Hawk Wings » yojimbo

Script to archive emails into Evernote

Tim Gaden — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:56:12 +0000

Justin at veritrope has written an applescript that will quickly import emails from mail.app into Evernote , the web-based note and information manager.

It’s easy to use.

First, get the script from veritrope.

Like all Apple Mail-related scripts, the best place to store it is in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail folder, so that it appears at the top of the AppleScript menu when mail.app is open.

Then find the email that you want to save into Evernote, highlight it and click the AppleScript menu on the right of your menubar:

The script grabs the email and shunts into Evernote. It loads the message first into Evernote’s Desktop app from which it syncs up automatically.

The script also presents a dialogue so that you can tag the email and select where to store it:

Chosing the “Select notebook from list” options retrieves a list of your existing notebook and also offers you the option to create a new notebook on the fly.

A nice Growl alert lets you know when it’s done.

The end result is a new Evernote note, nicely tagged-up and with a hyperlink back to the original message in mail.app:

Of course, it all goes much faster if you fire the script with a trigger in Quicksilver or set a keyboard shortcut for it with a utility like Daniel Jalkut’s excellent FastScripts .

veritrope also provides a fistful of applescripts for integrating Evernote with other popular apps like Yojimbo, NeetNewsWire, MacJournal, DEVONThink, even (of all things) Entourage.evernote, mail.app, apple mail, applescript, script, plugins, quicksilver, fastscripts, yojimbo, productivitySimilar Posts:

A smarter script for piping email into Yojimbo

Tim Gaden — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:58:02 +0000

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, productivitySimilar Posts:

Email to Yojimbo script with PDF support

Tim Gaden — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:30:11 +0000

Drummond Field has written an applescript that exports an email from Mail.app into Yojimbo.

Unlike other “Email to Yojimbo” scripts, this one offers the option of exporting the email into Yojimbo as either a note or a PDF.

Select the message, run the script and a dialog appears:

Drummond doesn’t have a web site to host the script on, so it finds a home on Hawk Wings for the moment.

Download it here

Don’t stop there though. Other useful Yojimbo scripts include:

A script to push Yojimbo notes onto an iPod.
A script to send a Yojimbo item with Mail.app.
A script to email yourself notes that are automatically inserted into Yojimbo.
Scripts for Yojimbo, NetNewsWire and de.licio.us integration.
All the other scripts you can find by searching Hawk Wings for “Yojimbo” and “script”.

mail.app, apple mail, applescript, yojimbo, pdf, notes, ipod, netnewswire, delicious, tips, productivitySimilar Posts:

Put Yojimbo on an iPod

Tim Gaden — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:47:22 +0000

Making use of Yojimbo’s newly-expanded “applescriptability”, Steve Kalkwarf has knocked out an applescipt that copies notes and passwords tagged with “ipod” to an iPod.

It creates a sub-folder called “Yojimbo” in the Notes folder of your iPod and copies all the matching items to it. Of course, with a little bit of tweaking in Script Editor, you could easily set the script to transfer notes with a different tag.

A couple of things to note:

If the note is longer than ~4KB, it gets chopped up into chapters.

A poster on the Yojimbo Mailing warns that notes containing a colon in their title may not behave well in the transfer.

I don’t have an iPod to test this. I only buy Apple products that can run Mail.app. Still, by all accounts it works a treat. not apple mail, yojimbo, applescript, ipod, notes, syncing, PDA road warrior, mobility, productivitySimilar Posts:

Making Finder’s Toolbar work for you

Tim Gaden — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:37:48 +0000

Rubin emails to ask:

I was reading your new post on Address Book syncing and backup, and I noticed on the screen capture that you had a little Yojimbo icon on your Finder windows. I’m a Yojimbo user and a big fan too. How did you get this little icon and what does it do?

Fair question.

While the Finder Toolbar can be expanded with many useful pre-defined extras (Control-Click on Finder’s Toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar…”), you can also add your own favourite items:

I dragged some of the apps that I use a lot (TextMate, Terminal, Yojimbo) from the Applications folder onto the Toolbar. That creates a shortcut on the Toolbar. Now I can quickly launch the apps by clicking on these icons and, more importantly, I can drag files onto the icons to open them.

I’ve also added on the right some of the folders into which I often need to file things. When tidying up, I drag the files onto those folders and they’re filed.

Of course, there are other ways to do these things, not least Quicksilver, but another option is always welcome. not apple mail, finder, icons, shortcuts, productivity, yojimbo, terminal, textmate, toolbar, customizeSimilar Posts:

Wide-screen hack for Yojimbo

Tim Gaden — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:20:22 +0000

Fans of Aaron Hanly’s Letterbox plugin, which redraws Mail.app’s interface to provide an “Outlook-style” preview pane on the right, will love a hack for Yojimbo that does the same thing.

Jon Hicks has created a modified nib file for Yojimbo’s interface that moves the preview pane to the right.

The shift involves some contraction of the Listview in the middle, but looks good:

This is Jon’s screenshot, ripped off with thanks

Jon provides some instructions for installing the new nib file. The involve digging around inside the app itself, but are not too daunting.

As Jon points out, it is a good idea to backup the existing OGMainWindow.nib file, in case you tire of the new look.

You can get the modified file and read the instructions on Jon’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, widescreen, letterbox, plugin, hack, outlook, yojimboSimilar Posts:

Script to send a Yojimbo item with Mail.app

Tim Gaden — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:59:05 +0000

Jim Correia of Bare Bones has written an applescript that will send a selected Yojimbo item to someone via Mail.app. (He has also written one for Mailsmith ).

Of course, you can do more of less the same thing by dragging the item onto the Mail.app Dock icon. However, this script can be attached to a Quicksilver trigger (Let Merlin Mann show you how ) or keyboard shortcut (using FastScripts or similar). This seems quicker and more appealing to me.

