Hmmm…. Late to the party on this one, but still worth posting.

Derek Punsalan has posted a comprehensive guide to getting Gmail’s new IMAP service, Apple Mail and the iPhone’s Mail.app working together in perfect harmony.

He explains how to mail the special folders in Mail.app (Sent, Draft, Trash) to the correct ones in your Gmail account, and then how to match them in the Gmail account on your iPhone.

He also provides a summary of several clever tips that were left in the 212 comments to the post, including how to use Gmail without all the Gmail folder hierarchy, and how Mail.app flags and Gmail stars are the same thing.

Curiously, he doesn’t mention a tip for email hoarders. If you like to keep everything, select Gmail’s all mail folder and under Mail.app’s Mailbox > Use this mailbox for… menu option, select Trash.

Then your delete key becomes a quick archive shortcut.

Of course, there are many reasons why this might be a bad idea — See an earlier Hawk Wings post on Why the delete key is your best friend.

[Via just about everyone]

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GrowlMail, the Mail-specific notification bundle for Growl doesn’t work under Leopard, although the next version (1.1.3) will work. If you are missing it and can’t wait, this applescript workaround will help.

Kevin Way posted an AppleScript on his web site two months ago that can be attached to a Mail.app rule.

It passes notifications of new messages directly to Growl, and since it is rule-activated, you can use conditions to make it tell you only about emails from particular people. Of course, you could also set it to match on particular words in the subject of the mail, or only for emails from a particular account, or for whatever other condition you set in the rule.

I found that the latest beta of MailTags stopped me creating a rule with an applescript attached, but uninstalling it, creating the rule and then loading MailTags again seems to work fine.

The end result is a nice Growl alert:

A thread on the Growl forum contains more tips and tricks for tweaking the script.

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Several Hawk Wings readers have asked if the very successful trick of speeding up Mail.app by “vacuuming” the Envelope Index still works in Leopard.

I figured that there was only one way to find out.

I have no knowledge at all of SQL or the technical aspects of the management of data in relational database systems, and my post should be read in that light. However, I also have no fear, because I have backups.

So, as a lack of fear naturally produces recklessness, I decided to use the biggest weapon in the arsenal first. I quit Mail, made a copy of the Envelope Index file in my ~/Library/Mail folder by dragging it to the Desktop. Then I deleted the original in my Mail folder and started up Mail again.

It imported all the messages (with several heart-stopping pauses) and things looked good. The Envelope Index file was reduced from 37.4MB to 24.8MB.

However, doing it this way had two unpleasant side-effects, one of which I expected and one not. Mail then wants to re-cache all your IMAP messages and attachments. Even with ADSL2+ this takes a long time.

Secondly, the rebuilding somehow “broke” the syncing of to-dos between Mail and iCal. Mail told me that they were out of sync and asked if I preferred the list from Mail.app or from iCal. With iCal syncing in its current unworkable state, this lead to many opportunities for contemplating the spinning rainbow-coloured mandala of karmic retribution.

But eventually all was well, and Mail did feel faster. Then I tried with the Terminal commands. This was faster and resulted in a further small reduction. But it broke the to-do syncing as well.

Rumours suggest that the 10.5.1 update has already been released to developers for testing, and that it will fix many of the things which currently afflict users of minor, peripheral apps like Mail and iCal, including the stability of syncing. Perhaps it would be smart to wait until 10.5.1 is out and then try this.

In the meantime, I hope that someone smarter than me will tell me why this breaks the syncing of to-dos. Just for curiosity’s sake.

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Like many people, Max Shafiq is looking on the Apple Discussion forums for a way to import Tiger Mail messages into Leopard Mail.

Another post in the same thread notes some of the ways not to do it:

I have the same problem Max. I’ve tried importing mailboxes (from the file menu), and also dragging the old Mail folders to the new Mac’s Library… both attempts only partially successful, with most mail missing completely.

Actually, the answer is fairly simple. Just follow the method in this previous Hawk Wings’ post on importing emlx messages into Tiger Mail. Nothing’s changed.

It involves quitting Mail, making a backup, creating a new Mailbox in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder, copying in the individual emlx files (that is, the messages) you want to import, restarting Mail, selecting the new mailbox which will appear in the list of mailboxes “On my Mac” and rebuilding it. Voilà! The messages appear, with timestamps and everything else nicely preserved.

Piece of cake.

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When Tiger came out, some people noticed right away that Mail.app no longer allowed itself to be launched in a hidden state. An AppleScript fixed the problem in 10.4, but it doesn’t work in Leopard.

Martin Patfield has created a fix for Leopard users who want to launch Mail but not see it.

Installing the app is easy, and follows the same procedure as the old Tiger fix. First you need to download it, and install it somewhere on your hard drive (in the Applications folder perhaps).

Open System Preferences and navigate to the Login Items tab of the Accounts Preference pane. Select the “Plus” button underneath the list:

Navigate to wherever you saved the “Launch and Hide Mail.app” app and add it:

There’s only one problem. It doesn’t work. It launches Mail.app alright, but doesn’t hide it. At least, for me it doesn’t, although you may have better luck. I noticed that 98 people have downloaded it from MacUpdate and no one else has complained.

Try it out for yourself. It’s freeware (donations not refused!).

UPDATE: The developer has just sent me a tweaked copy of the app. Now it works! The entry on MacUpdate now points to the updated file.

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I would rather cut my own heart out with a teaspoon than use Leopard Mail’s HTML stationery.

But I know not everyone shares my view.

If you are a lover of this kind of thing, Josh Pigford at The Apple Blog has a long and detailed post on how to edit or create your own stationery for use with Leopard Mail.

He explains where the HTML files are stored within Mail’s package and how to get at them, as well as what files are required if you are working up a new template from scratch.

He even provides some “walkthrough” files to act as a pattern for your own creations.

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