Mail: can I move emails by typing the name of the mail folder

[dtbain]

Hello

I was forced by my employer to ditch gmail.

I've found that Apple Mail is a pretty good replacement, and I prefer it to Outlook, except for one thing.

When I want to move an email to a folder, Outlook allows you to type the name of the folder, and after a few characters it suggests a few plausible folders, as Gmail also does.

So far as I can tell, Apple mail doesn't. If so, then for me this is a significance drawback. I've hundreds of folders and sub-folders, and it would be very time-consuming every time I want to file an email to have to find the folder to drag it to or otherwise move it to.

Am I missing something, or does Apple Mail really lack this feature?

If it does, do people expect it to get that feature any time soon?

(While I am at it, I loved another feature of Gmail, namely that one can use labels instead of folders, the key difference being the a single email can live in more than one label/folder. Is there any way of getting that on Apple Mail?)

Many thanks for your help; much appreciated.

David

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Mail.app supports a handful of shortcuts to move messages to specific folders but not arbitrary folders. The label concept is unique to GMail and isn't available in Mail.app, where folders are used to categorize the email. Gmail really keeps all of your email in one folder and uses the labels to filter them in or out of your current view.

What is the backend powering your email? Exchange? O365? Internal? Depending on the answer, you can maybe try Spark to see if it has better support for your workflow.

 

[dtbain]

thanks - more

Many thanks for the reply.

I take your point about labels, which in effect allow one email to be stored in more than one label/folder. My impression is that that is indeed unique to gmail, which is a great shame.

But it still strikes me as an oddly basic shortcoming that, when choosing to place an email in sub-folder "finances 2018", say, I have to drill down to that subfolder either to drag the email to it or to assign it to it using right-click or the Move button in the taskbar. Is that right? Is there no other way? It would be such help if I could start typing "Fin ..." and Mail would suggest "Finances 2018" among, perhaps, other options.

The backend of my email is Exchange. Do you think Spark would make sense? Do it have either or both of the above features?

Thanks

d

Mail.app supports a handful of shortcuts to move messages to specific folders but not arbitrary folders. The label concept is unique to GMail and isn't available in Mail.app, where folders are used to categorize the email. Gmail really keeps all of your email in one folder and uses the labels to filter them in or out of your current view.

What is the backend powering your email? Exchange? O365? Internal? Depending on the answer, you can maybe try Spark to see if it has better support for your workflow.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Spark can access Exchange without any problems and since it's a free app available in the App Store, I'd give it a shot. When it comes to categorizing email, I tend to use email rules to do that. I used Spark for a little bit of time and don't remember if you can move email faster in there.

 

[pm-r]

When I want to move an email to a folder,

What about setting up a rule or various rules to do the moving and some of the other things you want to do with Mail.app.




- Patrick
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[pm-r]

I don't use it but what about using Mailbutler.app that might provide you with some of the options you want:
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/56115/mailbutler

Or Mail Act-On
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/17808/mail-acton

It seems to have something similar to what you used to use by just typing in part of the mailboxname.

Or there may be some other Mail enhancers you could checkout here:
https://www.macupdate.com/find/mac/mail




- Patrick
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[dtbain]

What about setting up a rule or various rules to do the moving and some of the other things you want to do with Mail.app.




- Patrick
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Thanks Patrick. I am new to Mail so not completely on top of rules, but it looks like they would tell Mail to automatically file an email when certain conditions are met, whereas what I want is to read the email in the inbox and then tell Mail where to file the email myself, but not by dragging or dropping or selecting from a huge menu, but instead simply by starting to type the mailbox name.

But perhaps I've misunderstood?

d

 

[dtbain]

Patrick, this is FANTASTIC, thank you so much. Mail-acton does precisely what I wanted and has in the last 20 minutes saved me a 10 minutes!

Thank you again. I haven't used macupdate before so hope I can trust it, but in any case the app is installed and so far is working very nicely.

d

 

[pm-r]

Patrick, this is FANTASTIC, thank you so much. Mail-acton does precisely what I wanted and has in the last 20 minutes saved me a 10 minutes!

Thank you again. I haven't used macupdate before so hope I can trust it, but in any case the app is installed and so far is working very nicely.

d

Glad to read this dtbain, and macupdate has been labeled with adding extras, I found it works well but pay attention that you're just getting what you want.

