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Is there a way (or an add-on) that lets me customize the Mail.app toolbar beyond "View -> Customize Toolbar"? At a minimum, I want to add buttons that do "Move to <somefolder>".

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I don't have an answer for you, but welcome, Paul! – Negrino Mar 18 '11 at 3:08
I do not have an answer for this either. But I guess you can create tiny applescripts, and bind them to keyboard shortcuts. – nuc Mar 25 '11 at 15:34
Not really an answer to your question but maybe a workaround. You could use automator to add actions to the services menu – elhombre Apr 2 '11 at 15:38
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To be clear, I really really want something that creates buttons on the toolbar: I don't want to memorize any more keystrokes. – Paul Hoffman Apr 6 '11 at 12:06

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Read CocoaDev: HowToAddButtonsToAppleMail. It references a page of links to articles/examples on writing Mail.app plugins. You will also need to do some programming of Mail.app, e.g. using AppleScript - which you can learn more about here.

Here is a year-and-a-half old blog post by a guy who managed to get some useful control over Mail.app from AppleScript. You might use it as a model. He built his with a third-party module but you might find a way to write your own, if necessary.

The scripting of Mail.app might be stable. However, from what I have read - the rules for how to construct a Mail.app plugin may be in flux from one major version of Mac OS X to the next.

That could be enough to discourage you from writing what you want for wide distribution but it might not be much of a handicap for personal use.

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That does discourage me, yes. :-) However, it is the best we have seen, and it is probably the definitive answer, unfortunately. – Paul Hoffman Apr 21 '11 at 12:55
up vote 1 down vote

I think you can use Mail Act-on for this, it provides Shortcuts for doing stuff with various mails. Not a Visual Shortcut, but a Keyboard one.

Move messages by keystroke only Mail Act-On’s interface includes the ability to move or copy messages to any folders by keystroke, even if you don’t have an Act-On rule for a particular mailbox.

http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html

Hope it helps,

Karl

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+1. I love mail act-on. – Harv Apr 5 '11 at 21:44
Thanks, but I really want something visual. I have way too many keyboard shortcuts to remember as it is. FWIW, I use MsgFiler now, and it seems less intrusive than Act-On. – Paul Hoffman Apr 6 '11 at 12:05

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