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Printing to-do lists from Mail.app

Tim Gaden — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:51:18 +0000

Hawk Wings reader Jon Yates emails to ask, “Any idea how to print a list of all your to do headings in OSX Leopard mail.app?”

Good question! I don’t think you can. At least, I can’t work it out (which may not be the same thing).

Luckily because of the new system-wide task database in Leopard, your choices are not restricted to Mail.

You can, of course, do it in iCal. But it takes a lot of stuffing around with the options in the Print dialog to whittle things down to a lean, tasks-only list. And then more clicking to get it to print out as, for example, a PDF.

But in the end you can get there:

You could do it in a GTD app like OmniFocus or Things, but that seems like a hammer and walnut solution for the problem. Jon just want to email a list of tasks.

Fortunately, a quicker, more efficient and free solution is not far away. The task management widget DoBeDo (which also does a lot of other things — see earlier Hawk Wings post) has a print option that can quick spit out a list of tasks in Preview as a PDF or to a specified printer.

After you set the option on the back of the widget, it is a one step operation (mouse-click or ⌘P), and produces a nice list:

It also has a one-click option (⌘E) to send the list to an email address that you specify.

DoBeDo has recently been updated, and now features a “Last Day of the Month” scheduling option and treats “procrastinated” tasks without a due date as due today.

It also has more skins that the last time I looked (selection below):

The Apple Calendar skin looks nice next to the other black widgets in Dashboard:

DoBeDo is freeware. It is available along with detailed documentation of its options and keyboard shortcuts from the developer’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, tasks, todos, ical, printing, lists, dobedo, widget, pdf, productivity, tips, leopardSimilar Posts:

TaskPaper: Getting Things Done without distraction

Tim Gaden — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:10:27 +0000

A new Getting Things Done (GTD) app from Hog Bay Software brings an extreme and focussed minimalism to task management.

It doesn’t transfer data to your iPod or iPhone, or sync information with facebook, or grab an audio soundbite from iTunes for each project, or have fifteen user-customisable icons for each context. It just does lists, projects, tasks and contexts. And it does them very well.

The interface is simple:

Simple keyboard shortcuts start a new project or task. Contexts (or what the app calls ‘tags’) with @ prepended are stored and can be set to autocomplete on future tasks.

Tasks for each context across a variety of projects are easily and cleanly displayed by selecting the context from a drop down list:

Completed tasks can be archived, which shifts them down to the bottom of the document and removes from the project and context-specific display.

If I had time to maintain a GTD life outside Mail.app, I would use something like this. There is no opportunity to waste time tweaking endless options which are peripheral to achieving the task management that these apps are designed to provide. Although there are plenty of other GTD apps for Mac users (see an earlier Hawk Wings post or Ed Eubanks’ round-up at Low End Mac), none of them offers the forocious “Productivity Boot Camp” discipline of TaskPaper. I find that helpful.

You can get a copy of TaskPaper from the Hog Bay web site. It costs USD 18.95 although the free 14-day demo period gives you a chance to discover if this the approach that works for you.

Disclaimer: Jesse Grosjean kindly gave me free registration so that I could try this out.GTD, getting things done, productivity, not mail.app, not apple mail, task management, listsSimilar Posts:

Attaché: Droplet for quick Mail.app attachment lists

Tim Gaden — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:31:14 +0000

After watching a work colleague manually adding attachments to a Mail.app message, Martin Michel decided that there must be a better way.

And he made one. He has created Attaché, an AppleScript droplet that quickly creates an new email, with all the attachments dropped on it included and listed.

Just dump it on your Desktop (or wherever you like to keep droplets–in the Dock, perhaps). Select the files you want to send and drop them onto it.

Hey presto – an email with attachments and a list of what’s included:

If my life was full of industrial quantities of attachments, I can see how this would save a lot of time indeed.

