Messages /Address Book / Rules

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Messages / Address Book / Rules - The unofficial Mail for Mac OS X FAQ

Messages / Address Book / Rules Q&A

Q. Is there any way to get a filter report or at some way to signify where all my new mail got filtered out to?

A. No, this is not possible.

Q. My rules to route messages from address (mail lists like this one) to specific mailboxes appear to loose the memory of the selected folder. Mail preferences rules says "No mailbox selected".

A. I the fix was deleting "Macintosh HD/Users/username/Library/Mail/MessageSorting.plist", and then rebuilding all my rules.

Q. Is there a way to get Mail.app to create a rule based on the selected message, e.g. auto-complete the "To:" field from the selection when you are setting up the rule?

A. No, just cut-n-paste.

Q. Are there handy dandy shortcut keys for reading mail? I looked in the "Help" but didn't see any reference.

A. If you delete a message, it will jump to the next message (in the direction of the highest sort value). If you sort ascending, it'll jump to the message below, if you sort descending, it'll jump to the message above.

Q. I expected that the message I sent would go out with the same account the original message was sent to, but instead it went out with my default account. Is that how Mail is supposed to work?

A. If the account has its own dedicated inbox (i.e. not in Personal Mailboxes), the reply will go out as from that account. If the address can't be determined, Mail looks at the To: and Cc: headers for addresses that match any that you have for any of your accounts and uses that for the reply address. If the address can't be determined from the prior sentences, the final fallback is the topmost account in the accounts list.

Q. Does Mail have a blind-carbon copy field?

A. Yes, select 'add bcc header' in the Message menu.

Q. When I reply all to a mailing list I just get the list address, but if I reply all to a non-list (or most other lists) it replies to all addresses. Should it work this way?

A. Yes, it is a pain to do the Cc: by hand when replying to an individual on the list. Some lists work this way by design rather than a flaw in Mail.

Q. Is there any way to apply rules to outgoing mail?

A. No, not right now.

Q. Is there a way to make Mail filter out Spam like Entourage or Outlook Express?

A. Yes, by creating strict Rules (in Preferences...) for mail I'm willing to accept and then making the last Rule place anything that has reached it in the Deleted Messages folder. You could substitute another folder for Deleted Messages if you wanted to go though the messages before deleting them.

Q. Is there anyway of marking emails as "Replied" in addition to the blue dot that disappears when the email is read?

A. No, there is currently no way to do that.

Q. Is there anyway of designating priority other than typing it in the subject line?

A. I'm assuming you mean X-Priority:? If so, no.

Q. Is there a shortcut to adding an email address to the Address Book?

A. Any outgoing message or message that you transfer from one mailbox to another (manually or via a rule) will automatically get added to the Address Book.

Q. I know about cmd-Y which adds the current messages sender to the book, what I want is an email address that is in the text of a message to be added to the book.

A. You can drag and drop properly formatted email addresses into address book from Mail.

Q. I really like the way you can flag emails (in the inbox, etc.) with colors. Can this be done manually instead of having to use a rule? If not, is this anticipated in a future release?

A. This is something Apple is going to put in a future release of Mail.

Q. Does Mail show the picture from an Address Book contact?

A. Yes, Mail can display the picture from an Address Book contact on the Mail message.

Q. Can Mail insert a header into each mail message to specify which account it was received on?

A. Yes, if you display your POP accounts separately in their own mailbox in the drawer (because it's easy for us to determine which messages belong to a given account). IMAP accounts are not limited by this.

Q. How can I set Mail to specify a Reply-To field in messages I send? I tried just changing the "Email Address" field of the account preferences, but if I have two accounts with the same e-mail address, I don't get the option to switch between them when composing messages.

A. Put two addresses in the Email Address field, separated by commas. That should get you what you want. Generally, you don't want to put a Reply-To: header unless for some reason you want to 'compel' the recipient to reply only to you and not other recipients listed in the headers. If you also want multiple Full Names per account, you're out of luck.

Q. Can I change whether the cursor starts at the top or bottom of the message?

A. Sorry you cannot.

Q. Can I customize the autotext "On Friday, March 30, 2001, at 10:43 PM, Bill Bob wrote:" setting?

A. If you want to be daring, you can edit this file and relaunch Mail: Macintosh HD/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Compose.strings Do so at your own risk.

Q. Is there anyway to supress Mail from displaying messages in the preview pane when I click on them?

A. One workaround (or tip, you might call it) for this one is that you can move the horizontal divider down to the bottom (or double-click it for a shortcut). In that mode, when you select a message, it will not load the body of the message.

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