David Chartier over at TUAW has hit upon a Mail.app productivity tip that will be useful for some users.

He points out that it is possible to open a second viewer window via the File menu (or ⌥⌘N if you are that kind of person), so that you can process your email twice as fast. Or at least, attack it from two different angles at once.

He suggests one possible use:

This is particularly useful if you have a folder (or perhaps a Smart Folder) which you keep checking throughout the day; this way, you can simply keep one viewer open to your inbox (or whatever default location that suits you), with the second viewer set on that other fold.

Nice one.mail.app, apple mail, productivity, viewer window, smart mailbox, tip

macOSXHints has posted a tip for creating smart mailbox folders that you can edit.

This allows you to construct a smart mailbox folder that will display the messages inside its subfolders, something that Mail.app no longer does by default.

The tip requires some hacking of your SmartMailboxes.plist file, but careful instructions are provided.

Commenting on the entry about Getting Things Done in Apple Mail, a poster wrote:

I’ve noticed that when setting a tag to move to a smartfolder, it doesn’t actually move the original message to the folder instead it only copies it there. I find that not a useful feature, is there anyway around this ?

The reason a Mail Act-on rule can’t move a message to a smart mailbox is a simple one. Smart mailboxes don’t really exist. They are just dynamically-updating saved searches, the criteria for which are saved in an XML file called SmartMailboxes.plist in your Mail folder.

For example, after the jump you will find some of the code for my “Next Actions” smart mailbox from that file:

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