Flag and File Emails in Apple Mail

I'm not really a big fan of smart folders for my emails. However, there is one smart folder that I can recommend that you make: flagged emails. If you don't already flag your emails, then you should be. Using a simple smart folder for all your flagged messages (Message is Flagged) then you can keep track of all the important emails you flag.



If you're going to be flagging your emails, then you should use the keyboard shortcut to do it: Cmd-Shift-L.



By combining these a smart folder with the keyboard shortcut, you can set up a very efficient system for keeping track of emails that are important to you.

Resend or Redirect Message In Apple Mail

Let's say that you have this email that you need to keep. Let's also say that the person who sent it to you isn't the brightest and decided to give it some "funny" subject like "yo mammas so fat she shakes the earth when she walks" instead of something sensible like "Profit Estimates For Q3 2008". Instead of copying the contents of the message from the current message to a new one, there's a neat little trick you can use to send the to yourself the exact same way you received it.

Simply select the message you want to send again and hit Cmd-Shift-D (Message menu > Send Again). This will open up the message in a new window with everything the sender set–except for the From address.



This is best used for what I described earlier. If you want to send the message to somebody else, perhaps you think that somebody else might care more, then I would suggest using Cmd-Shift-E (Message>Redirect) so that you don't have to delete the excess "To" address.

Application: Letterbox

A great add-on for Mail that I've been using for a while is Letterbox. Letterbox takes the current Apple Mail layout (1 column and 2 rows) and turns it into 3 columns. (See image below.)



This is really nice because when you normally read messages, the mail viewer window is too wide for the message. However, when it's set to 3 columns, the message viewer width is just fine.

After you DUZI Letterbox (Direct download link) go to your Mail.app preferences. Chances are that you'll have to click and hold on the arrow at the far right of the address bar to be able to access the Letterbox preferences.



There are several options here, such as the viewer orientation (the big feature) or alternate line color in the message selector. Browse around and find the best setup for your tastes.

When people were raving about this, I was highly skeptical at first. If you're in the same camp that I was in, then I highly suggest you install it. You can uninstall it later, but odds are you'll love it.

[Letterbox]

Stop Opening! How To Change The Default Applications [System]

Apple doesn't make it neccessarily easy to change the default application for different stuff (email app, photo app, etc.) Here's a quick guide telling you what's where when you want to change your default applications.

Email

This is probably the worst out of all of these. Instead of putting an option somewhere in System Preferences to change your default email client, you have use Mail.app. First, open up Mail.app from the applications folder. Then, setup an email account. Finally, go to the Mail preferences and under General there is the option to change your default email reader.



Inserting a Camera

I originally had it set so that when I inserted a camera, it opened iPhoto. Not any more though! It's too much of a slow down when I only want one picture. To change this behavior open up the Image Capture application in your Applications folder. Hit Cmd-, to open the preferences and change the option from there.

While you can do this in iPhoto, you get more options with Image Capture. (You can choose "Other...." in Image Capture, but not in iPhoto.)



Web Browser

This one is probably the easiest. You can either do it in FireFox, Safari, Camino, and some others.

For Safari:
Hit Cmd-, to open the Safari preferences.
Click on the General tab.
Change the first option to whichever one you want.


In FireFox:
Hit Cmd-, to go to the FireFox preferences.
Click on the Advanced tab.
Click on the General tab inside the Advanced tab.
Click on the button labeled "Check Now" in the lower right hand corner of the window.



Default IM Program

Like the others, you'll need to open up iChat to change this. After opening iChat.app, hit Cmd-, to go to the preferences, click on the General tab and change the first drop down menu to your desired Default IM Program.



Those are the only one's I can think of that need to be changed like this. If you can think of one please post about it in the comments. Also, you might want to check out one of the third part "Default Application" changers called RCDefaultApp. RCDefaultApp is a preference pane that lets you change seemingly every default application for pretty much anything.

Easier Mail Signatures in Apple Mail [Mail]

A long time back, I wrote a post about how you can make Mail.app email signatures using lots of steps, some HTML editing and then some more steps. It was a very slow way of doing it, but the only way I knew of.

As it turns out though, there is a much better way to make HTML (or Rich text) signatures: Copy and Paste. That's right, as gal04 pointed out in my youtube video concerning the subject, you can just select the item that you want in the signature, and paste it in. This means that you can create a signature in your favorite Rich Text editor and then copy and paste it into the signature window. No more having to deal with the .webarchive files! (Unless, of course, you want something like a youtube video embedded into your signature....)