To use it, get the text from the Yojimbo mailing list archive.

Load it into Script Editor, compile it to make sure everything is good and then save it in the Yojimbo folder in your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications folder.

Or create a Yojimbo folder there if one doesn’t exist. That way the script will always be at the top of the AppleScript menu when Yojimbo is the active app.mail.app, apple mail, yojimbo, applescript, quicksilver trigger, fastscripts, productivity, tips, script, email, mailsmithSimilar Posts:

Yojimbo and EagleFiler updates

Tim Gaden — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:53:15 +0000

Yojimbo and EagleFiler, two personal information management apps, have been updated.

Both gain greater support for AppleScript and well as other enhancements making them easier and quicker to use.

Yojimbo 1.4 gains an “Untagged” factory collection, so that you can see at a glance which items are untagged.

Like many people, I was hoping for a change to the smart collections for tags, which would allow an option for matching “either/or” on multiple tags.

This didn’t happen.

The only option for multiple tags is still “match all”.

The big ticket item in this update is the improved AppleScript support.

Yojimbo now has a solid AppleScript dictionary.

I am not very good at AppleScript myself, but this does open the way for others who are to write scripts that will better integrate Yojimbo in our workflows.

I’m looking forward to that. More examples like Dylan’s Yojimbo, del.icio.us and NetNewsWire scripts can only be a good thing.

An extension in the way URLs that point to HTML are handled makes it possible to import Mailsmith HTML attachments and the contents of the Firefox Scrapbook collection.

EagleFiler 1.1.2 also features improved AppleScript support, including a new “import text” command which takes a text string and creates a new rich text file in the library.

Navigating through the various elements of the interface with the tab key is now more reliable.

Users of PDFView can capture PDFs in EagleFiler.

The operation of EagleFiler is snappier due to improvements in the way emptying the trash and indexing searches are handled.

Many tweaks and fixes are also included, which you can read in the full changelog .

Yojimbo 1.4 is a free update for registered users. So is EagleFiler 1.1.2 .pim, productivity, yojimbo, eaglefiler, applescript, not apple mail, not mail.appSimilar Posts:

Automatic notes in Yojimbo via a Mail.app rule

Tim Gaden — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 09:32:24 +0000

Konrad Lawson has written an applescript which will cleverly pick out the text of an email you have sent to yourself and use it to create a note in Yojimbo.

You attach it to a rule that matches text in the subject line (like, say, “Note:”). Then anywhere that you have access to email — the coffee shop, the library, roaming the street or wherever, you can email yourself something worth remembering. Get back to your Mac and you will find it waiting for you in Yojimbo.

It’s a useful addition to a growing number of applescripts for Yojimbo that help the app to work even smarter: Jim Correia’s script that exports a selected email into Yojimbo and Dylan Damian’s del.icio.us-NetNewsWire-Yojimbo “mash-up” scripts.yojimbo, mail.app, apple mail, productivity, notes, applescript, getting organisedSimilar Posts:

Getting Things Done with Yojimbo

Tim Gaden — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 14:11:31 +0000

On the Yojimbo mailing list, Robert Foxworthington has posted his system for “Getting Things Done” (GTD) with Yojimbo.

It’s the first comprehensive attempt to do this that I’ve seen, and makes clever use of the new tagging features recently introduced in Yojimbo 1.3.

Naturally I prefer to use Mail.app to manage how I get things done, but Yojimbo is also a good candidate as Robert points out:

It’s lightweight, easy to use and very well designed (usability wise). Since I keep a lot of my “stuff” in Yojimbo, I also wanted to do my GTD in it so that all things are in one place instead of spread out over multiple applications… which, ever since tagging support was introduced in 1.3, works pretty well now.

He uses Yojimbo Collections to define his projects, grouping them by assigning the same custom icon to home projects or work projects.

Most actions or tasks are empty notes with just a title (and tags). He admit that he misses the strike-out feature for completed actions that often grace GTD apps but it’s not fatal:

When you’re done with an action, simply click Yojimbo’s Delete button and select “Move to Trash”. That way of course, the completed action just moves to the trash and there is no cool crossing-it-out-which-makes-you-feel-you-just-accomplished-something, but that’s OK. You can always look at the Trash’s item count to see that you’re actually getting things done.

Contexts, people, “states” and due dates are all handled by tags with specific suffixes:

Contexts are tags with an @ suffix (e.g. home@, work@).

People have tags too, basically the person’s initials with a #
suffix (e.g. af#, sk#).

Tags with a + suffix are used for “states” (e.g. waiting+,
deferred+, someday+, inbox+).

Due date tags are a date with an ! suffix (e.g. 0612!, 061224!).

Using suffixes helps Yojimbo to auto-complete the tag more reliably.

These customised tags give him nice flexibility in filtering his items with Yojimbo’s search box:

Search for the “home@” tag to see all the things to do at home… or search for “fm#” to see all the items that are related to Fred Madison, or simply search for the “#” tag to see all items that involve other people… or search for “!” to see all the items that have a due date, or search for “0612″ to see everything that’s due in December 2006… or create tag collections for frequently used searches like “inbox+”… or search for the “Urgent” label to see all urgent tasks.

Yojimbo can’t order actions and items as well as some other GTD apps nor does it easily allow for sub-projects, but Robert finds that he doesn’t miss those traditional aspects of the GTD approach as much as he thought he would.

It’s a fine system, useful and clever in equal parts.

If you are not a Yojimbo user, there are lots of other Mac apps to help you get things done.GTD, getting thins done, yojimbo, productivity, tags, collections, howto, mail.app, apple mailSimilar Posts: