A tip on macOSXHints points out a short-cut for text entry in Address Book.

Pressing Option-Escape in a text field, opens an autocomplete dialogue with options from previously entered cards.

Like all these tips, it makes perfect sense when you think about, but who ever thinks about it?

For example, type the first two or three letters of the name, hit Option-Escape and then just choose from the options that appear:

This is especially useful with spouses or large numbers of employees from one company or those English Fotherington-Smythe cousins.

Unfortunately, Address Book Quick Entry (now my preferred faster way of entering contacts) isn’t as smart about this. Hitting Option-Escape here brings up a general autocomplete list rather than previous values from Address Book itself.

Related posts

• Yojimbo: Bare Bones’ new information manager
• Two tips to manage your email better
• Two Tips for Leopard’s Address Book
• Two steps forward, one step back: A switcher’s tale
• TextExpander: 20% Discount for Hawk Wings readers

macOSXHints returns from holidays with a simple but great tip.

You can delete an email permanently by pressing the keyboard shortcut for “Cut” — Command-X — when the message is highlighted in Apple Mail.

Makes sense when you think about it, but I’d never thought of it before. It also saves a second trip to the Trash to delete the messages again when you are spring cleaning.

Check it out; and read Rob’s cautionary footnote.

UPDATE: As David Chartier wisely points out on TUAW, bypassing the Trash like this mean that when the email is gone, it’s really gone.

However, if you realise you’ve done a stupid thing, the “paste” key (Command-V) will return the message from the clipboard to the mailbox, providing that you haven’t placed something else on the clipboard in the meantime. Whew!

Related posts

• Mail Act-on - Getting sorted, saving time
• Zoë: Google your email
• Zimbra iSync beta released
• Why Mail.app quotes the way it does
• Webmailer: Easily set webmail services as your default mailer

There are at least two tips floating around on the Internet at the moment, offering “faster” or “easier” ways for emailing a URL while browsing in Safari.

One is an Automator action, the other an AppleScript.

The Automator tip makes hard work of emailing a URL. It’s clever, but it seems to add nothing new. The keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-I in Safari will create a new email with the URL in Mail.app.

If you must use a mouse, dragging the URL from Safari’s address bar onto the Apple Mail icon in the Dock does the same thing.

The AppleScript tip is clever too, but doesn’t seem to add anything either. By the time you have called the script, you could have typed the “Check this out:” which the script prepends to the URL four times. Actually, you could probably type it even faster than that.

It’s amazing what keyboard shortcuts can do.

Here is a list of ten great ones for Mail.app and a comprehensive listing of all the shortcuts documented for Apple Mail.

Or perhaps you want to make your own keyboard shortcuts for Mail.

Related posts

• Mail Act-on - Getting sorted, saving time
• LetterPop: Quick and easy HTML newsletters
• Gmail’s new interface, shortcuts and Safari
• Better formatting of web content in Mail.app
• Automator Action to email files quickly

Bryan Campbell emails to say that he inadvertently came across an undocumented keyboard shortcut.

If you hit Command-I while you’re in Mail, it will bring up an Account Info dialog box which tells you all sort of interesting things about your account. If you have an IMAP account, for example, it will tell you how much of your quota you have used and how big all your mailboxes are, and allow you to modify the behaviour of Mail’s Special Mailboxes.

If you have a POP account it will list any messages still on the server and give you the option to delete them.

I say “undocumented”. That is to say, it is not included in the 70+ keyboard shortcuts in Mail’s help file (I’ve made a helpful PDF of them which you can find in this entry). Nor does it appear as an option in any of Mail.app’s menus.

Of course, you can get the same result by selecting a mailbox in the Mailbox Drawer on the left, Control-clicking and selecting the “Get Info” option. But you have to use a mouse for that.

[Thanks, Bryan!]

Related posts

• The dreaded “your home directory is full” error
• Switching from Eudora for Windows to Mail.app
• Speed up your Mac: Software tweaks
• Setting a minimum HTML font size
• One thing Thunderbird and Mail.app can’t do

I’ve blogged before about using the Dictionary and Thesaurus in Apple Mail and about rolling your own Shortcuts.

A neat tip on macOSXHints combines the two.

Not wanting to send an email by mistake when trying to check a word in the Dictionary (like this poor guy), the poster decided to change the keyboard shortcut for the Dictionary from Control-Command-D to F7. (You could, of course, choose any shortcut you like, following the instructions here and modifying the “Look up in Dictionary” shortcut.)

What’s extra clever about this, though, is that the new shortcut becomes something more than the old one was.

The poster discovered that the new shortcut acts as a kind of “toggle switch”. After pressing F7 he could move the mouse over as many words as he liked and get a definition for each. When he was finished, hitting F7 again toggled the “Dictionary mode” off again.

Excellent tip. Never has it been so easy to understand those emails from friends who take pride in being obscure!

(This will work in other apps too.)

Related posts

• Textpander gets an update
• TextExpander bargain today on MacZOT!
• TextExpander auto-corrections list
• Setting a minimum HTML font size
• Script to pipe emails into Yojimbo

Jorge emails to ask how to forward an email complete with headers in Apple Mail.

First you need to display the headers. Shift-Command-H makes them appear. If you are a “mouser”, click on Long Headers in the Message sub-menu of the View menu or on the Long Headers button in your Toolbar (if it is there).

Then simply forward the message. Shift-Command-F is the keyboard shortcut, or use the Forward button on the toolbar.

There the headers are, ready to go!

Related posts

• Setting a minimum HTML font size
• Pressing the wrong key: Another sad story
• Mail Act-on - Getting sorted, saving time
• Destroy an email immediately in Mail.app
• A smarter Dictionary shortcut