After switching to mail.app from Thunderbird, the blogger at 48-Hour Days found that that she (or he) couldn’t live without Thunderbird’s F8 keyboard shortcut for showing and hiding the Preview Pane.

As everyone knows, you can show or hide it in Apple Mail by double-clicking the small dot in the separator between the Mail Viewer and the Preview Pane — Apple’s Technote shows you how.

But if that is not quick enough for you, 48-Hour Days provides an applescript that will automate the process and which can be bound to a Quicksilver trigger or FastScript’s shortcut.

Only hardcore keyboard fanatics will want to use this, but there are people like that out there, and this post is for them.

Related posts

• AppleScript to view next unread message
• Weekly Roundup
• Two great Mail.app tips
• Thunderbird, Growl and Getting Things Done
• Thunderbird and Mail.app compared

Aral Balkan has written a clever applescript that makes it possible for mail.app to reply to multiple emails.

By default you can’t do this. If you select multiple emails in the Mail Viewer, the Reply and Reply All buttons in the Toolbar grey out.

Aral’s script, based on a previous example posted on macOSXHints.com, saves time and effort by giving you the power to respond to a bunch of emails about a similar problem in one hit; especially useful if you have been on an extended break at the beach and have returned to an inbox heaving with emails.

Copy the text of Aral’s script , paste it into Script Editor, compile it and save it somewhere clever like ~/Library/Scripts/ Applications/Mail so that it is always at the top of the AppleScript menu when Mail is the active app.

Then select all the emails you received about new cutting edge “Getting Things Done” (GTD) apps that knock every other previous GTD app into a cocked hat, or how frustrating it is that the background of emails in Mail.app can’t be changed or whatever, and run the script.

Mail produces a new message addressed to you with all the senders of the original emails in the BCC field:

Promise to check out all the new GTD apps right away, hit send and suddenly your inbox is fifteen emails smaller.

For extra-speedy multiple replies, you could bind the script to a Quicksilver trigger or use a utility like FastScripts to bind it to a keyboard shortcut of your choosing.

Related posts

• Thunderbird, Growl and Getting Things Done
• Three outgoing mail fixes for Mac users on the go
• Sorting mailbox order manually
• Scripts to automate the Mail.app Envelope speed trick
• Script to send a Yojimbo item with Mail.app

John Maisey has updated his AppleScript for deleting duplicates in iCal, so that it works with Leopard.

Syncing and sharing calendars often produces duplicates. Removing them manually is a pain. John’s script makes it easy.

When you run it, it will prompt you to select which of your calendars you want to clean up:

Then is does its business quietly in the background, popping the result when it is done:

One note of warning. It doesn’t offer you a second chance or an option to review the deletions. Once you select the calendar and tell it to clean up, that’s exactly what it does.

So, back up your calendar data first, using the File > Backup iCal menu option.

Delete iCal Duplicates is freeware (donations not refused) is available, along with some other interesting scripts for iCal and Address Book, from John’s web site .

Related posts

• iCal Dupe Deleter rips through iCal Duplicates with style
• iCal de-dupe: Kill iCal duplicates
• Schedule delayed to dos in iCal
• New MailTags Beta: Multiple to-dos and events
• MenuCalendarClock: Slick new to-do management features for Leopard

John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame has written up a detailed explanation of Leopard Mail’s new message: URL links, which allow you to link to individual email messages from other apps like Yojimbo and iCal.

He describes how the feature works, the various formats that Leopard accepts — message:%3cMESSAGE-ID%3e, message://%3cMESSAGE-ID%3e, message:<MESSAGE-ID>, message://<MESSAGE-ID> — and why message://%3cMESSAGE-ID%3e is the best of the bunch.

As he correctly points out there is no default menu option in Leopard Mail to access this feature. However MailTags users can find it under the Edit menu or use the keyboard shortcut ⌃⌥⌘U to copy the URL to the clipboard (in Mail.app’s default message:%3cMESSAGE-ID%3e format).

John also provides an applescript for copying the message: URL of a selected email to the clipboard in his preferred message://%3cMESSAGE-ID%3e format, which is recognised by any Cocoa-based app using NSTextView.

Read the whole post and get the applescript on Daring Fireball.

Related posts

• Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates
• Yojimbo 1.3: Tagging, hyperlinks and more
• YAI (Outlook meeting plugin) updated for Leopard
• Will Leopard Mail kill MailTags?
• WideMail 0.1.0: Real Widescreen Preview Column

Andreas Amann has pushed out two quick updates to his Mail Scripts applescript collection.

Now at version 2.8.2, changes include a fix to make the Schedule Delivery script work in 10.4 and 10.5, a workaround to fix a possible error in the Schedule Delivery and Send all Drafts scripts caused by the way Leopard Mail fails to report the account of draft message, and a smarter Export Addresses script, which is no longer stumped if a contact has no work address.

Mail Scripts is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Andreas’ web site .

Related posts

• Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates
• Plugin List update: 11 new entries
• Plugin and addon list updates
• Mail Scripts updated for Leopard
• How Mail sucks (again), TUAW-style

Just when I thought I had posted enough for today, Andreas Amann releases a updated, Leopard-friendly version of his most excellent Mail Scripts.

Mail Scripts is a collection of eleven applescripts, bundled up in a user-friendly installer, which will remove duplicate messages in Mail.app, create rules from a selected email faster, archive messages, change SMTP servers on the fly, schedule emails for delivery later and much, much more.

They are now compatible with Leopard, although Andreas adds a note of caution about two of the scripts:

When sending messages other than text/plain (i.e., HTML messages and messages with attachments) using either the “Send all Drafts” or “Schedule Delivery” scripts, Mail might fail to actually send the message and present a dialog telling that the message failed to be sent using the server “null” - re-selecting the correct SMTP server will cause the message to be sent as intended. This seems to be a bug in Mail with the application forgetting the correct SMTP server settings which hopefully will be fixed in a future system upgrade.

Mail Scripts is donation-ware and available from Andreas’ web site . No mail user should be without them.

Related posts

• Remotely control your Mac via AppleScript
• Plugin List adds 122 Leopard Mail Templates
• Mail Scripts gets even more leopardy
• How plugins turned an Entourage Girl into a Mail.app Fan
• You’re invited: Outlook meeting plugin for Mail