In my ongoing quest to find the best possible Mail experience, I’m always looking out for interesting plugins, hacks and tips to extend this amazing email client. Here I’m going to feature two great plugins for Mail, that simply flush it with power and features while still keeping it simple and elegant.
MailTags
Almost every piece of software out there is going the tag way. Tags are a great way to sort and organise your data in a non-linear way. Unfortunately, Mail comes with the old fashioned way of organising emails using folders. Nothing wrong with them, until you find that you have too many emails coming in, and sorting them is really a pain.
MailTags integrates with Mail, by adding a sidebar which can be shown or hidden at any time. This sidebar is really powerful with which you can add so many organisational functions that it is hard to believe that it’s just a plugin. Using the sidebar you can add tags in their simplest forms, assign ‘projects’ to emails, set reminders or ‘ticklers’, change the message colour, create a todo or event from Mail directly into iCal, or add a note.
Adding tags to messages can be done from the sidebar, or from the menubar. Using the sidebar you can use the drop down menu to add old tags, or type them in to create new ones. You can also use the menubar to add these tags.
The best part about all of this? You can use the default mail rules to add any of the above!
Searching
The best part of using these tags, is that you can narrow down your search with the new fields that are added to your toolbar. So I can search for “Smoking Apples” and then narrow down the search to only show me messages that have the tag Smoking Apples. Same goes for projects and notes.
I did find a few faults in the UI though. The sidebar seems squashed up and is totally non-resizeable. I would have also preferred a floating palette of sorts, where one could drag and drop tags on emails. Even managing tags is a little awkward in the preference pane.
Using MailTags over the past two weeks have really helped me sort my emails into a neat little virtual structure, that makes finding that particular email a breeze. If you have a large influx of emails, I’d highly recommend the $29.95 that MailTags demands. A 21 day trial is available for your testing purposes.
Next up, Mail Act-on…
Personally, I’m not a keyboard guy. I do use a lot of shortcuts, but I’m very happy using buttons, drag-and-drop, and other mousy activities. But I know some who just live off the keyboard. Mail Act-on is definitely the killer app for keyboarding Mail users.
The main drive behind Mail Act-on, is organising your emails. For instance, if I want to move an official email to the SA folder, I simply press F1, M, and enter. I could also directly hit F3 and enter to do that same task. Once you get the hang of where exactly those menus are, hitting those keys is extremely easy.
Integration
The best part of Act-on, is its integration with MailTags. You can quickly add keywords and projects to your emails using the Act-on window. It is in fact much faster to set keywords and projects using Act-on than the MailTags sidebar.
There’s not much else to say about Mail Act-on other than it being a real time saver. If sorting out emails is your thing, Mail Act-on should definitely be high on your list (don’t you have a list?).
Both these plugins go hand in hand, which is why I just couldn’t do a review of them one by one. Although each of these plugins will work beautifully separately, when put together they perform magic. MailTags costs $29.95 and Mail Act-on is down at $19.95. Both great plugins and a must have for any serious email user.
