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Version 1.3 Last update: April 7, 2014
Airmail
Table of Contents
Introduction [Living Document]................................................................................................................. 2
Getting Started ........................................................................................................................................... 4
Airmail: A Visual Overview ...................................................................................................................... 5
Walking with the Wizard ........................................................................................................................ 10
Preferences............................................................................................................................................... 15
Accounts ............................................................................................................................................... 16
User................................................................................................................................................. 18
Mapping........................................................................................................................................... 23
Alias ................................................................................................................................................ 30
Signature ......................................................................................................................................... 33
Composer ........................................................................................................................................ 37
More ................................................................................................................................................ 40
General ................................................................................................................................................. 45
Appearance .......................................................................................................................................... 52
Notification ............................................................................................................................................ 61
Languages ............................................................................................................................................ 66
Internationalization Options ............................................................................................................. 69
Advanced .............................................................................................................................................. 71
External Services .................................................................................................................................. 75
FTP Attachments ............................................................................................................................. 76
Dropbox........................................................................................................................................... 77
Google Drive.................................................................................................................................... 81
Droplr .............................................................................................................................................. 83
CloudApp......................................................................................................................................... 85
Evernote .......................................................................................................................................... 87
Open Directory ................................................................................................................................ 94
Navigation................................................................................................................................................. 95
Menus ................................................................................................................................................... 96
Keyboard Shortcuts............................................................................................................................. 102
Menu Extra ......................................................................................................................................... 105
Composing Messages ............................................................................................................................ 106
Addressing Messages ......................................................................................................................... 107
Writing ................................................................................................................................................ 110
Replying.............................................................................................................................................. 112
Using Signatures................................................................................................................................. 114
Using Attachments .............................................................................................................................. 117
Airmail
Welcome to Airmail, the modern way to engage with your email! Email is still the lifeblood of modern
communication, even with the rise and importance of social media and mobile devices, but the common
tools available to users were designed for a different era. Airmail enables you to more efficiently, quickly and
powerfully manage your email by fully leveraging the incredible power of todays computers.
Airmail
Supports the major email services and protocols, including Exchange.
Leverages modern GPUs for a fluid and responsive user experience.
Integrates with modern file-sharing services to streamline sending large files.
Offers extensive account alias support.
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Getting Started
Airmail: A Visual Overview
Walking with the Wizard
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Accounts View
The Accounts view lists all configured mail services as a series of icons with the email address or description
written vertically. You can select individual accounts or choose the All Inbox to see a unified view of all
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inboxes across accounts. By default the account icons display the number of unread messages as they
appear, though you can control this behavior.
Folder View
Most mail service store email in folders, similar to the file system on your
computer. (Gmail is the exception where everything is a label. See the
Labels section for more details.) You can choose to see folders for an
individual account or, in the All Accounts view, the combined special
folders, such as Inbox, Starred, Drafts, etc..}
Message List
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Detail View
The Detail View provides a preview of the selected email message or conversation in the Message List.
table(noborder).
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Advanced View
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Supported Protocols
IMAP
POP3
SMTP
Exchange Web Services (Requires Exchange 2007 SP1+)
Local Accounts
Airmail supports importing your existing email data, whether in Apple Mailbox, EMLX, EML or MBox formats,
into a special local account. This account stays on your computer and doesnt interact with any kind of server.
Local mailboxes are great for bringing over any of your current mail archives for use in Airmail, or to create
new ones.
On Archiving
Archiving email into local mailboxes provides many benefits:
Reduces the amount of load on your mail server, which increases performance and keeps you under
your quote, for those servers that enforce a quota.
Allows you to save off your email into local storage for faster retrieval in case of disaster, and
incorporate it into your backup workflow such as Time Machine, CrashPlan, Backblaze and other local
and off-site solutions.
Increases Airmails performance by reducing the amount of mail it has to contend with. You may want
to find that TPS report from 2008 at some point in the future, but does that mean you need to keep all
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of your email from 2008 on your mail server? No, you can archive it off and then open the 2008 local
mailbox and search there. Or just let Spotlight find it and then you can open the local mailbox you
need.
