Comments on: Picks from MBW 95: Tokyo Subway

By: Bookmarks about Merlinmann

Bookmarks about Merlinmann — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:53:53 +0000

[...] – bookmarked by 1 members originally found by violetsrblack on 2008-08-22 Picks from MBW 95: Tokyo Subway http://www.mbwpicks.com/2008/06/25/picks-from-mbw-95-tokyo-subway/ – bookmarked by 3 members [...]

By: Jason Clarke

Jason Clarke — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:13:34 +0000

I think the problem in Gmail is that “only to me” is a message-specific attribute, and in a longer thread how do you differentiate? What do you do with an email thread that starts off with lots of people copied on it, but then one message gets sent directly to you, or worse, starts off as a one-to-one email to you, but then others get copied in on it? Should it be unmarked as “Only To You”?

I set up toffer’s rule described above for each of the email addresses that I use in Mail (one rule for each one), and applied them to my inbox, copying the messages that satisfied the rule’s criteria to a folder called “OnlyToMe” which when using IMAP with Gmail corresponds to a label. Then when I view my inboxes in my Gmail accounts, an overwhelming number of the messages in my inbox have the “Only To Me” label on them when it was only one message in that thread that actually was only to me.

But I’m not willing to give up Gmail (and Mail.app’s) threading features, yet I still really want this functionality.

Can anyone see a way around this issue? Is it a GUI issue that would require rethinking the inbox view?

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:51:56 +0000

I personally just create email forwarding addresses for everyone (every person, blog, online store etc I want to contact me). I have literally a hundred+. My filters work on the “To” line for the most part, and if anyone displeases me, I delete the forwarding address I gave them. No one has my actual POP/IMAP account email address.

By: Merlin

Merlin — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:34:50 +0000

An excellent start! Many thanks.

I should probably provide more details on why I’ve found this task challenging (come to think of it, I may go ahead and do a 43f post on this august topic).

I think these are a terrific solution for folks with one and only one email address. Like a lot of people, though, I’m monitoring email to many private and public addresses — probably around 25 in toto.

The easy hack for Apple to help us with would be to pick up a) any email addresses in our own Address Book card + any addl. addresses we’ve added in the various Mail.app accounts Preferences. Then it would be pretty easy to have a search/filter criteria of “IS to me” and “IS ONLY to me” etc that could be combined in novel ways with other criteria.

I’ll keep monitoring here and will link if I end up writing a post. Many thanks!

By: STrRedwolf

STrRedwolf — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:46:47 +0000

Common antispam procedure! Filter on To: youremail@addyhere and/or CC: the same, and if it doesn’t match, push it to a “BCC Trap.” You’ll find at least half your mail goes there if you don’t filter ordinarily.

Doesn’t quite work with Gmail, given it tags insteads of move into folders…

By: toffer Surovec

toffer Surovec — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:23:33 +0000

Just set up an Maill.app rule to move emails with where the to field “is equal to” you’re email address and the CC field does not contain “.” to a folder labeled ‘just for me’ or something. I do the opposite. I filter out everything but emails sent to me from people I know into a folder called ‘Bullshit, Bacn, Bitches, and Unknown Senders’