Top 10 Keyboard Shortcuts For Mail [Shortcuts]

Knowing keyboard shortcuts is probably one of the most important, but least used, skills of an effective computer user. I figured I would compile a list of the 10 most important keyboard shortcuts for different applications. For the rest of the week I'll go through Mail, Safari, and Finder/System. Today I be writing about Mail.app's top ten keyboard shortcuts in no particular order.


Mark as Junk Mail: Cmd-Shift-J

No matter how hard you try, you will probably never be completely free of Junk mail. However, if you mark a junk message as such, then Mail will eventually learn what you want and what you don't want.


Get New Mail: Cmd-Shift-N

If you're waiting for a message, this can be really handy. Cmd-Tab to Mail, hit Cmd-Shift-N, then Cmd-Tab back to your previous app.


Reply: Cmd-R and Forward: Cmd-Shift-F

These pretty much go together. Cmd-R will reply to your message and Cmd-Shift-F will forward your message. Always handy if you have a lot of messages to reply to.


Send Message: Cmd-Shift-D

On that same note, once you've hit Cmd-R to reply to a message, you can use Cmd-Shift-D to send the current message. This can greatly decrease the time spent dealing with emails.


Search Your Mailboxes: Cmd-Option-F

This is probably one of the one's I use the least. However, that's probably because it's a strange shortcut. So, I've changed mine to Cmd-K. If you do this, you'll need to change the shortcut for Mailbox>Erase Deleted Messages>In All Mailboxes. I changed that to Cmd-Option-Ctrl-K.


Quicklook Attachments: Cmd-Y

While you can use Cmd-Y in Finder, you cannot use Cmd-Option-Y (Fullscreen quicklook) in mail. Bummer. (By the way, Cmd-Option-Y is for New Todo.)


New Viewer Window: Cmd-Option-N

This one is good to know simply because all too often I'll close the main viewer and need to go looking through the menus for the New View Window option. (Of course, it doesn't occur to me while I'm looking that I can simply click on the dock icon.)


Increase/Decrease Quote Level: Cmd-' and Cmd-Option-'

This one I only use every now and then, but it's still helpful. As Omer over at MacTips.org points out, a good way to remember this is that you're just pressing Command and the key you use to signify quotes in a normal document.


Bounce Messae: Cmd-Shift-B

This goes back to the Junk Mail prevention department. Supposedly, it helps stop spammers if you bounce the messages they send you. (It will appear to them as if the message was sent to a bad address.)


New Mail Message: Cmd-N

This is probably the most obvious of all of these. But you should be using Cmd-N to make a new message and not be clicking in the toolbar. (Or even worse, the menu bar.)


In conclusion, each of these individually will probably not save you a lot of time. However, if you put all of these together, you'll probably save a lot of time when dealing with your email!

Drag Stuff To The Dock [System]

I mentioned in a previous post about dragging folders to the Disk Utility application. Well, there's more to dragging stuff to the dock then just that! Here's a quick list I've come up with:

Dragging text to TextEdit will make a new document using that text.

Dragging text to Mail will make a new mail message with that text.

On the same note, dragging a file to Mail will make a new mail message with that file attached.

Dragging text to Safari will do a google search for that text. (However, this doesn't work in both Webkit and Firefox.) (You can also drag textClippings instead of text. However, this doesn't work in Mail or TextEdit.)

If you know of any that I missed, please point them out in the comments!

Reply Shortcut for Emails

If you're one of the many people who use the mouse over the keyboard, then replying to a message in Mail is probably harder than it has to be. Instead of mousing up to the Reply button in the toolbar, simply Option-Double Click on the message you want to reply to and a reply window will open up!

Make Lists Using an Applescript and a Rule

This alert is for those in reading this from the RSS Feed: There is a video for this post. Watch it here.

Everybody makes lists. The problem though, is that you have to have what you're writing your list on with you to be able to add something to it. Well, with a little bit of applescript, a mail rule and a .txt file, you can be well onto your way to making lists from any email you send yourself! Here's how:

You will need:
This Applescript
Apple Mail

Step 1: Download the Applescript. Or, copy and paste the following code into script editor:

