Quick HOWTO questions for Mac Mail (was "is Mac OSX more stable than Windows?)

[azhrei_fje]

Forked from: Is The Apple OS More Stable Than MS Windows?

@ azhrei_fje:

okay so your problems are ones of not knowing how to do something in Mail as opposed to it really being not able to do what you need.

I can tell you how to solve most of that stuff almost immediately ... however it is clear from your post that you like Linux and are so used to it that anything different will just confuse/seem wrong to you.

Well, if you can solve most of that stuff "almost immediately", I'm ready and waiting to hear from you. Hence this new thread, so as not to further derail the original one.

Let's take the issues one at a time:

1. Mail doesn't find plain-text dates and offer to create an iCal entry for them.
2. How do I reply to a message in a folder, say it's called "Mom", and tell Mail to keep the sent copy in the folder called "Mom"?
3. How can I run a shell script whenever a new mail message arrives?
4. When a message has a color applied to it using the filters, how do I turn the color off later, say after I'm done processing the message?
5. How do I define multiple outbound SMTP servers on different ports so that I can choose one?
6. How to I tell Mac Mail not to display HTML attachments as HTML, but to either (a) leave them as attachments or (b) displayed them as raw text?
7. How do I tell Mac Mail to compress some or all of an email message without compressing the message in advance and attaching it?

If you want to just pick one or two of those and answer them, I would be most appreciative!

 

[Steve Jung]

[*]How do I reply to a message in a folder, say it's called "Mom", and tell Mail to keep the sent copy in the folder called "Mom"?

If I understand your question properly, you want messages both "To:" and "From:" your mom in the same folder.

So you need to create a rule.
1. Go to Mailreferences
2. Click on the Rules tab.
3. Click on the Add Rule button and name it.
4. Under where it says, "If [any] of the following conditions are met:" there is a pull-down menu. Select "From" then enter your mom's address in the adjacent box.
5. Under where it says, "Perform the following actions:" there are two menus. In the second menu select the mailbox you want to send the messages to.
6. Finally, click the OK button to save you rule.

 

[azhrei_fje]

If I understand your question properly, you want messages both "To:" and "From:" your mom in the same folder.

That's correct.

So you need to create a rule.
1. Go to Mailreferences
2. Click on the Rules tab.
3. Click on the Add Rule button and name it.
4. Under where it says, "If [any] of the following conditions are met:" there is a pull-down menu. Select "From" then enter your mom's address in the adjacent box.
5. Under where it says, "Perform the following actions:" there are two menus. In the second menu select the mailbox you want to send the messages to.
6. Finally, click the OK button to save you rule.

Okay, I tried it. It does exactly what I thought it would do: new messages coming in are put into the designated folder.

But that was only half of the question. The other half was how do I force the copy of OUTBOUND messages to go into that same folder, too? Perhaps this is something that Leopard's Mail can do but not Tiger's?

I tried creating a dummy folder, "Xyz", and told the rule to drop all email from <xyz@abc.com> into that folder (as you described). When I send an email, my copy of the sent mail is still put into the Sent folder, not "Xyz". When I click on Get Mail and the new message is downloaded, it is correctly put into "Xyz". So I go to the Xyz folder and hit Reply, type in a new message, and send it. The copy of the sent message still shows up in Sent, not in Xyz.

In KMail there is a general setting, "Save all outbound messages in the same folder as the original being replied", or something like that. Which is perfect for me: I have about a dozen clients that I deal with via email every day and having their messages automatically go into the correct folder -- and my responses as well -- makes things very simple for me. With Mac Mail I have to go back and drag individual messages from Sent into the correct folder so that threads are properly preserved. (Threaded messages are very important when I'm dealing with so many companies, each of them with multiple sales contacts!)

Thanks for the help; I appreciate the attempt.

 

[azhrei_fje]

Well, if you can solve most of that stuff "almost immediately", I'm ready and waiting to hear from you. Hence this new thread, so as not to further derail the original one.

