Automate Email - Take Control of Automating Your Mac (1.0) - page 91

Automate Apple Mail with Plug-ins
Dozens of third-party Mail plug-ins let you give the program new features, enable significant
new customization options, and even zap unwanted features. For example, plug-ins can
stop spam, encrypt email messages, offer advanced message filing options, change the way
attachments are handled, modify Mail's method of quoting text in replies, and much more.
I won't try to catalog all the available Mail plug-ins here, but allow me to refer you to a
Macworld article I wrote about My nine must-have plug-ins for Apple Mail , and lists that
other people have compiled and maintain: Maximizing Mail: Add-ons for Mac OS X's Mail
app at Macworld, and Apple Mail Plugins and Tools .
However, I do want to put in a plug (so to speak) for a few plug-ins that I find especially
helpful for automating Mail above and beyond what rules do. These plugins allow me to act
on messages in my Inbox and save time when composing or replying:
• Mail Act-On is a multipurpose tool that adds numerous new features, but the
one I like best is its clever approach to filing messages. Mail's built-in rules
run automatically when messages are received, but Mail Act-On adds another
layer of rules that run on demand , via keyboard shortcuts—or when a message
is sent . You can even combine multiple rules into a single keyboard shortcut.
For example, I can select a message and press my user-defined keyboard
shortcut that means “do the right thing with this message,” and it will move the
message into Mailbox A if it's from person A, B, or C, but put it into Mailbox
B if it's from person X, Y, or Z. It's extremely clever, and that's only one tiny
example of what Mail Act-On can do.
Note: Although Mail Act-On is my personal pick for filing messages from the keyboard,
other plug-ins that do similar things and have their own loyal fans include MsgFiler
and MailHub .
• SpamSieve : If you get too much spam in your Inbox even after server-side
filtering, SpamSieve is the best tool, by far, for separating the wheat from the
chaff.
• CargoLifter : Big attachments are a pain for both senders and receivers.
CargoLifter lets Mail use Dropbox (or a similar service) to store the files.
Recipients get a link to the original file.
• QuoteFix : If you don't like the way Mail quotes text in replies, this plugin
lets you customize quoting to your specifications. For example, you can more