--MacTipper.com

property the_key : "gl"
property list_path : ""
property have_space : 1 -- 0 = false, 1 = true
property have_colon : 1 -- 0 = false, 1 = true


using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages the_messages for rule the_rule
tell application "Mail"
set the_messages to the selection
repeat with each_message in the_messages
set (read status of each_message) to true
set the_subject to subject of each_message as string
set the_body to the content of each_message as string
set new_item to ""
if the_subject begins with the_key then
if (the_body is "
") or (the_body is "") then
set the_count to ((count the_key) + have_space + have_colon + 1)
set new_item to characters the_count thru -1 of the_subject
if new_item contains "'" then
set current_name to new_item
set search_string to "'"
set replacement_string to "\\'"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
set the text_item_list to every text item of the current_name
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
set the new_item to the text_item_list as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
end if
do shell script ("echo '" & new_item & "' >> '" & list_path & "'")
delete each_message
end if
if (the_body is not "
") and (the_body is not "") then
set new_item to the_body
if new_item contains "'" then
set current_name to new_item
set search_string to "'"
set replacement_string to "\\'"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
set the text_item_list to every text item of the current_name
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
set the new_item to the text_item_list as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
end if
do shell script ("echo '" & new_item & "' >> '" & list_path & "'")
delete each_message
end if
end if
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

While this applescript may seem complicated, it really isn't. There's only a few things you have to change.


Step 2: Now you need to edit the applesript to work for you. At the top of the script there are three properties. You need to edit this like this:

the_key: This is what you want as a prefix to the item you're adding, or, as the subject of a group of items. Don't add any spaces or colons to the end of it.

list_path: This is where you list is at. I would suggest opening textedit, making a new text file (.txt) and saving it where you want the list. Then, drag the file between the quote marks. When you do this, you should end up with something like:

property list_path : "/Users/oliver/Desktop/Grocery List.txt"

have_space: This is where you set it up so that you can type a space after you key. So, instead of writing, "glcheese" you have to type "gl cheese" instead. (Where gl is your key." Like the script says, 0 turns off the space and 1 turns it on.

have_colon: This sets whether you put a colon in your subject line or not. So, if you enable this, you would use, "gl:cheese". Once again, 1 enables space and 0 disable it.

If you enable both space and colon then you would have the subject be "gl: cheese".

The reason for having the space/colon functions is so that you can just have "gl" (your key) in the subject and have the body of the message be the items you add to the list. So, you can have a message of:

Subject: gl
Body: cheese
crackers
wine


Step 3: After you've edited the script, save it to somewhere safe on your hard drive. (You don't want to break the Mail rule, do you?)


Step 4: Open up mail and create a new rule. Set the rule like this:



Step 5: Test it out! Send two email's to yourself. One with the subject being your keyword and the item you want to add, and one with the subject being your keyword and the body being a couple things you want to add. For me, I would send:

Message 1:
Subject: gl: eggs
body:

Message 2:
Subject: gl
body: cheese
crackers
wine

Now, when I receive those emails back, the applescript should run. When it runs, it'll take the first message and add "eggs" to the end of my list. For the second message, it will add "cheese", "crackers", and "wine" to the list.


Using this system you can make to-do lists, grocery lists, etc. If any of the steps confused you, you can watch the video I made for this post.

Subscribe To RSS Feeds for Mail in Safari

When Leopard first came out, I pointed out that you can now subscribe to RSS feeds in Leopard Mail. Since then, I've been using Mail as my default RSS reader. The problem with this though, is that I can't preview the RSS feed before I actually subscribe. Granted, I can just right click on the feed and delete it. However, there's a much easier way.

What I've done, is I've set Safari as my default feed reader. Then, whenever I click on a feed link, it opens in that Safari window. Then I subscribe to it in Mail.

What you probably don't know though (because I didn't know about it until recently) is that there is a button in the Safari RSS feed to subscribe to that RSS Feed in Mail:



Just click that button and Mail will open up and subscribe to that feed!

If you want to test this out, you can try it on the RSS Feed for The MacTipper Blog.

Leopard: Embed Web Objects in Mail Messages

Mail has a really cool copy/paste function going on with Safari. What you can do, is copy something on a web page, perhaps a youtube video, and paste it into a new Mail message.

When you do this, the YouTube video you copied will appear in the Mail message in the same way you see it on YouTube. This works with embedded videos or entire web pages (much like Cmd-I).

Unfortunately, if you paste in a youtube video from a youtube page, then the video will automatically play. Which is exactly what it does when you open a youtube video in Safari.

Also unfortunate is that this doesn't work in FireFox or Tiger. However, you can email somebody in Tiger an embedded video from Leopard.

The Services Menu

The services menu has some handy features in it. However, these features don't have shortcuts for them. Here's a list of the one's I find handy, and a keyboard shortcut you might want to add to it.


Look Up in Dictionary -- Option-Ctrl-D

Unlike using Cmd-Ctrl-D to lookup a word in the little dictionary panel panel, the look up in dictionary item opens the dictionary application instead.


Mail»Send Selection -- Cmd-Option-Shift-I

This one is really handy. Simply select the text you want to send to somebody and hit your keyboard shortcut to make a new email with the selected text as the body of the message.


