Extensions now exist which offer Thunderbird users some of the rich extra functions provided by Mail.app plugins. Paolo Koasmos has written a collection of excellent extensions and Paul Tomlin’s Quick File gets close to the filing magic offered by Mail Act-on.

Paulo’s AttachmentRemember will catch messages to which you have forgotten to add attachments just like James Eagan’s missing attachments plugin.

Quick file by Paul Tomlin gives filing a tremendous speed boost over the “old drag ‘n’ drop”.

Select a message, hit a user-customizable hotkey (⌃Q works for me), and a dialog appears. Start to type and it offers a list of matching mailboxes that you can navigate through using the arrow keys. It’s quick.

Lastly, Paulo’s ExternalTemplateLoader brings MailTemplate to Thunderbird. It loads an external HTML file as the template for a message or a reply.

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James Eagan has updated his AttachmentScanner plugin to make it a universal binary.

This is a clever little plugin for Mail.app which prevents absent-minded people like me from sending emails without first including the attachments they should contain.

As he explains on his site , the universal version is enormous (7.3MB) because it includes a full universal version of Python.

In addition, the plugin now attempts to use the language set in the Spell Checker rather than the default System language. So, if your System language is set to English but your Spell Checker is set to Spanish, it will use the latter to determine if an attachment is present or not.

You can get the plugin (PPC, universal or source code) from his web site .

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A poster on macOSXHints has pointed out a super-quick way to save attachments in a Mail.app message.

As everyone knows, you can save attachments by dragging them from the message window to the Desktop or by using the “Save” button at the top of the message.

But there is a faster, smarter way, especially for messages with multiple attachments.

All you need to do is drag the actual paper clip icon to the Desktop:

This saves out all the attachments in one hit.

Another triumph for users in the face of Apple Mail’s many under-documented features.

[Thanks, Leonardo]

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James Eagan has updated his Attachment Scanner plugin for Mail.app, which checks messages for attachments, and when it decides one is missing, give you a warning before you send.

With the help of several translators, it will now scan for attachments in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish.

The plugin is freeware and you can get the updated version from James’ web site .

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A post on macOSXHints reveals a tip that was news to me.

If you want to forward selected attachments in an email you have received, highlight them, click Forward (or Command-Shift-F) and a new message appears containing only the attachments you have selected.

Of course, this is just an extension of the standard behaviour with selected text. Blocking a selection of text in an mail and then starting a forwarded message (or a reply for that matter), opens a new message containing only that selected text.

Still, I had never thought of applying it to attachments. Nice one.

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I had occasion at work today to be very grateful for TNEF’s Enough, a utility that decodes those annoying winmail.dat files which Exchange Server users send you when you are marked in their contacts as someone who accepts messages in RTF.

You know the kind of situation. The information that you need for a meeting arrives by email 15 minutes before the meeting starts. Bad enough.

To add to the drama, it is all crammed inside one of those winmail.dat files that Mail can’t process. The Registrar with whom you are meeting is a die-hard PC fan. He thinks that Mac computers are just glorified iPods. He’s gagging for me to come in and say I can’t get at the stuff on my MacBook Pro. It becomes a point of honour.

Thankfully, TNEF’s Enough handles these files very well. Save off the winmail.dat file, open it in Enough and there are your attachments, readable once more.

It’s like magic. You can get TNEF’s Enough from the developer’s web site . Who would be without it?

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