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Up close with Mail Act-On 2

Macworld Video
By Dan Frakes, Macworld OCT 24, 2008 3:22 am PDT
Macworld Video
Image: IDG

Earlier this week, I reviewed Mail Act-On 2.0.1, an add-on for Apple’s Mail program. Among its many talents, Mail Act-On lets you run mail rules—automated actions—using the keyboard. This means you can apply rules to specific messages, anytime you want. (Mail can apply rules only to all incoming messages at the time the messages are received.)

But Mail Act-On has a number of other great features, as well, including the ability to apply rules to outgoing e-mail and a way to quickly file e-mail into your folders using just a few keystrokes. In this week’s video, I demonstrate a few of the ways in which Mail Act-On can improve your email efficiency.

Download Macworld Video #75

• Format: MPEG-4/H.264

• Resolution: 320 x 240 (iPhone & iPod compatible)

• Size: 8.9MB

• Length: 4 minutes, 16 seconds

Show Notes

If you’re interested in other ways of enhancing Mail, check out these other Mail add-ons:

  • MailTags: From the same developer of Mail Act-on, MailTags lets you tag e-mail messages with keywords or categories that are Spotlight-searchable, as well as add notes, priorities, and due dates to messages.
  • MiniMail: Lets you shrink the main Mail window down to a tiny version that lets you monitor—and even reply to—incoming mail without taking up much space on your screen.
  • MsgFiler and Mail Attachments Iconizer: MsgFiler provides functionality similar to Mail Act-On’s Move feature for quickly filing email into folders; Mail Attachments Iconizer improves the way Mail handles attachments.
  • MailFollowUp & MailRecent: MailFollowUp adds a Followup command to mail, which creates a copy of a previously sent message with the original e-mail text in quoted form, making it clear that you’re following up on a previous e-mail. MailRecent adds Move To Recent, Copy To Recent, and Go To Recent items to the Messages menu.
  • Letterbox: This add-on enhances Mail with a new widescreen view that places the preview pane to the right of the message list, rather than below it.
  • MailScripts: These AppleScript add-ons for Mail let you perform actions such as adding all the recipients of the current message to your address book, creating rules based on the current message, removing duplicate messages, and opening all mailboxes with new messages.

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