Daniel Bingham has written a plugin that fixes a particular problem with Mail.app’s IMAP support.

IMAPCheck corrects Mail.app’s habit of not seeing email that has been moved into IMAP subfolders by server-side rules until you actually open the subfolder.

Instead, it forces Mail to do a full sync every time, which will increase the traffic between your IMAP server and your Mac, but will also pick up emails that you might not otherwise see.

This plugin differs from IMAP-IDLE, a plugin that creates support in Mail for IMAP’s IDLE feature.

With IMAP-IDLE installed, Mail knows about email arriving in your inbox right away. IMAPCheck lets you know about email that has arrived and been moved into another IMAP folder.

IMAPCheck comes with one limitation:

It still does not enable rules support on IMAP accounts. This bundle WILL allow Mail.app to see the new email, but it still doesn’t process rules in those folders. I looked briefly into enabling rules on these folders, but it seems to be something built directly into POP Account support.

I don’t have any server-side rules myself, but those who do will be glad of this new option.

It’s donation-ware and you can get it from Daniel’s web site .mail.app, apple mail, imap, server side, rules, mailboxes, folders, plugins

On the Apple Discussion Boards, a poster called Cyclosaurus has provided an applescript which when activated by a rule in Mail.app will save an email to a plain text file on the Desktop.

This could be very handy.

To use it, all you need to do is copy the text from his posting (above), paste it into Script Editor, compile it and save it off as a script in some memorable place (I find that ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/ Mail is memorable).

Then you need to hook it up to a Mail rule. Here I am using it to extract bibliographical records of books for importing into Bookends or EndNote, two reference managers for academic writing.

The rule recognises the subject line that the library adds to these emails, extracts the info to a plain text file on the Desktop called slash.txt, tags it with the MailTags project for my work and dumps it into my mail archive. (A quick subject line search for “MARC record” will find them all again, so a rabbit warren of mailboxes is not required.)

The end result is a clean plain text file. The script appends any subsequently extracted emails to the end of the file:

This is unfortunately a hypothetical example. In real life I am not that organised or automated.

However, it gives you an idea of the applications to which the script could be put. Gathering a list of to-dos perhaps or saving a plain text copy of every email from your sweetheart. Or from a cyber-stalker. Or if set to “every message”, a full plain text archive of all the email you receive. Or to save a copy of every email that mentions Steve Jobs. Or whatever. mail.app, apple mail, rules, applescript, productivity, plain text, extract, email, tips

Reports on eWeek.com and on SearchSecurity.com claim that a highly sophisticated Russian bot-net is pumping out the current surge in image spam.

According to a senior security researcher at SecureWorks, the bot-netters grew their 70,000 strong zombie network with the SpamThru trojan, an innovative piece of malware which not only packs its own pirated version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus to eradicate any competing malware from infected computers, but also uses a list of proxy servers to evade blacklisting by anti-spam agencies.

The researcher also claims to have uncovered evidence that the spammers harvested lists of email addresses from financial institutions:

It also appears the spammer made an effort to obtain more targeted lists of email addresses by hacking into smaller investment news Web sites and other e-businesses and downloading their user databases,” he said. “This is likely due to the fact that pump-and-dump stock spam seems to be a primary motive of the botnet.

Mail.app users can get some level of protection by creating a rule to filter some of these images spams out.

David Reitter takes a slightly different approach with a different rule.

Fastmail users (and others with tweakable server-side spam protection) may get some extra relief from this tip on EmailDiscussions.com which creates a more sophisticated rule.

[Via Daring Fireball ]mail.app, apple mail, image spam, junk, rules, email, bot-net, trojan

I’ve had three emails in as many days from people wondering how to set up automated archiving in Mail.app, so that messages older than a specific date are moved out of the app and into a separate folder.

Although some other email clients do this (I have a vague memory that Outlook used to ask me about this from time to time), Mail doesn’t.

The only solution I could think of revolved around creating a repeating event in iCal, say once a month, and setting it to run the Archive script from Andreas Amann’s Mail scripts which can export messages in standard mbox format.

But that’s not very automated. You still need to select the mailboxes to export and other bits and pieces.

I asked Andreas Amann who is gobsmackingly clever with AppleScript why this isn’t easier to achieve. He tells me:

The problem is that AppleScript Studio applications themselves are not scriptable so they don’t lend themselves to be run without user interaction. Since my archive script needs the user to select which mailboxes to archive as well as some options for the archive, this won’t work.

Another solution would be to create a rule and then apply that to selected message. However, since you can’t run rules via AppleScript either, this won’t work in an automated, non-interactive way either.

I guess people will have to look at some of the commercial offerings for this (I don’t know whether they support automated or timed archiving though…)

Any ideas? (Non-commercial solutions preferred)mail.app, apple mail, archiving, applescript, automated, backup, export, rules

Graeme Mathieson has produced a great tutorial on using Mail.app as an offline archive for Gmail, complete with step-by-step instructions on creating the rules to push emails into the right folders and screenshots.

He recently switched to using Google apps for your domain but like any prudent Scot wanted access to his email when he is not online and “a backup should something go wrong” (see further — “Gmail user gets kneecapped” and the Gmail “Black Hole treatment”).

Nice. mail.app, apple mail, gmail, google apps, backup, archive, rules, screenshots, email

Merlin Mann, 43 Folders productivity bodhisattva, offers some tips on using Mail Act-on to increase productivity and handle the hackwork of filing and processing your emails.

He shows you how to make several clever Mail Act-on rules that interact with Mail’s smart folders and MailTags to create a workflow that works for him.

He also offers a sneaky tip for remapping the Caps Lock key to the Control key function. No more weirdly bent pinkies for him!

As Merlin says,

I’m really just scratching the surface on what you can do with Mail Act-On — I’m sure there are power users out there who are doing much sexier stuff with it — but I wanted to make sure people know that this is most definitely not just for geeks and high-volume email users. In my opinion, this is functionality that should (and eventually will) be included as a stock feature in Mail.app.

mail.app, apple mail, tips, mail acton, plugins, productivity, workflow, rules

1. Automatically mark emails needing a reply: A poster on macOSXHints describes how to set up a rule that will automatically mark incoming emails requesting a reply. Easily adaptable to other uses.
2. Catch image spam: A new brand of image-based spam can outfox Mail.app’s junk filter. Luckily, an easy-to-construct rule will stop it in its tracks again.
3. Remotely schedule torrent downloads: Matt Comi shows you how to construct a rule that will automatically strip out a torrent that you email to yourself and pass it to Azureus to begin the download. Bittorrenting from work without guilt or fear!
4. Control your home Mac remotely: Attached to a mail.app rule, this applescript can automate a select number of tasks when prompted by emails with the right keywords. A couple of apps make this even easier to set up.
5. AppleScripted Auto-replies: Michelle Steiner has written an applescript that will generate auto-replies when attached to a Mail.app rule. Macresponder does the same thing with more options but costs money.

mail.app, apple mail. tips, applescript, rules, remote control, spam, reply, productivity, torrent