It will also please people like Jonathan, who emailed recently with a particular attachments problem:

One thing that frustrates us is that when adding attachments the attachment name is always truncated for longer names. As we have to print a record copy of the email, and all our documents include a date at the end It is impossible to see the proper name of the email attachment. Is their a way to make it add attachment name in plain text, or not truncate?

Mail’s default behaviour is annoying. But the list that this droplet generates solves his problem. Nice!

Martin plans to add further features, zipping of the attachments, default recipients and subjects and more.

Of course, you can always drag files to the Mail icon in the Dock or use the proxy icon (as described in a recent Macworld tip ) which is good enough for me.

Attaché is freeware and available from his web site .mail.app, apple mail, attachments, applescript, droplet, productivity, quickly batch and send, listsSimilar Posts:

Backpack with TextMate to Get Things Done

Tim Gaden — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 11:42:13 +0000

Brett Terpstra has written a bundle for the cutting-edge text editor TextMate which enables the creation, editing and deleting of Backpack items within the editor.

TextMate won the Apple Design Award for Best Developer Tool at WWDC this year. It shares some interesting design features with Mail.

Like Mail, it is built on a “lean but extendible” philosophy. An array of bundles allow users to extend the app in ways that suit them, rather than loading it up by default with the bloat of every possible feature. For example, this blog is written with TextMate’s blogging bundle , crucial to me, but not important to every TextMate user.

Unlike Mail, TextMate developer Allan Ogaard encourages bundle developers by opening up the guts of the editor so that third-party developers can easily create new bundles. With Mail’s undocumented API, third-party Mail.app bundle developers can only beat their heads against their monitors until the code works. (Although some helpful notes on Mail’s plugin API exist.)

Brett’s Backpack plugin allows access to pages, reminders and lists. (The updated version released yesterday adds list support.)

All the commands are linked to the âŒƒâŒ˜R keyboard shortcut.

This pops up a list of all the options, which can be selected by pressing the required number or with the up and down arrows.

New items are created through a pop-up window:

Editing is done via a list of all the available items on your Backpack pages. Again, items can be quickly selected by number.

Of course, there are other ways to integrate Backpack into your workflow: a Dashboard widget (pictured), a Firefox extension , the stand-alone Packrat app, a plugin for Quicksilver and more.

If you spend a lot of time in TextMate, this bundle is a nifty way to get stuff into Backpack quickly and to edit existing items without switching around.

In other TextMate news, the app has been ported (sort of) to Windows.not apple mail, backpack, textmate, bundle, productivity, reminders, lists, pagesSimilar Posts:

Thrifty GTD: Lifehacker’s productivity top ten

Tim Gaden — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:59:50 +0000

Gina Trapani at Lifehacker has posted her top ten free or cheap productivity tools.

Pen and paper tops a list in no particular order. I get the hunch that these old-fashioned tools are making a come back in the productivity market. Mike Rohde’s Back to paper post caused quite a splash a month or so ago.

Other old favourites are there too—your phone, a filing cabinet and an inbox tray.

Software doesn’t miss out entirely; Quicksilver and TextExpander earn their spots.

Why are Top Ten lists so popular? Usually you know all the things on them already, but seeing them through someone else’s eyes often helps you to see them anew. Check it out.GTD, getting things done, pen and paper, Retro GTD, top ten, listsSimilar Posts:

Printing Address Book contacts

Tim Gaden — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:28:17 +0000

Creativebits carries a tip on how to print contacts from Address Book if you need the information and are away from your computer.

Ivan points out that Address Book contains a “Pocket Address Book” printing format.

If you are looking for greater flexibility, it is worth remembering another helpful app that expands your options.

Address Book Reports offers a variety of templates that include Card and Phonebook sizes and well as allowing for custom print-outs (Hipster contact lists, anyone?).

It also does envelopes and labels, and all of that for only USD 15. You can get it from the developer’s web site .

[Via TUAW ]address book, contacts, printing, lists, labels, custom, helpful apps, hipster, productivitySimilar Posts: