The latest public beta of MailTags 2.0 has been released.

It’s unlikely but possible that some Apple Mail users don’t know what MailTags is. It’s a plugin for Mail.app that brings powerful tagging and management to your email, smarter integration with iCal and forms the cornerstone of Getting Things Done with Apple Mail.

Improvements over the previous public beta are most visible in speed, stability and a tweaked interface.

Tagging and opening large mailboxes are both now markedly quicker. Scott has optimized that way rules are applied, postponing IMAP updates to end of rule application.

Stability is also improved. Messages are no longer sometimes deleted when tags are rapidly applied to a large number of messages and the number of temporary duplicates has been reduced. In addition, MailTags now more reliably deletes iCal events attached to the message when clearing all tags via the MailTags pane or menu.

Tabbing through the to-do and event pop-up windows no longer crashes Mail on occasions.

In the kind of nice touch that belongs to an app nearing its final polish, the MailTags tag icon no longer appears printed messages.

In the main MailTags pane, the same polish is noticeable.

The widgets and buttons have been redrawn to match better the overall look and feel of Mac OS X. An Action button on each to-do or events gives quick access to editing/viewing/deleting options.

The pop-up windows have also been reworked a little. Copy and Paste functions now work in the text fields, which also accept non-English characters.

The pp-up windows look good and are easy to work with:

Some niggling problems remain. MailTags and PGP signatures don’t agree with each other. And some beta-testers find that MailTags will sometimes make .Mac accounts reject the account’s password (although a restart fixes that) and sporadic crashes sometimes occur when printing.

Overall, MailTags 2.0 now looks and feels like a plugin that is almost ready to be released in final form.

The prince of Mail.app plugins hovers on the verge of even greater greatness.

You can read more about MailTags 2.0 and download the new public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions. mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, public beta, ical, applescript, events

John Maisey has written an apple-scripted plugin for Mail.app, You’re Invited, that makes working with Outlook users easier.

It is similar to another plugin, OMiC . However, the feature sets do not over-lap completely. There are some things that OMiC does that this one doesn’t, so You’re Invited has a few tricks of its own up its sleeve.

As John explains on his web site:

This Mail.app rule was designed to avoid:

• Text only invites appearing in Mail.
• Invites arriving in Mail not being automatically sent to iCal.
• Invitations arriving in iCal that create the ‘email address that isn’t on your “me” card in Address Book’ error.
• Having to remember obscure key combinations.
• Having to repeatedly drag/drop .ics files onto iCal.

A neat little interface adds a rule to your preferences which runs a script on incoming messages:

Invitations buried in your emails are whizzed over to iCal for processing.

Unfortunately it conflicts with something in the guts of MailTags, which means that I won’t be using it.

But if you are not using MailTags , you might (i) ask yourself, Why not? and (ii) find You’re Invited useful.

UPDATE: You can work around for the conflict by uninstalling MailTags, installing You’re Invited and activating it, and then installing MailTags again.

The current beta is freeware (expires 21 February) and available from John’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, plugins, outlook, ical, invitations, invites, applescript, mailtags

Scott Morrison has released public beta number 6 of his forth-coming MailTags 2.0 plugin for Mail.app.

The big change with this release is the ability to add multiple to-dos and events to a single message.

He has been busy. Users will quickly notice the main changes to the MailTags pane and the pop-up interfaces for adding to-dos and events to messages.

Events and to-dos for a message are now listed together in the re-designed pane.

Right-clicking (or Control-clicking) on an item displays a Contextual menu that allows you to edit it, to view in iCal or delete it. Old-timers will remember that these options were once provided by small buttons on the pane.

The buttons on the pane have also been refreshed. They no longer look “clunky” and add extra unity to the plugin’s interface.

Users are less likely to see another important change under the bonnet. This public beta features a new optimised way of applying rules to incoming messages. Rules now process in sequence when multiple rules apply at the same time or in close sequence.

As a result it is much, much harder to crash MailTags by going at it lickity-split, hammering away with as many fast Mail Act-on keystrokes as possible. Believe me. I’ve tried very, very hard.

The interfaces for entering to-dos and events have also been redone. They are both now smoked glass pop-ups. The to-do interface contains everything you need:

The events pane is new but follows the same pattern:

Scott notes that this beta is now “feature-complete” before the final release: “Nothing new to add and only bugs to work out”.

Whenever Scott releases another version of the public beta, I need to think of some new superlative to describe this prince of plugins.

