Mail Archiving With Snow Leopard Services
After upgrading to Snow Leopard, I quickly learned that I had been using a free beta version of Mail Act On. Mail Act On basically allows you to trigger rules based on keyboard shortcuts. I used it for one task, moving emails to an archive folder using a keyboard shortcut. This feature is crucial to my implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done personal productivity methodology.
Mail Act-On costs $25.95, which seems steep to me for what it does. I had no luck fishing around on onmacupdate.com for alternatives, so I decided to replace this program with a Snow Leopard contextual service and keyboard shortcut.
Step 1: Creating a Service in Automator
Starting in Snow Leopard, a new template for Automator workflows exists called “Service.”
After selecting this template, you’ll notice that you can select the context for the service at the top of the Automator workflow. You don’t need to specify any input since we’ll be using Applescript to do all of the work. You do need to select Mail.app as the context so that this service doesn’t appear in other applications.
Your service only needs one action, Run Applescript. Drag a Run Applescript action to the workflow. Assuming you have a single archive mailbox, your script will be similar to below. The script takes the selected items and moves them to an Archive mailbox of a MobileMe account.
Save the script. Automator automatically saves it in the ~/Library/Services folder.
Step 2: Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut
Next, you need to assign a keyboard shortcut to this service. Just open System Preferences, clickKeyboard, and then select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Under the Services category, you should have aGeneral section and the script should appear. My script is highlighted below. Now, just click on the area right of the script and you can add a keyboard shortcut.
You should now have a contextual based service under your Mail --> Services menu. Hitting the hotkey should invoke the automator action and execute the Applescript on the selected mail messages.
For some reason, the execution is a tad slow. It is manageable for me, but I’m hoping a future update to Snow Leopard will help speed the execution on Automator services.
