A new version of Mail Act-On is in the mail

Indev Software's Mail Act-On extension for Apple Mail has been updated to version 2 last week. Among the new features are an improved user interface, support for undo, and applying rules to outgoing email messages.

So, what does Mail Act-on do?

If you have not heard of Mail Act-On before, let me quickly describe what it does; if, however, you are already using Mail Act-On, feel free to skip to the next section to read up on the new features in v2.0.

As you may already know, Apple Mail has a feature called rules to automate some of your daily email management tasks. These rules are a combination of conditions and actions: when the rule is applied, the actions are performed on those messages that match the selection criteria defined in the conditions. E.g., you could create a rule that will flag every message whose "From" field contains your boss's email address.

Per default, Apple Mail will automatically apply these rules to all incoming messages as well as to specific selected messages when the Message > Apply Rules command is invoked. However, Mail will always apply all (active) rules.

Mail Act-On's core functionality is lifting that limitation by letting you launch just a single specific rule: to launch a rule, you first summon Mail Act-On via a configurable keyboard shortcut, and then either select the rule from the list in the software's main window, or press the key assigned to the respective rule.

Here's a real-life example for how to use Mail Act-On: a while ago, I followed Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero advice and reduced my mailboxes to "Hold", "Wait on", "Someday", "Archive", and "Archive BIZ". Instead of moving new emails from my inbox to any of these folders by dragging and dropping them with the mouse, I have defined rules in Mail Act-On that simply move the selected message(s) to on of these folders.

The keyboard shortcuts I'm using are: F(ollowup) → Hold, D(elegated) → Wait on, S(omeday) → Someday, A(rchive) → Archive (Note that these keys are all next to each other, so that I can easily place my left hand's fingers on them and just leave 'em there while sifting through my inbox). To move a message from the inbox to, say, the Hold folder, I hit the hashmark "#" to bring up Mail Act-On, and then hit "F". Done!

As for the two archive folders, Mail Act-On lets you assign the same keyboard shortcut to more than one rule. By using those rules' condition statements, different actions can be applied to a set of selected messages, e.g., automatically moving emails addressed to my business account to the "Archive BIZ" folder while all others go into the generic "Archive."

Of course, you are not limited to moving messages around: you have all of the actions at your disposal that are available in Mail's rules, including launching any AppleScript to be applied to the selected messages. All in all, I find handling emails this way to be vastly more efficient than having to resort to using the mouse.

What, then, is new in the new release of Mail Act-On?

And what is new in version 2?

Revised UI The developers at Indev have applied quite a bit of graphics polish to Mail Act-On's UI, as you can see in the screenshot of the software's main window above, but they have also added a very handy new feature to this window: hitting the "summon" key while the window is displayed now toggles locking that window so it stays open after applying a rule.

With the main window locked, pressing the right-arrow key applies the selected action to the message(s) selected in Mail's main window, and it also moves keyboard focus to the message list in Mail. Typing the left-arrow key puts the focus back on the Mail Act-On window. By using a combination of the arrow keys and the keyboard shortcuts assigned to the rules, you can now quickly work through a whole bunch of email messages without having to re-open the Mail Act-On window every time you have applied a rule.

New Rules preferences In the previous version of the software, rules for Mail Act-On were defined in the same list as all other Mail rules, and each rule's keyboard shortcut was defined right inside the title of the rule, which was a bit awkward. In release 2, Mail Act-On presents a revised Rules panel in Mail, that now has separate panes for Inbox Rules, Outbox Rules, and Keystroke Rules.

In the previous release of the software, the rules' keyboard shortcuts were defined in the rule name.

The dialog sheets used for defining the latter look just like the stock Mail rule dialogs, and they also include all available conditions and actions, but add a little text field for assigning the keyboard shortcut. This design is much cleaner and less error-prone.

The new rule definition dialog in Mail Act-On 2 looks just like Mail's own, except for the Act-On Key: field.

Outbox Rules Apple Mail has often been criticized for the lack of rules to be automatically applied to sent messages (vs. incoming messages). Mail Act-On fills this void by adding just such rules, and they're handled in exactly the same way is Inbox rules. Excellent!

There is just a minor issue here: the Inbox rules' conditions for "Sender" ("Sender is in my address book" etc.) do not make much sense when applied to sent messages, because that sender will always be you. Instead, for Outbox Rules, those condition should read "Any Recipient..." That would be very handy, e.g., for creating a rule that automatically archives all sent messages whose addressees are listed in my Address Book database.

Support for undo How often have I cursed the lack of undo for Mail Act-On rules: "OK, let me archive this. Oh, darn, I think I still need that email after and should have moved it to the Hold folder instead." And all the efficiency of email handling is annihilated by having to dive into the Archive folder, locate the message, and then move it to the Hold folder via Mail Act-On.

That is now a thing of the past, because now there is support for undoing a rule you have triggered via Mail Act-On. While it may appear a bit inconspicuous, this is definitely my personal favorite among the new features in release 2.

Mail Act-On's move/copy view with a complete list of literally all of your mailbox folders.

Moving/copying messages Moving and copying files to mailbox folders most probably is the foremost use for Mail Act-On, and the new release has a dedicated feature for moving selected messages to any mailbox folder in Mail. A dedicated keyboard shortcut opens the Mail Act-On main window showing a list of target folders, and by typing a search term, that list is filtered just like a Spotlight search. However, that view literally shows all folders, including a complete list of inbox folders for every email account configured on your Mac, etc..

Therefore, you have to do a lot of scrolling to find the right folder, or type in a search term every time. Compare this to typing just two keys to move messages as outlined earlier, and you will agree that, while it may be useful for occasional use, defining your own custom rules for moving messages around still is much more efficient.

So, what's message here?

A lot of thought has undoubtedly gone into the new features and UI refinements that Mail Act-On brings along, and every new feature adds to the value of this nifty tool, making your daily email chores much less painful. While I considered its previous incarnation to be a "should-have" product, its new Outbox Rules, support for Undo, and the window locking features have easily advanced it to "must-have" status.

Mail Act-On is available as a 2.3MB download from the indev website, is packaged as a fully-featured 21-day trial, and is currently being offered at the introductory price of $19.95.