Like many people, Max Shafiq is looking on the Apple Discussion forums for a way to import Tiger Mail messages into Leopard Mail.

Another post in the same thread notes some of the ways not to do it:

I have the same problem Max. I’ve tried importing mailboxes (from the file menu), and also dragging the old Mail folders to the new Mac’s Library… both attempts only partially successful, with most mail missing completely.

Actually, the answer is fairly simple. Just follow the method in this previous Hawk Wings’ post on importing emlx messages into Tiger Mail. Nothing’s changed.

It involves quitting Mail, making a backup, creating a new Mailbox in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder, copying in the individual emlx files (that is, the messages) you want to import, restarting Mail, selecting the new mailbox which will appear in the list of mailboxes “On my Mac” and rebuilding it. Voilà! The messages appear, with timestamps and everything else nicely preserved.

Piece of cake. mailboxes, leopard, mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, messages, importing, emlx

Steven Samuels has produced an applescript based on Jim Correia’s earlier script for piping emails from Mail.app into Yojimbo.

This script adds extra information about each email to Yojimbo’s Inspector pane, an idea, he says that he got “after seeing the “Summary” field in SOHO Notes.”

It adds the date on which the message was sent (yyyy/mm/dd) and the name or address of the sender or recipient to the Comments pane and also adds the first 60 characters (more or less) of the message:

The script, which contains substantial notes on its usage and limitations is available from the public archive of Yojimbo’s mailing list. mail.app, apple mail, applescript, yojimbo, messages, summary, productivity

Ronald, a Hawk Wings reader, sent me some screenshots of the message threading in Thunderbird and Mail.app.

I knew that both email clients can thread messages, but I had never twigged how much more elegantly it is done in Thunderbird.

As you can see from the following images, Thunderbird is able to nest replies within replies, something that Mail is not able to do:

Ronald was hoping that I knew of a plugin for Mark.app which would emulate the smarter threading. I don’t know of one and I expect that developing one would be a lot of work.

Nonetheless, I am posting these shots partly for their own value (why isn’t Mail better at this?) and partly on the off-chance that someone knows of a plugin or tweak that I don’t know about.mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, messages, threading, plugins, tips

My very favourite app for integrating Mail with iCal has been updated.

Event Maker allows you to create normal and all-day events and To Dos from a selected message in Mail.app or from scratch. The quick launch scripts mean that the whole process can be accomplished without touching the mouse once.

Event Maker 0.4 sports a redesigned interface to allow for alternate methods of setting dates, including a pop-up calendar, and an alarm drawer which supports full keyboard access.

The interface is cleaner:

It also now has full undo and redo functions and improved error-checking when creating events. The internal update feature has also been improved.

The app’s preferences offer good control over the creation process, allowing you to set default durations, to tell the app how to create events and what to do next:

Mike emails to say that he hasn’t put the new version up on MacUpdate or VersionTracker yet, but if you already have it installed, the auto-update feature will fetch it.

If you don’t yet use it, but want to try it out, download version 0.3 from MacUpdate and then internally update to the newest version.

Event Maker is donation-ware.mail.app, apple mail, ical, events, messages, todos, keyboard shortcuts, productivity

If you use Thunderbird and are interested in “productivity” or just working your email smarter and more efficiently, you will like Quick File.

It is a Thunderbird extension that quickly files messages into the folder of your choice, the closest thing that I have seen to Mail Act-on for Thunderbird.

The extension’s preferences allow to set a user-defined hotkey to activate its filing window:

The developer suggests Control-Q for Mac users and that does work.

If you have selected a message and hit the hotkey, Quick File pops up a filing window:

Type in the first few letters of the folder into which you want to file the message, and it lists the matches. You can keep typing until there is only one left, or navigate through the options with the arrow keys. Hit return, and it’s filed.

You can get the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons site .thunderbird, productivity, filing, messages, extensions

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.mail.app, apple mail, text, forwarding, attachments, messages, tips

Rob Griffiths at MacWorld posts a great tip for the ad-hoc colouring of messages.

I use the coloured message background feature of Mail.app a lot, and find that it helps me balance the overall grasp which a unified Inbox offers me with the ability quickly to zero in on the messages in a particular account.

Mostly I do this with a combination of rules that colour every email coming into a particular account and with MailTags keyword colours (powered by Mail Act-on rules).

But every now and then something unusual comes in that needs a colour of its own.

Rob shows you how to do that quickly with the Colour Picker (Command-Shift-C).

The end result is a technicolour bonanza that might not appeal to everyone, but which helps me find what I want quickly:

Click image for the full colour explosion!

Try it out. You’ll find it useful too.email, mail.app, apple mail, tips, messages, colour, color, color picker