Remember O’Reilly big hitter Allison Randal and her overflowing inbox?

She’s decided to try stemming the flow with Mail.app and MailTags and Mail Act-on , two of the very best plugins for Apple Mail.

It is interesting to see what she discovers and whether she is hopeful that it will be enough to meet the challenge of her 20,000 email inboxes. Interesting too to ponder whether better tools can beat a cultural problem.

Two things at least are better than she holds out. Emails can be tagged with rules in mail.app, so manual tagging is not the only way to bring some order into your data. And the public beta of MailTags does bring reliable syncing of IMAP tags between more than one Mac.

I think, though, that even the most partisan MailTagger would have to concede her other point. You do need to use a Mac to enjoy the plugin’s benefits.

I wonder if Scott is secretly working away on an Outlook or Thunderbird version? mail.app, apple mail, productivity, mailtags, mail act-on, plugins, inbox of doom, mutt, linux

Scott Morrison has released a third public beta of MailTags 2.0, the next supercharged version of his outstanding plugin for Mail.app (Read more about this plugin which has totally revolutionised the way I use Mail in earlier reviews of MailTags 1.2 and MailTags 1.2.2).

Although it comes with very sensible warnings about the dangers of beta software, I am finding it remarkably stable. It came out of the sandbox and into my real life email long ago without any problems.

Public Beta 3 adds AppleScript support which allows scripts to access and set tags.

Its support for threaded views in Mail is greatly improved. The plugin will now display all keywords and projects within a thread, as well as priorities and due dates.

Two niggles have been corrected: IMAP messages no longer disappear from smart mailboxes after they are tagged and preferences for projects and keywords are less likely to become corrupted.

The ability to set an iCal event (as well as to-dos) almost made the cut for this beta. Expect to see it soon, making MailTags more and more the complete package for Mail and iCal integration.

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

Brian Fling has written up a terrific post on using MailTags and Mail Act-on to stay on top of your email.

He frames it all within the Getting Things Done method of task management, but even if you are not a devotee, you will benefit from the extensive screenshots and the clear way in which the tutorial is designed.

Although he tried using the principles of Feng Shui to manage his email with some success in the past,

by using a couple of simple techniques and some cool software, you can use a less new-agey means to simplify your message stream and get back to work…. The goal is to make the act of archiving a one step process. A big part of getting control of your inbox is to be able to triage and filter information quickly. If if takes you more than a second to store a message, then you are taking too long.

Ten steps or less.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, GTD, MailTags, Mail Act-on, plugins, tips, inbox, filing, triaging

When Leopard Mail was previewed last month, it provoked a lot of reaction. One of the things people broadly welcomed was the introduction of more “productivity features” like to-dos, notes and the integration of RSS feeds.

It looks like the Apple Mail Development Team is giving Mail some more grunt for getting things done, and might even muscle in on the territory currently occupied by MailTags .

A poster in the MailTags forum asked today,

With the promised tighter integration of Leopard’s new Mail and iCal, including managing ToDo’s directly from Mail, why should I invest in MailTags 2.x now? What more will MailTags be offering?

Good question. And MailTags developer Scott Morrison has produced a good answer. He has listed all the things that MailTags will continue to offer than Leopard Mail doesn’t (as far as anyone knows):

If this is too hard to read, you can see a full-sized version of the list on the MailTags forum .

From what I’ve seen, there’s no reason to think that MailTags will be redundant when Leopard Mail arrives.

It will continue to provide a comprehensive structure and process for my workflow through its projects, keywords and priorities, something that Leopard Mail cannot offer.

What do you think?mail.app, apple mail, mailtags, leopard mail, to-dos, notes, productivity

Scott Morrison has released a faster, smarter, more stable and slicker public beta of MailTags 2.0, Apple Mail’s premier productivity plugin.

Public Beta 2 tweaks the plugin’s main functions. In particular, it fixes an issue with large messages, in which MailTags sometimes duplicated the message instead of replacing it with a newly tagged copy.

Syncing is smarter and the plugin now preserves and works better with IMAP keywords on the server.

Its interaction with iCal has also been improved. Unicode characters are now supported in iCal items and calendars, syncing between Mail and iCal is better and you can now link in iCal’s URL field to emails without message IDs (like drafts and sent mail items).

An expanded series of preferences give users more control over how the plugin displays its information and over message colouring.

Lastly, the application of rules is more robust, especially when rules include a filing or non-MailTags action.

Overall, the most noticeable change is the plugin’s increased stability. It’s now rock-solid for me, and I hammer it pretty hard.

Scott is now beginning work on further features will debut in Public Beta 3. You can look forward to creating iCal events as well as to-dos, possibly the option of a horizontal layout for the MailTags pane and more.

You can get MailTags 2.0 Public Beta 2 from Scott’s web site , where you will also find a support forum for tips and help as well as information on how to save money by pre-registering for the final MailTags 2.0 release.

