1. Automatically mark emails needing a reply: A poster on macOSXHints describes how to set up a rule that will automatically mark incoming emails requesting a reply. Easily adaptable to other uses.
2. Catch image spam: A new brand of image-based spam can outfox Mail.app’s junk filter. Luckily, an easy-to-construct rule will stop it in its tracks again.
3. Remotely schedule torrent downloads: Matt Comi shows you how to construct a rule that will automatically strip out a torrent that you email to yourself and pass it to Azureus to begin the download. Bittorrenting from work without guilt or fear!
4. Control your home Mac remotely: Attached to a mail.app rule, this applescript can automate a select number of tasks when prompted by emails with the right keywords. A couple of apps make this even easier to set up.
5. AppleScripted Auto-replies: Michelle Steiner has written an applescript that will generate auto-replies when attached to a Mail.app rule. Macresponder does the same thing with more options but costs money.

mail.app, apple mail. tips, applescript, rules, remote control, spam, reply, productivity, torrent

Ashish Gulhati, CEO of email service provider Neomailbox , decided to dump Mail and give Thunderbird another try.

At first glance, he was impressed with the improvements since he last used it twelve months ago.

He even got inspired enough to list Thunderbird’s pros and cons. In short, he concluded, the Mozilla client “sure seemed to surpass Mail.app in terms of bleeding edge features.”

Then the rot set in and Thunderbird’s charms began to fade:

OK, so Thunderbird managed to delete a lot of my recent mail. Luckily, Mail.app had cached a copy of most of the messages. I’m also quite sick of Thunderbird’s frequent crashes, horrible search, flaky filters, and general instability. I’m switching back to Mail.app!

Sure, Thunderbird has all the bleeding edge bells and whistles, but none of the features work trouble-free, not even basic, core functionality. In the final analysis a mail program that works reliably at what it does is way more useful than one which has all the latest features, but nothing works.

Like the hare and the tortoise, Thunderbird streaks ahead in the comparison shootout at first, but slow and steady wins the race:

In the final analysis Apple’s Mail.app is still probably the most reliable, responsive, usable and full-featured email program available for OS X, or any platform for that matter.

mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, email in general, pros and cons, happy users, unhappy users

GTDGMail is a Firefox extension that provides an excellent “Getting Things Done” (GTD) framework for Gmail. It also adds advanced search abilities in Gmail, which are very welcome whether you are into GTD or not.

If it had existed when I was compiling a list of ten GTD apps for Mac users, it would have come in near the top of the list. It’s a very clever stretch of Gmail’s existing label and filter features.

GTDGmail is very easy to install. Simply navigate to the site, click on the install link and follow the prompts in Firefox. A quick relaunch, load Gmail and you are good to go.

The extension comes with “wizards” to install common labels for contexts, actions and projects. Detailed instructions make it easy to create your own additional ones.

Access to the GTD labels is provided at the top of each Gmail message:

The inbox helpfully displays those labels at the start of the message’s subject line (some of my labels are coloured by the Gmail Label Colors Greasemonkey script — I like visual clues):

Additional tweaks offer easy emailing of tasks and references to yourself.

One other feature of the extension will please Gmail users even if they are not interested in the GTD approach. The GTD search function allows you to construct complex searches in Gmail much faster than you can manually:

Once you needed to enter the string “label:freelance label:Hawk-Wings after:17/8/2006″ into Gmail’s search box. Now it is just a matter of a few mouse clicks.

GTDGmail is freeware and well-supported with documentation, tips and hints on the developer’s web site.GTD, getting things done, firefox, gmail, productivity, extension, email in general

My RSS reader NetNewsWire served up a tragic Apple Mail story today.

A poster on the macOSXHints forums had a very bad day :

So I was having trouble with one of my POP3 accounts in Mail.app. It was locking up when receiving the last message. It’s safe to say that this problem is already fixed.

In the process of fixing it I decided to remove the account and re-add it (a common solution in MS Outlook). When I deleted the account I did not realize that it also deletes the folder with all your messages in it with out noticing me! So I lost all of my email in that folder (stupid me didn’t have a backup of that box). Is there anyway to get it back? I tried using Data Rescue X but it pretty much just recovered files that were already there (unless I am using it wrong).

Please help! Thank you!

The sad thing is that there is no help. When you delete a POP account in Mail.app, it doesn’t just delete the settings. It deletes the lot. Gone.

Of course, it’s not helpful after the fact to point out that Mail warns you first:

Or that you should have a backup.

Or that MS Outlook is an unreliable guide for life as a whole.

Or that IMAP is an email protocol with many advantages.

Still, it’s not after the fact for most readers here (yet).mail.app, apple mail, backup, POP, IMAP, disaster, data loss

Email Backup, a simple and easy-to-use email backup utility that I posted about just last week, has been updated, adding support for Thunderbird and Eudora.

The app can now do backups for all the major Mac email clients, which can be selected from the main interface:

It’s not an ideal solution. Restoring one of its backups has to be done manually. It doesn’t back up some of the things that I think are essential for Mail.app.

But it’s a lot better than nothing. And it’s free.

Email Backup is available from the developer’s web site .backup, apple mail, mail.app, entourage, files, schedule, better safe than sorry, Thunderbird, Eudora

Andreas Amann has produced an update to Mail Scripts, his excellent collection of AppleScripts for Mail.app.

Four scripts have been improved.

The “Remove Duplicates” script is now faster with smarter initial scanning of message IDs. It also properly identifies duplicates with message IS headers spanning two lines of containing an asterisk.

The “Archive Messages” script now handles exporting to RTF better.

The “Add Addresses” script will now scan the Reply-To header and add anything found there to the list of addresses which can be added to Address Book.

Lastly, the “Export Addresses” script now uses a semi-colon rather an a comma as the line separator when exporting to a comma-separated file.

Mail Scripts is freeware (donations not turned away) and is available from Andreas’s web site .mail scripts, applescript, remove duplicates, add addresses, address book, archive messages

A poster on macOSXHints offers a simple script that will create a new message in Mail.app and insert a random “quote of the day” from www.codingtheweb.com’s web service.

Although a comment on the site suggests that it doesn’t work, it worked fine for me.

Compile the script in Mac OS X’s script editor, editing it to add your own sig info if so desired and save it off into your ~/Library/Scripts folder.

When you open your script menu in the menubar (I’m using the excellent FastScripts Lite in this screenshot), it’s there waiting for you:

Run it and the new message appears complete with quote:

Very nice if you like that sort of thing.signatures, random, applescript, mail.app, apple mail, tips