I avoid their "macupdate" desktop app that they sometimes like to include, but do glance over many of the user comments and realize that commenting trolls exist at such sites.

So glad the read that Mail-acton will do what you want.




- Patrick
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[IWT]

Nice one, Patrick.

Can't give thumbs-up; got to spread it around......

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Nice one, Patrick.

Can't give thumbs-up; got to spread it around......

Ian

Thanks for the thought Ian, and I'm not sure that still works the way the forums are working these days.

BTW: What's the difference between the I seem to have been labelled with and your ???

But you do have more brownie points, or I guess they would be scout points.




- Patrick
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[IWT]

Patrick

Traditionally, Premium Member was for those who paid a "subscription" up front, thus avoiding the ads and, at the same time, giving financial support to the Forums.

Senior Member - well, I don't know for certain but suspect that age and decrepitude feature there somewhere

One passes through the stages of youth, middle age, becomes a geriatric and then a dinosaur. All that's left after that is fossil.

Ian

 

[pm-r]

Thanks Ian.

At least they got my "age and decrepitude feature" correct. ;D




- Patrick
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[dtbain]

is there a plug-in to add labels to Mail?

Thanks again, Patrick, that was so useful that I thought I would try my luck and ask whether you know whether I can add one final feature that I miss from gmail.

This is labels. What is lovely about gmail is that it uses labels but at the same time allows you to display your labels in a hierarchical folder structure on the left-hand side.

This in effect means that there is no difference for the user between labels and folders EXCEPT that with gmail labels one email can appear in more than "folder" at a time, so if a secretary emails me to tell me in a single email that the faculty meeting in on Friday AND to tell me that a student has dropped out of my course, I can put that email both in my Faculty "folder" and my Students "folder". Similarly, if I send an email that is to do with students, I can put my sent email in the Student folder without thereby removing it from the Sent Mail folder. Another nice feature of it is that if an archived conversation comes back into the inbox thanks to a reply, one needn't re-assign it to a folder when archiving it, since it comes back into the inbox with the labels assigned when originally archived.

Anyway, though I am getting on much better with Mail than I expected, especially now that I can assign emails to folders quickly using the plug-in you recommended, it would be even better if I could have this feature, where I could in effect assign the same email to a number of folders.

(Even with files on a Mac you can do a version of this by using aliases.)

Anyway, I am guessing that there is no plug-in for this, but if you know of one please do let me know. (I probably should use another thread in this forum somewhere?)

All best

David

 

[dtbain]

PS. I've noticed, though it's far from a perfect solution, that I can use copy-to make copies of an email to multiple folders. And there's also the smart folders you speak of, though I'd prefer something manual (since the key word for instance won't always be present) and that can be arranged hierarchically.

But don't worry; I am pretty certain I am not going to get this in Mail, which I am going to stick with anyway, and life must go on!

d

 

[pm-r]

But don't worry; I am pretty certain I am not going to get this in Mail, which I am going to stick with anyway, and life must go on!

I would have thought that some combinations of Rules, Smart Folders, Email message color label, and copies should do what you need, or maybe even something like Automator could help. And don't forget to use some various websearches.

I, and I imagine, quite a few other Mac users are still trying to find an email client that could work and get modified as well as the old Eudora.app.




- Patrick
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[RichardShaffer]

one more idea

Hi, reading your message, I think if you often use e-mail, in that case I can recommend you good online service, which I personally use almost every day.

I found it somewhere about half a year ago, on the Internet, and still using it. I want to advice you the product that making email migration an easy ride - time after time. You may look on email extraction tool here for more details. Additional options make it possible to recreate the original mailbox folders structure in on your hard drive, keep the original dates of creation for all extracted files and define a standard name for messages with an empty subject field, and so forth.
I think you worth to try it once, and you will see by yourself. With so many free and commercial tools and services available today, no wonder people get confused and give up too soon.

 

[pm-r]

Hi, reading your message, I think if you often use e-mail, in that case I can recommend you good online service, which I personally use almost every day.

Unfortunately maybe, it seems to be restricted as it's name implies: Data Extraction Kit for Outlook

Also, not exactly a Mac app:

System Requirements: OS Microsoft Windows®, Microsoft Outlook® v.2000-2016 (standalone installation, at least one local .pst user profile should be configured). Sources: Outlook PST file or Outlook User Profile.

Just saying, just some basic details about it for Mac use…

Or did I misread something with a quick glance over.




- Patrick
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