At the end of the day, some people just like having things organised neatly into instantly recognisable piles.

For them Doug Hellman has produced an applescript that automates the process of archiving emails by year and month.

As he says on his web site, “Each time it processes a message, it automatically maintains a folder hierarchy based on the parent, year, and month”. Doug also provides instructions on setting it up to work with a Mail Act-on rule.

The script has recently been updated.

In version 1.2 he has updated the scripts,

to make them more reliable as mail rule actions by using the perform_mail_action hook and taking the selection from the info passed in instead of asking Mail for the current selection.

I don’t know what this means, but it impresses the hell out of me. mail.app, apple mail, applescript, archiving, filing, sorting, folders, month, year, tipsSimilar Posts:

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He suggests that it could be used to configure a folder that shoots off any file dragged into it to someone you frequently send files to.

Another option is to configure a Folder Action so that any file dragged onto a particular folder is automatically send to your Gmail address for archiving.

Other possibilities are not hard to imagine — emailing photos to your Backpack account or whatever.

One screencast shows the Folder Action at work , as Murphy emails some iPhone graphics (very topical) to his Gmail account.

After the Folder Action is set up, all you have to do is drag the file over the enabled folder:

Enter a subject line when prompted, and whoosh!–Mail.app sends off the file–which arrives at Gmail, ready for archiving and storage:

A second screencast describes how to edit the applescript he provides so that this will work for you:

It’s a clever solution for people who are always emailing attachments to particular people or who are looking for a simple way to archive files online. mail.app, apple mail, gmail, finder, folder actions, applescript, archiving, storage, productivity, tips, googleSimilar Posts:

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Although some other email clients do this (I have a vague memory that Outlook used to ask me about this from time to time), Mail doesn’t.

The only solution I could think of revolved around creating a repeating event in iCal, say once a month, and setting it to run the Archive script from Andreas Amann’s Mail scripts which can export messages in standard mbox format.

But that’s not very automated. You still need to select the mailboxes to export and other bits and pieces.

I asked Andreas Amann who is gobsmackingly clever with AppleScript why this isn’t easier to achieve. He tells me:

The problem is that AppleScript Studio applications themselves are not scriptable so they don’t lend themselves to be run without user interaction. Since my archive script needs the user to select which mailboxes to archive as well as some options for the archive, this won’t work.

Another solution would be to create a rule and then apply that to selected message. However, since you can’t run rules via AppleScript either, this won’t work in an automated, non-interactive way either.

I guess people will have to look at some of the commercial offerings for this (I don’t know whether they support automated or timed archiving though…)

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While EagleFiler is a powerful, fully-featured information manager, it offers more flexible tagging and annotation options than other apps. Also, although it uses a Core Data SQL database to track your files, it stores them in an “open format” library or Finder folder, just like iPhoto or iTunes. This will not only please open format advocates, but allows other apps to access the data easily and makes backups much more efficient.

The interface has the much admired three-pane Mail-like look (just like Yojimbo and SOHO Notes):

It provides numerous ways for importing or capturing the information you want to store. A system-wide capture key (F1 by default) allows you snag info (EagleFiler handles emails from all the major email clients, web pages, PDFs, word processing files, iChat logs, audio files and more – see the full list ) without interrupting your workflow, although files can also be dragged to the Dock icon, interface or dedicated “Drop Pad”.

Integration with Growl is a nice touch, providing notification of successful capture without the need to switch apps and check.

Mail can’t (yet) be imported directly from IMAP accounts, but has to be moved to a local folder first. Michael says that he hopes to overcome this limitation in later releases.

To make up for that, MailTags users will be delighted to hear that EagleFiler will import its tags along with the emails. Nifty!

It also provides flexible ways of organising your data. Hierarchical folders and labels allow “folder-lovers” every opportunity to indulge; it even supports multiple libraries for the ultimate in data separation.

“Archivers” will value the ability to find things in one huge folder through the app’s Search function which supports Boolean or phrase searches.

Tag support is something that Yojimbo and SOHO Notes don’t provide. In EagleFiler you can tag each items with as many tags as you want.

A tag pane allows you to add, customise and add color to your tags.

You can also set a character or symbol for each tag, which shows up in the app’s main viewer.

Tags are also displayed in the folder list on the left, so that it is easy quickly to find all the items with a particular tag.

Further options for labelling, naming and tagging are provided by an Inspector window.

You can enter tags in a field obscured in the screenshot by the drop-down menu for the labels (which are Finder labels and can be edited in Finder’s Preferences pane).

People who feel constricted by Yojimbo’s lack of support for hierarchical folders or restricted meta-data options will love the flexibility EagleFiler offers without the need to switch to SOHO Notes’ OpenBase database engine.