Well, I want to say "thank you" to Steve as he attempted to solve one of my Mail issues on OSX (Tiger). I have biases, just like we all do, but I truly would like the Mac to work using the software that comes with it. (I have installed some non-Apple software though, such as Quicksilver.)

I've noticed that dvvega can't be bothered to show how he can solve these issues "almost immediately", so I'm guessing he was just blowing smoke and doesn't really know what he's talking about. Or maybe he was thinking that I could "almost immediately" wipe OSX and install Linux.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to keep looking for solutions. If I find any I'll come back here and post; perhaps I can save someone else some trouble.

 

[Rackhir]

I know you're asking about Mail for OSX, but have you tried Thunderbird 2 from Mozilla? It is available for OSX as well. Might be a better fit for you perhaps. There are other email clients available for the mac after all.

Unfortunately, I'm on Leopard so I can't really help you with Tiger specific questions (I don't have a separate mac to check out questions like this on).

 

[ephemeron]

Well, if you can solve most of that stuff "almost immediately", I'm ready and waiting to hear from you. Hence this new thread, so as not to further derail the original one.

I prefer to avoid OS holy wars, so have no idea what's going on in the other thread, and most of the features you ask for are genuinely missing*, but I can help with a couple:

Mail doesn't find plain-text dates and offer to create an iCal entry for them.

Apple added this feature in Leopard.

How can I run a shell script whenever a new mail message arrives?

This gets a bit cumbersome, but what you need to do is wrap the shell script in an Applescript (using the do shell script command) and set a rule that matches "Every Message" and runs that Applescript.

How do I define multiple outbound SMTP servers on different ports so that I can choose one?

Preferences...->Accounts->"Edit Server List..." on the drop-down SMTP Servers menu. The pain in the neck here is that you need to go back to Account Preferences every time you want to switch SMTP servers.

*Mail.app is not Apple's finest work by any measure, but I've been using it for years while I wait for something sufficiently better to come along.

 

[azhrei_fje]

I prefer to avoid OS holy wars, so have no idea what's going on in the other thread, and most of the features you ask for are genuinely missing*, but I can help with a couple:

Heh-heh, I understand.

Apple added this feature in Leopard.

Thanks. I'll add that to a list of (possible) reasons to upgrade.

This gets a bit cumbersome, but what you need to do is wrap the shell script in an Applescript (using the do shell script command) and set a rule that matches "Every Message" and runs that Applescript.

That's what I thought. I've written a couple of AppleScripts already (for example, one to prompt for a memory size when running MapTool.

I was hoping there's something a bit better than that, but I appreciate the confirmation. (Because AppleScript can't seem to run a shell script other than by creating a Terminal and feeding it a command line. The problem here is that if Terminal is not already, the "do shell" command seems to start two Terminals (on Tiger): one to run the shell command and another one that just sits there. There are other issues, but they wouldn't apply to running a script from Mac Mail.)

Preferences...->Accounts->"Edit Server List..." on the drop-down SMTP Servers menu. The pain in the neck here is that you need to go back to Account Preferences every time you want to switch SMTP servers.

Really? I'll have to check on this one -- I don't remember seeing that option in the Preferences. Thank you very much!

*Mail.app is not Apple's finest work by any measure, but I've been using it for years while I wait for something sufficiently better to come along.

I agree with that! The previous poster suggested Thunderbird and I'll probably look into that ... but from my point of view, the ideal operating system should provide basic productivity software and do a good job at it. If it doesn't, it's no better than Windows where users have to download a bunch of third-party apps to make a usable system. Apps that typically don't play together very well or don't integrate well with the operating system.

Thank you, ephemeron, for rising to the challenge and answering a couple of my questions.

 

[Steve Jung]

Well, I want to say "thank you" to Steve as he attempted to solve one of my Mail issues on OSX (Tiger). I have biases, just like we all do, but I truly would like the Mac to work using the software that comes with it. (I have installed some non-Apple software though, such as Quicksilver.)

You're welcome. Sorry I couldn't answer your questions, though.