Search With Google -- Cmd-Shift-L

This one is already setup with Cmd-Shift-L and simply takes whatever text is selected and opens a google search with the text.


TextEdit»New Window Containing Selection -- Cmd-Option-Shift-E

This is only helpful if you use TextEdit, but you can use this if you want to quickly edit some text you've selected in Safari.


These aren't the only Service menu items. You might want to check out your services menu to find out if any applications installed some service menu items of their own. (For example: Netnewswire or skype)

Leopard Only: Export Mail's RSS Feeds

If you use Apple Mail as your RSS reader, then you might have noticed that there's no easy way to backup your RSS URLs. Well, somebody over at MacOSXHints.com wrote a simple shell script which will export your feed URLs to the shell. The script is:

IFS=$'\n';for i in $(find ~/Library/Mail/RSS/ -name "Info.plist");do grep "http://" $i | sed "s/.*\(http[^<]*\).*/\1/";done

This can be easily modified to export the URLs to a file called "Mail Feeds" on your desktop:

IFS=$'\n';for i in $(find ~/Library/Mail/RSS/ -name "Info.plist");do grep "http://" $i | sed "s/.*\(http[^<]*\).*/\1/" >> ~/Desktop/Mail\ Feeds.txt;done

If the command line isn't for you, I've written a simple applescript which allows you to either export to the clipboard or to a file. You can download it by clicking on this link.


If all this talk about RSS feeds has made you hungry for another one to subscribe to, then you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the MacTipper Blog.

Mark As Unread in Leopard Mail

BTW, in case you missed it, there was no tip yesterday (sunday) because of Passover.

Leopard Mail has a great improvement that was severely lacking in previous versions of mail. In Tiger, if you marked a message as unread (Cmd-Shif-U) while the message was selected, it would become immediately unmarked. Fortunately, in Leopard, when you mark a message as unread, the message will stay marked as read as long as it is selected.

Interact With Background Applications

A short time back, I suggested an application called Afloat 2 to float Quicktime movies above your other windows. Well, how many clicks/keybourd presses would it take to pause a floating movie? If you answered 2, then you're wrong. As it turns out, you can pause a quicktime movie with one mouse click. To do this, just hold the Command key and click on the pause button.

This post is not about pausing quicktime movies though. Rather, it is about interacting with applications that are in the background. The gist of it is that if you hold the Cmd key, you can click on background windows. However, there are a few catches.


1: Cocoa only.

Regrettably, this only works with Cocoa applications.

Cocoa applications include:
Mail
Safari
Quicktime

Carbon applications include:

Firefox
Finder
iTunes

So, if you're working in Finder (carbon) and want to minimize a Safari (cocoa) window, you can hold Command and click on the yellow minimize button of the Safari window. However, if you're working in Safari, you cannot Cmd-Click on the Finder window to minimize the Finder window.


2: No major interaction

As an example, you can't make a new message window in the background. If you did Cmd-Click on the new message button in mail, it will move mail to the front and open the window. However, you can switch mail messages, check for new mail or even move mail messages around. (But you can't delete a message.)


3: No flash interaction

This is only relevant for Safari, but you can't interact with flash (for example, pause a youtube video). So, if you're watching a youtube video while writing in TextEdit, you have to switch to Safari before pausing the video.


Now that you know how to interact with your applications on a whole new level, what do you find this is most useful for? Leave a comment!

Keyboard Shortcut to Find Messages in Mail

When I'm about to look for a message, I use Cmd-F to hop my cursor over to the search box. Regrettably, you can't do this. Instead, Cmd-F opens up the text search box. Well, after a quick search in the menu bar, (Okay, I was too lazy to search for it earlier!) I found the proper command tucked under the Edit>Find>Mailbox Search menu item. The command is Cmd-Option-F. I'm tempted to change that. But, I don't know what I'll change it to. So, for nwo, Cmd-Option-F is the keyboard shortcut of the day!

Add Keyboard Shortcuts From The Command Line

When I installed Leopard, I lost the functionality (for some odd reason) to add keyboard shortcuts via the System Preferences "Keyboard & Mouse" preference pane. Well, here's a way to add keyboard shortcuts through the command line.

By using the template:

defaults write com.apple.App NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Menu Item"="@n";}'

we can make a keyboard shortcut for a lot of different apps. We change the com.apple.App to the name of the application (case sensitive) and we use these symbols near the end to represent the modifier keys that one would press:

• @ = Command
• $ = Shift
• ~ = Option
• ^ = Control

So, to make a keyboard shortcut in Mail to show the Photo Browser, you would first quit Mail, then type into the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Mail NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Photo Browser"="@$p";}'

Which means that when we open up mail again, we can hit Cmd-Shift-P to open the photo browser.


