Set keyboard shortcuts in Mail for outgoing e-mail accounts

Nov 21, '08 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: kirkmc

As I was sending an e-mail today, I wondered if there were any easy way to choose my outgoing account in Mail. Like many people, I have several accounts, and need to choose specific ones for messages I send to certain clients. So I wondered -- since you can apply keyboard shortcuts to menu items using the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane -- maybe that would work for this drop-down menu in Mail.

So I went to that preference pane, clicked the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, and clicked the + button to get the new keyboard shortcut dialog. I chose Mail as the application, then entered the exact information that displays for one of my accounts (in the Mail 'From' drop-down menu). The format of each menu item is:

First_name Last_name <my_email@my_host>
Make sure to include the angle brackets, and put a space before the first one. Choose a shortcut -- I chose Command-Option-Control and a letter for each account -- then click Add. As you can see from Rob's screenshot, it works as expected.

Go to Mail and press Command-N to create a new message. Now, just press your keyboard shortcut, and you'll see the outgoing account changes to the one you've chosen. If you have several accounts, do this for all of them (or the ones you use most often). This doesn't save a lot of time, but it means I can use the keyboard instead of the mouse to make that change.

[robg adds: You can also add shortcuts for the outbound server and Signature drop-down menus. I guess this is to be expected, but I'm always impressed when keyboard shortcuts function on drop-down menus without having to first activate those menus.]

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