A rule to highlight replies to messages sent in Mail

Jun 15, '04 10:17:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Mail uses a uuid when it generates message-id's. Part of the uuid is determined by the Mac from where you sent the message. When someone replies to your message, most mailers put the message-id of your message in the In-reply-to: and References: headers of messages that are responding to your message. Subsequent replies to that message will keep the message-id in the References: header.

You can use this fact to set filters that highlight messages that are replies to messages you sent, and to highlight messages that are in a thread of discussion where you actively participated. First, in a Terminal window run the uuidgen program to see what a uuid looks like on your Mac:

$ uuidgen
6286E5CE-BBE9-11D8-B143-000A95739F62
$
Notice the part after the last dash, which happens to be 000A95739F62 on my powerbook. It will be different on your Mac.

To highlight replies, establish a filter on the In-reply-to header. In Mail, bring up Preferences and select Rules. Click on Add Rule. Change the Description to "highlight replies." Press the "From" pop-up and select "Edit Header List..." at the bottom of the list. Type "In-reply-to" in the Header field (capitalized exactly as I've shown), click Add Header, then click OK. Press the "From" pop-up again and select "In-reply-to."

In the text field to the right of the "Contains" pop-up, paste the part of the uuid after the last dash. Then select whatever actions you prefer, for example, Set Color Of Background to Orange, or whatever you want. To filter on threads you've participated in, use a similar procedure with the References header.

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