As another example, if, in Safari, you wanted to make the Google Search box selectable with Cmd-K (the firefox default) and you wanted "Reopen All Windows From Last Session" to be Cmd-Shift-R, you could use:

defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Google Search…"="@k";"Reopen All Windows From Last Session"="@$r";}'

Note that you have to have a ; between the two terms and at the end of the {}.


Finally, to remove a command edit (change Cmd-K back to Cmd-Option-F in Safari) simply replace the "@k" in the previously given command to "" and get rid of the "Reopen...ion"="@$r"; so that you end up with:

defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Google Search…"="";}'

Note, however, that the ... in "Google Search..." is actually an elipsis which is typed using Alt-;.


As a final comment, to add a keyboard shortcut for every application, you would use:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Send Selection"="@~$i";}'


and obviously replace the "Send Selection" with your command and the "@~$i" with the shortcut. BTW, the given command will set the "Send Selection" item in the App_Name>Services>Mail> menu to Cmd-Option-Shift-i so that you can select some text and pop it into an email with a simple shortcut.



Well, that's all for now. Thanks for reading and come back on Sunday for more Mac tips from The MacTipper Blog!

A Few Comments About RSS in Mail

If you're using Apple Mail as your RSS reader, then here are a few things I've noticed about it.


• When you check for mail, you check your feeds.

I am still not 100% convinced, but, from what I can tell, when you hit Cmd-Shift-N to check for new mail, then you'll also check for new RSS feeds. If you would rather just check for new feeds, click on the Mailbox Menu>Get New Mail>RSS.


• RSS Messages are Mail messages

This means that you can put them into folders along with standard emails. You can forward them with Cmd-Shift-F and you can rebuild your RSS feeds "inbox". Also, you can apply rules.


• Speaking of rules, all the rules you make apply to RSS feeds also.

While this could be good, it could also be bad. When creating a rule, make sure that you add the "Message Type" variable. (If required.) As a side-note, rules apply to notes also.l

Getting Rid of Spam

So, you're drowning in spam? Well, here's two ways to help you get rid of it.


1: The Rules

If you're using Apple Mail, then you should also be using the "Rules". In case you didn't know, rules allow you to filter you mail based upon some criteria. With this in mind, we want to set up a rule to get rid of any junk mail not caught by Apple Mail. Here's what you want to do:

• Create a new folder called junk. This way, you can go through this when you want to and can make sure it catches the bad, and not the good.

• Make a new rule in the Mail Preferences (Cmd-,) that will search the entire text of messages for any words that could be spam. I highly suggest you start out with "v¡agra" (with an "i") and then expand from there. (By the way, I used a ¡ instead of an i so that if you set this up already, it doesn't delete this tip.)

• Add to the rules whenever you get a spam message. If somebody sends you a spam from "lottery@lotteryboard.com" then add that From: address to your rules. If you have the message selected, then when you select "From:" from the menu, it will automatically enter in the From: address of the currently selected email.


If you are still getting spam through the rules. Then you probably want to add on Gmail to your filter.


2: The Gmail Filter

If you're not using Gmail, then you probably don't know how great the Junk Mail filtering is. It's not perfect, but, it gets rid of a LOT of junk mail. To put it simply, before I applied Step 1, I was getting a few spam messages each month. Step 1 got rid of those. Here's how you can set up a "Gmail filter".

Step 1: Create a new gmail account. We'll name ours Example.Spam@gmail.com.

Step 2: If you can, then, on the server side of your email account, forward all your emails to example.spam@gmail.com. If you can't, then set up a new Rule in Mail to redirect every message to your gmail account and to delete the message.




Step 3: Log onto your gmail account and make a new filter that if "To:" is "example@gmail.com" (your normal email address) then forward the message to "example@gmail.com". Basically, what we want is the emails coming in from a source and going back to that source.


That's it! Now, you should not have much spam any more. Hope you don't miss it to much! :D

Rebuild Your Mail Index Easily

I've recently starting experiencing problems with Mail not allowing me to see RSS messages. Well, a solution i've found for this is the Rebuild command in Mail. Rebuilding your mailbox will reset your envelope index much like this tip at Hawk Wings does. To rebuild a mailbox, select the mailbox, then, click on the "Rebuild" option at the very bottom of the menu. (You can also type "r" to have it highlighted.) Some other side-effects of doing this can be speeding up Mail and saving you some hard drive space.