As regular Hawk Wings readers know, I love this plugin to death. Nothing has done more to revolutionise the way I use Mail than MailTags or increased its power as a tool for getting things done.mail.app, apple mail, plugins, mailtags, productivity, IMAP, ical, the ant’s pants

It’s a great day for Mail.app users. The public beta of MailTags 2.0 has been released, bringing with it full IMAP tag support, tagging of outgoing messages, tag sharing, a revamped, more flexible MailTags pane, the display of keywords, projects and other MailTags info in the ListView and more.

In some ways it offers better productivity features than Leopard Mail and it’s here now.

IMAP tag support

Probably the most anticipated new feature is full support for tagging emails in IMAP accounts.

This is achieved by storing the keywords, projects and other metadata in encoded X-MailTags headers in the email itself. When new MailTags information is added, MailTags writes a new copy of the message to the server. The metadata is stored server-side, making it available on any Mac you use which has MailTags 2.0 installed. Synchronised tagging has arrived whether you are in the office, at home or on the road.

You can also choose to save the metadata in clear text so that other email clients like Thunderbird will be able to read it.

The MailTags Pane

Many of the new features in this beta are best understood from the new-look MailTags pane.

Individual sections of the pane can be hidden or shown as you prefer by clicking on the disclosure triangle in the top left of its header.

Interaction with iCal continues to improve. Support for to-dos allows you to set priorities, due dates and to add comments in the Notes field. You can set a default calendar for MailTags to use in the MailTags Preferences.

The linkage between Mail.app and iCal has been improved through the use of a new URL format (message://mymessage-id @ server.com) which will find the relevant email regardless of the actual file location.

The Notes field now automatically expands with the size of the window, so that verbose people like me can see all the info for a particular email more easily.

In another much-hoped improvement, the Notes field can be used to replace the subject line of the email (see the subject line in italics in the screenshot below). Neat!

In the Compose window MailTags pane, additional options allow you to tag your outgoing message and/or tag the original message with the same tags as the reply. You can also create a rule to accept reject tags based on any criteria (such as member ship in a specific address book group).

This is a real bonus for work groups. Tagging outgoing messages gives people working on shared projects the ability to accept and share tags with other collaborators.

Of course, you may run into a nutcase using MailTags 2.0, so the option to refuse attached tags is also included.

Seeing your tags in the ListView

One of my favourite new features is the ability to see your projects and tags in the Message ListView, which provides additional and immediate visual cues about what you need to get done.

Command-clicking on any column header to add or remove the project, keyword, priority and due date columns.

When matched to the project-related colour coding of messages, you know at once what needs to be done in what sphere of your life:

The expanded Preferences now contain a number of separate panes to manage the plugin’s options. These options and MailTags 2.0′s other new features are set out in an expanded and comprehensive readme file.

How does it compare with Leopard Mail, or at least, with as much of Leopard Mail as we have seen? As Scott says,

While Mail 3.0 brings some MailTags-like features to Mail, MailTags continues to add many features not included with Mail 3.0, including keywords, project and priority tagging, saving notes directly with message, changing subject lines, dynamic coloring of messages, full integration with rules and smart mailboxes, and more.

Upgrade Warning!!

Installing MailTags 2.0 will erase the settings for MailTags 1.2.2. This is set out at the top of the plugin’s new readme file, but is worth repeating. However, MailTags 2.0 saves a backup of your info so that can go back to MailTags 1.2.2 if you decide that the beauty and power of MailTags 2.0 is not for you.

Registration and Special Offer

MailTags 2.0 is not donation-ware. It is shareware (USD 29.95). After a trial 30 day period, unregistered users will be unable to tag messages.

During the beta test period, you can purchase MailTags 2.0 for a reduced price of USD 25 by following the links in MailTags preferences.

MailTags has more than quadrupled the productivity grunt of Mail.app for me. It is money very well spent.

You can get the public beta from Scott’s site where you will also find a support forum for all your MailTags queries.

Of course, MailTags 1.2.2 will continue to be available too under the same donation-ware conditions as before. MailTags 1.2.2 users can look forward to an update with minor bug fixes later this week.mailtags, mail.app, apple mail, productivity, tagging, to-dos, ical, workgroups, collaboration, IMAP

David Emery provides a rave review of how Spotlight and MailTags, the prince of plugins, help him to be more productive at the office.

Everyone else in the office files their emails. Not David:

In a work environment I can just about understand the need for filing things in folders; but I think this behaviour stems from how older email programs worked. With Mail.app on Mac OS X 10.4 the search is brilliant…. Hence, whenever I want to find a specific email I just search for it; which takes about the same time I imagine opening a folder and scanning its contents for the correct email would take.

He gets extra search precision and power by using MailTags :

Using this plugin, I tag every email that comes in with a set of tags that will help when I come so search for something. So, for example, if I get an email about a Thom Yorke website, I’ll tag it with “Thom Yorke” and “XL” (the [recording] label). This also exposes another weakness with the traditional filing model – you can’t have something in two folders at once.

All this tagging, though, only helps to add some context to an email that might not happen to mention its topic – a notes panel would do the trick as well, if it was searchable.

Regular Hawk Wings readers will remember recent research on how hard it is for people to give up folders for their email. email, folders, tags, mailtags, mail.app,apple mail, productivity, plugins