Linking emails in iCal: A tip to avoid
A poster on macOSXhints has posted an applescript 
that will provide a link to Mail.app messages in iCal to-dos and events.
Obviously, the concept is a good one, but in this case, it’s a tip to avoid. The main problem is the link will break as soon as an email is moved. Reindexing Spotlight may also break the link. Links to IMAP messages will break if you have to refresh your local mail cache.
So, all up, not so good.
If your email is IMAP, you are better off waiting for the next MailTags public beta which is plenty robust and creates reliable, move-proof hyperlinks back to your emails. (See more on this in Scott’s comment below).
If you’re a POP person, the next public beta of MailTags will work for you too. Or if you can’t wait, LinkABoo makes solid links for POP messages.
The developer is about to release a new beta of LinkABoo which has support for hyperlinking to IMAP email. I’m playing with it now, and it feels pretty solid.
Tags: Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, hyperlinks, iCal, mail.app, mailtags, ProductivityRelated posts
November 16th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
Just a note Tim,
Message:// url works with the current public beta — the only thing that is coming with the next pb is a contextual menu item that allows you to copy the message-id to the clipboard from Mail (If people really wanted to they could show raw message (or full headers) locate the message-id header, copy that and add the message:// protocol to the front of it when pasting it in.
Or, they can use flyboy’s applescript/python solution
that will grab the message id of the current selection and do the work for you putting the right thing on the clipboard.
Or they can wait for MailTags pb 4… due out by this time next week.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Thanks for clarifying that. I’m slowly getting my head around it ;-)