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MailTags - Add keywords and more to Mail messages Pick of the Week
MailTags imageThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 8 out of 10]
  • Developer: Scott Morrisson / Product page
  • Price: $20.00 (uncrippled donationware)
From the creator of previous Pick of the Week Mail Act-On comes this amazingly cool tagging plug-in for Mail. MailTags lets you, well, tag your mail in a number of ways--you can assign due dates, create iCal to do items, add multiple keywords, and even add comments. MailTags also integrates with Spotlight, making it easy to then work with all your coded messages.

Instead of trying to cover everything that MailTags can do, I'll just point you to Dan Frakes' recent Mac Gems entry on the program; Dan does a good job of explaining how it works and some ways it can be used.

There's one big limitation with MailTags, however -- it won't work well with messages stored on an IMAP server. While it will let you tag such messages, the tagging is local, and if you ever rebuild that IMAP box, all tag data is lost. However, I'm so impressed with the feature set in MailTags that I'm now changing my workflow. I'll be moving most of my "hot" messages to a local folder, and then move a copy of any "must handle ASAP!" messages to the IMAP folder if I know I'll be going on the road. But if you rely on IMAP and keep your mail in IMAP-stored folders, MailTags probably isn't for you.

I've only just started using MailTags, but it's already helped me keep track of the multitude of stuff that flows through the inboxes each day.
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  • Currently 2.40 / 5
  You rated: 5 / 5 (10 votes cast)
 
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MailTags - Add keywords and more to Mail messages
Authored by: cvk_b on Mar 30, '06 08:06:31AM

This plug-in also changed my work flow.

Turning any message into a calendar event is very helpful. Plus you can assign project names to messages, which are easily located with spotlight.

I did have some problems closing my mail preferences after installing this. Assigning a default due date in the 'options' fixed the issue.



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MailTags - Add keywords and more to Mail messages
Authored by: mpress25 on Mar 30, '06 08:23:55AM

Thanks to Rob, I discovered this nifty item from his previous Mail POTW. It truly is a sweet piece of add-on software. And combined with MenuCalendarClock for iCal, I can set To Do Items, etc. right from emails and then view them from my system menu bar without ever going into the iCal calendar.

This is a great organizer for emails...



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MailTags - Add keywords and more to Mail messages
Authored by: Helge33 on Mar 31, '06 07:05:22AM

I has been as excited about this useful plug-in like everybody else - until I tried to *search* for some of the keyword, projects etc...
Nothing is working with MailTags 1.2, Mail 2.0.7 and OX 10.4.5, I cannot search anything rendering this utility useless :-(



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MailTags - search problems
Authored by: markymark on Mar 31, '06 07:34:09AM

I just checked this very quickly. I did a search for words in the 'note' field. It worked with Inbox or Sent - but not if I tried 'All Mailboxes'



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MailTags - Smart mailboxes
Authored by: ostman on Mar 31, '06 04:25:26AM

I have also found it to be extremely useful, particularly in tandem with smart mailboxes. When I read incoming mail, I can set a keyword to the email, and have a smartbalibox setup to automatically store each keyword individually.

It's amazing how much time this can save when you need to find certain catefories of mail later.

Andy



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MailTags - Smart mailboxes
Authored by: sjk on Mar 31, '06 12:28:35PM
Being able to organize messages without having to care (too much) which mailboxes they're in is a useful and powerful abstraction. The combination of message tagging with smart mailboxes makes it possible to create virtual mailboxes containing more arbitrary groups of messages regardless of where they're stored. Very cool.

With the mechanism for messages to appear in more than one location simultaneously it's hard (for me) to use mail systems without that capability, being limited to simple traditional mailboxes. That's almost like what using iTunes and iPhoto would be like without playlists and albums.

Speaking of iTunes/iPhoto, I can imagine Mail having another type of "virtual" mailbox that behaved like playlists/albums. You could add/remove messages to/from them without copying/moving/deleting the "real" messages. But tagging/untagging used with smart mailboxes achieves a similar result.

Btw, what's a smartbalibox ? Been to Indonesia lately? :-)

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MailTags - Smart mailboxes
Authored by: ostman on Apr 03, '06 04:01:03AM

"Btw, what's a smartbalibox ? Been to Indonesia lately? :-)"

Chalk it up to Friday tiredness!



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MailTags - Add keywords and more to Mail messages
Authored by: smorr on Apr 06, '06 06:15:15AM

For Those people concerned with IMAP rebuilds. I just released version 1.2.1 that patches this problem. -- rebuilding IMAP mailboxes in 1.2.1 will now preserve mailTags.



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