EagleFiler’s preferences are minimal and mainly control the look of the interface.

You can also customise the capture key here.

EagleFiler also pitches itself as an archiver for Mail.app and other email clients.

Michael suggests:

Most e-mail programs are designed for communicating with your mail server and letting you read and write messages—not for storing all your old mail. By cleaning out your mail program’s database, you can remove some clutter from its mailbox list and speed it up. But cleaning it out doesn’t have to mean lots of time wasted trying to predict which messages you might need in the future. Disk space is plentiful—just archive all your old mail into EagleFiler. Later, you’ll be able to find what you need with a quick search. Meanwhile, the archived messages will no longer be slowing down Spotlight searches of your files and current messages.

I was very impressed. It is more flexible than Yojimbo. Its open format makes it more attractive than SOHO Notes. EagleFiler doesn’t have the full range of extra features — syncing, blogging support, full-screen option, alarms, etc — that SOHO Notes provides. That’s a pleasing lack of feature bloat for me. YMMV.

EagleFiler is shareware (USD 40) and a 30 day free demo is available from Michael’s web site .productivity, archiving, pim, yojimbo, soho notes, personal information manager, tagging, open format, michael tsaiSimilar Posts:

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It went quite well, but didn’t completely satisfy:

I had to bump the date up by 200 years because Mail.app refuses to properly sort nineteenth century email. I consider this a bug.

He plans to set up an IMAP server to store this kind of information as emails. And he is looking for good sources of material.mail.app, apple mail, pushkin, literature, archiving, searching, sorting

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An updated version released today upgrades the database engine to SQLite 3.3.5.

You can also set and/or buttons for searching more easily, delete attachments and set a default font.

It has also resolved a small problem in importing MailTags.

MailSteward is fifteen US dollars more expensive than Mail Archiver X, but about half the price of FastMailBase.

Which one is the best? Mail Archiver X offers cleaning, MailSteward offers more sophisticated searching as you can see below:

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That means it will recognize and import your metadata along with your messages and allow you to search with it by category, keywords, notes and/or priority. You can also add new tags to the archived messages. Nifty!

The new version also offers searching of HTML emails with no plain text, editing of MailSteward-generated SQL statements and other minor bug fixes and enhancements.

The interface has also been reworked and looks cleaner.

All of this archiving goodness comes with a price hike though. MailSteward now costs 49.95. A demo is available from the developer’s web site .mailtags, email, archiving, backup, searching, plugins, html, metadataSimilar Posts:

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Version 1.5b4 features a new icon and interface. The new interface has been simplified and beautified and the odd floating window of previous versions is gone.

It offers full support for Mail 2.0 and Filemaker 8. The attachments are now saved to the archive and the app boasts better MIME handling overall.

Mail Archiver X’s main competitors in the archiving stakes are MailSteward and FastMailBase.

In contrast to these, Mail Archiver X promotes itself as “the only mail archival application, which also offers cleaning of mails”. This means the ability to strip HTML, control tags and various other characters out of your emails, so that only clean copies of the useful material are retained:

Mail Archiver X is shareware (USD 34.95), fifteen dollars cheaper than Mail Steward (USD 49.95). FastMailBase is about twice the cost of Mail Steward (USD 97).

Which one is the best? MailSteward offers more sophisticated searching. Mail Archiver X offers cleaning. It depends on you and what you want from an archiving app.

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Of course, Safari users can do this manually by pressing Command-I, which sends the contents of a web page to a new Mail.app message, filling in their own email address and then sending the email.

This is much quicker and cleaner.

After registration, you are offered a bookmarklet to drag and drop into the Bookmarks Bar of your browser (I use Safari):

One click on this bookmarklet and the page you are looking at is emailed to your inbox:

There’s nothing else to do.

This may appeal especially to people who use Mail.app as an Information mananger, allowing for the quick and painless archiving of web pages.

The privacy policy of the service, which is run by the Japanese RSS management company Sidefeed looks OK to me:

About disclosing your personal information

We will not sell, rent or lease your personal information to any other third party.
We will disclose your personal information to outside third parties only when one or any of the following conditions are met.

When we have your consent to share the information.
To process and fulfill your order or notify you of order status.
When it’s necessary for us to observe the law.
When it’s necessary to protect and defend your rights or property.
When it’s based on the statistical purposes without any information that could be used to link that information to you.
We reserve the right to disclose any and all pertinent customer information to law enforcement or other government officials as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate.

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MailSteward 6.0 has a redesigned storage process which parses and stores your email simultaneously rather than in two stages. It will now show you which message is being processed and allow you to stop and restart the archiving process at any stage.

The new version also offers the ability to hide, bring to front, stop, or quit the app during processing and will display a list of invalid email files after the Store operation.

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