I love my macs.  With my friends and collegeaus I’ve become the guy to go to with Mac questions.  One frequent question is how do I use Mac mail.app?  Most of these questions are coming from former Outlook users who aren’t used to an intelligent UI.  While Mail.app is an outstanding stand alone there are some plug-ins that can make it even better.  Here’s my current setup.

1.  Letterbox.  The Letterbox plugin for mail.app takes advantage of the widescreen format of your monitor by placing the inbox and the email side by side instead of top to bottom.  You can switch back and forth through preferences.  This is especially helpful when working on smaller macbook screens.

2.  Mail Tags.  This adds lots of functionality.  It allows you to tag or label mail similar to labels in Gmail.  You can set up mail rules to have mail tagged as it comes in.  I set up a mail tag project for each church planter I work with and have it automatically tag the mail as it comes in.  I then set up a smart folder to automatically file the email.  From mail tags you can also type additional notes about the email.  Another handy feature is the ability to create a new event or to do from mail tags.  The event or to do that is created will have a hyperlink back to the email.  It is $29.99, but easily doubles the productivity of mail.app.

3.  Mail Act-On.  Mail Act-On lets you define custom hotkeys for Mail.  I like to keep my inbox clutter free.  I’m anal that way.  I really like the Archive functionality of Gmail.  So I created an archive folder.  I use Act-On to create a keyboard shortcut to make the action quicker.  You can also file emails to folders by using the keyboard rather than the mouse.  There are two versions.  The new version is 24.95 which is a little pricy.  The old version accomplishes the above and is free.

4.  Attachment Scanner.  This plugin keeps you from sending an email without your attachment.  Its saved me several times.  NOTE: The link above is not where I’ve normally downloaded it from.  It does appear to be the same plugin though.

These plug-ins make my mail.app experience 10 times better.  There are lots of other tweaks out there so chances there are others you will want to try.  A nice of available plugins can be found here.