Perhaps I should leave the flowery rhetoric to one side this time and tell it to you straight: there is no other plugin, add-on, hack, script or work-around that has added more grunt to my Mail.app than MailTags. Some days I consider Mail.app a plugin for MailTags, not vice-versa. It is simply the cat’s whiskers.

You can read more about MailTags 2.0 and download the new public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions. mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, public beta, ical, applescript, events

Scott Morrison has released an updated public beta of MailTags 2.0.

Public Beta 5 fixes a new bug in the previous beta in which tagging a message with an attachment could — in some circumstances — destroy the attachment data.

Obviously, this makes the new version a recommended upgrade for all users of the public beta.

This new version also brings some new features to the events bezel: it now has a close button and the calendar list shows calendars from iCal rather than MailTags projects.

The public beta of MailTags is free, although the finished release will be shareware. You can pre-order it for USD 25.

You can read more about MailTags 2.0 and download the new public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions. mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, public beta, ical, applescript, events

Scott Morrison has let loose the fourth public beta of the next version of MailTags, a plugin which provides integration with iCal and the tagging and productivity muscle which Mail.app lacks by default.

New features and greater stability are the hallmarks of the new beta, most notably iCal event creation from an email, a new Copy URL function and improved handling of IMAP connections and AppleScript.

The new event creation pane lets you do almost everything except set alarms. Clicking on the small plus sign under Events in the MailTags pane makes the events pane pop up:

Needless to say, each event thus created in iCal contains a hyperlink back to the email for ready reference and extra details.

To-do creation will eventually also use a pane like this. You can already create multiple events, multiple to-dos from a single email are coming soon.

Also very useful is the ability to create durable, move-proof hyperlinks to a Mail message which you can paste into other apps like Yojimbo, SOHO Notes or whatever. Oddly, I posted about this before it was released, so you can read more about this feature and see some examples in an earlier Hawk Wings post.

Less visible improvements include tweaks producing faster interaction with IMAP servers and fewer traffic jams due to too many open files. You won’t see this feature, but you’ll enjoy it.

Lastly, some kinks in the plugin’s AppleScript support have been ironed out, and Scott has added a sample script for creating a Yojimbo item that links back to the message, copying tags and the URL for the message.

The public beta of MailTags is free, although the finished release will be shareware. You can pre-order it for USD 25.

You can read more about MailTags 2.0 and its new features and download the public beta from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a forum for any questions. mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, public beta, ical, applescript, events

A poster on macOSXhints has posted an applescript that will provide a link to Mail.app messages in iCal to-dos and events.

Obviously, the concept is a good one, but in this case, it’s a tip to avoid. The main problem is the link will break as soon as an email is moved. Reindexing Spotlight may also break the link. Links to IMAP messages will break if you have to refresh your local mail cache.

So, all up, not so good.

If your email is IMAP, you are better off waiting for the next MailTags public beta which is plenty robust and creates reliable, move-proof hyperlinks back to your emails. (See more on this in Scott’s comment below).

If you’re a POP person, the next public beta of MailTags will work for you too. Or if you can’t wait, LinkABoo makes solid links for POP messages.

The developer is about to release a new beta of LinkABoo which has support for hyperlinking to IMAP email. I’m playing with it now, and it feels pretty solid.mail.app, apple mail, hyperlinks, ical, productivity, mailtags, tips

UPDATE: Due to a PEBKAC error (Wikipedia ) on my part, this feature currently only exists in internal builds of the beta. Think of it as a mouth-watering foretaste of more MailTags goodness to come in the next public beta, not as incompetence or cruelty on my part.

A week ago I posted about linkaboo, an app that provides a framework for linking to your emails in iCal, personal information managers and many other apps.

Stupidly I quite forgot that users of MailTags’ current Public Beta can (not quite yet) do the same thing, and do it better.

But the subject came up on the beta testers mailing list today, and it is good enough to share.

In the beta, all you need to do is highlight the message, press ⌃⌥⌘U or right-click on the message in the Message Viewer and select the “Copy Message Url” option:

That copies a link in the format message://EAAEED88-B00B-4B62-9A9B-F25CF4495BF8@hawkwings.net into your clipboard, which you can then paste in the personal information manager or other app of your choice, for example, Yojimbo:

Unlike linkaboo’s links these are not formatted up as hyperlinks, but they work just as well. Right-click on the link, select the “Open URL” option and the message is found.

This is better than linkaboo because:

1. It works for IMAP accounts as well as for POP ones.
2. It doesn’t involve an additional app.
3. MailTags is God’s own preferred plugin for Apple Mail.

mail.app, apple mail, mailtags, URLs, hperlinks, productivity, tips, plugins