” and a TextPander macro as Tim suggests… Since I am very much of a keyboard person, a combination of keyboard shortcuts works the best for me.

    You could also use some third-party macro utility like iKey to combine all those actions (hitting “reply” in Mail and then pasting some text) into a single keyboard shortcut. But then, this would require some $$$ to be spent…

  4. Glenn Samson says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 8:37 am

    Thanks for the replies, everyone. Maybe Leopard will have such a thing ;-)

  5. benry says:
    June 14th, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    I find an easier way is to simply create a signature file for each template you want to have, then create a new message with that signature and send as needed.

  6. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Get your hands on Mail 3.0 now says:
    August 9th, 2006 at 9:11 am

    [...] To-dos (not system-wide) — MailTags Templates (not HTML) — Mail Templates, Roll your own Notes (not RTF) — Note to Self RSS feeds (in your Inbox) — FeedMailer, rmail [...]

  7. Patrick says:
    May 12th, 2007 at 12:13 am

    Thanks for this quick tip, really helped me out.

    Greetings

  8. matthew says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 3:40 am

    Ahh, saved my life. Thanks.

  9. Online Pharmacy Site says:
    September 7th, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    How Can You Treat Impotence…

    Here’s an overview of online pharmacies…

Leave a Reply