Guest Blog: Plug-ins to Increase Productivity
Written by Tim Hannon, Macintosh Consultant and owner of Sound Support
Do you use Apple's Mail application on your Mac? It's a capable email application and one of its best features is that its abilities can be extended using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here's a list of 9 plug-ins for Mail that'll let you increase your productivity.
MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox's name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.
SpamSieve offers better spam protection then Mail's built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It require some initial training, but it's very effective.
MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction and video review will give you a more complete understanding of it's capabilities.
MailTags let's you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you've assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.
WideMail reconfigures Mail's layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen's space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular so they made it the standard layout in version 5.0 of Mail which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7
Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail's handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you're composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.
MessageFont lets you set Mail's default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail's preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which
font is seen by the recipient.
MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn't been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.
MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.
In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about dozens more at the Hawk Wings web site.
Do you use Apple's Mail application on your Mac? It's a capable email application and one of its best features is that its abilities can be extended using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here's a list of 9 plug-ins for Mail that'll let you increase your productivity.
MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox's name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.
SpamSieve offers better spam protection then Mail's built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It require some initial training, but it's very effective.
MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction and video review will give you a more complete understanding of it's capabilities.
MailTags let's you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you've assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.
WideMail reconfigures Mail's layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen's space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular so they made it the standard layout in version 5.0 of Mail which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7
Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail's handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you're composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.
MessageFont lets you set Mail's default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail's preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which
font is seen by the recipient.
MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn't been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.
MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.
In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about dozens more at the Hawk Wings web site.
Subscribe to the iOrganized Blog
Monthly archive
- December 2011 (2)
- November 2011 (20)
- October 2011 (24)
- September 2011 (16)
- August 2011 (14)
- July 2011 (8)
- June 2011 (7)
- May 2011 (7)
- April 2011 (4)
- March 2011 (6)
- February 2011 (7)
- January 2011 (5)
- December 2010 (5)
- November 2010 (7)
- October 2010 (7)
- September 2010 (6)
- August 2010 (6)
- July 2010 (6)
- June 2010 (6)
- May 2010 (6)
- April 2010 (9)
- March 2010 (8)
- February 2010 (7)
- January 2010 (10)
- December 2009 (10)
- November 2009 (7)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (7)
- August 2009 (8)
- July 2009 (6)
Recent posts
Recent comments
- if only my pantry looked like this... alas... on Article: How to Organize Your Pantry
- Different people in the world get the business loans... on Product Spotlight: iPhone cases
- Start your essay accomplishing and don’t know the... on Checklist: Balanced Diet Grocery List
- SEO optimization – is it really needed by you? Our... on Digital Clutter: OfficeDrop
- To investigate the this good topic was not simple and... on Digital Clutter: OfficeDrop
Comments
Post new comment