Once you enter your information and select Add, Airmail parses your email address to determine if
it is one it can automatically configure or not, and if it can, it creates the account fully populated
with the incoming and sending server information.
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Incoming
Service: Select the type of email service, IMAP, POP3 or Exchange.
Username: Airmail automatically enters your email address as the username; however, you should change this
to the appropriate user account used to log on to the service.
Authentication Method: Select the authentication method your email service supports, NONE, PLAIN, CRAMMD5. See the User Accounts preference for more details.
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Incoming server: Enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your email server. By default Airmail
duplicates what you type into the Sending server field; however, if your company uses different address for
sending and receiving email, you can update it accordingly.
Port: Enter the port number your email server listens on for incoming email logon requests. Typically you can
leave this set to Auto and let Airmail determine the appropriate port; however, if your email administrator
provides a specific port to use, use that.
SSL Handshake: Most email services protect your logon credentials during transport over the network by using
a version of Secure Socket Layer (SSL). This drop down allows you to specify what type of SSL encryption to
use, the modern Start TLS or the older SSL. Typically you can leave this set to Auto and Airmail attempts to
automatically determine the best method to use.
Sending (SMTP)
Sending server: Enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your SMTP server. By default Airmail uses
the Incoming servers address; however, please update this if your email service uses different addresses for
sending and receiving email.
Authentication: This checkbox determines if your SMTP server requires credentials before sending email.
Most SMTP servers today require users to authenticate before sending email; servers that dont require
authentication are called Open Relays. You do not have to enter your user credentials if you uncheck this box.
Port: Enter the port number your SMTP server listens on for sending email requests. Typically you can leave
this set to Auto and let Airmail determine the appropriate port; however, if your email administrator provides a
specific port to use, use that.
Username: Airmail automatically enters your email address as the username; however, you should change this
to the appropriate user account used to log on to the SMTP server.
Authentication Method: Select the authentication method your email service supports, such as PLAIN.
Password: The password of the account. You can paste your password into this field instead of typing.
After entering the necessary information select Add and Airmail attempts to communicate with the email
service using the credentials you provided. If successful, Airmail presents the mail Inbox view and starts
collecting email.
Exchange and Office 365 accounts will fail Autodiscover if your password has been reset by
your administrator or this is a brand new account and you are forced to change change your
password at the next login. You MUST log into Exchange or Office 365 using Outlook Web
Access first and change your password before adding it to Airmail.
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Preferences
Airmail provides numerous options that allow you to customize the applications behavior and appearance to
suit your needs. There are six individual preference panes:
Accounts
General
Appearance
Notification
Languages
Advanced
External Services
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Accounts
Changing Account Information
Airmail provides several knobs and switches for configuring your email accounts to suit your workflow. They
are divided into the following preference groups:
User
Mapping
Alias
Signature
Composer Specify the default formatting options for the email composer window.
More
Configure more advanced behavior options for the account, such as setting a BCC address for sent
messages.
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Once you create a local account you can select Import messages and browse to the mail archive to import.
Once Airmail finishes importing the mail shows up in the Local Accounts Inbox. If your archive has
subfolders, those are recreated within the Account.
Preferences
User >
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User
The User portion of the Account preferences is where the specific server addresses, user account credentials,
encryption and port settings are defined.
Icons
Airmail attempts to automatically determine and select an icon by checking these sources (in order) for
accounts email address:
Address Book
Gmail contacts
Website domain
Accounts
Airmail supports several email services and protocols including IMAP, Exchange Web Services (EWS), POP
and Local Accounts. This section describes the various fields and options for each account type.
Full Name: Enter whatever name you wish to appear on recipients email client, next to your email address.
Typically this is your full name.
Description: This is an optional field where you can add a brief description that is optionally displayed in the
Accounts View.
IMAP
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Incoming IMAP: Enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your email server. By default Airmail
duplicates what you type into the Sending server field; however, if your company uses different address for
sending and receiving email, you should update it accordingly.
Port: Enter the port number your email server listens on for incoming email logon requests. Typically you can
leave this set to Auto and let Airmail determine the appropriate port; however, if your email administrator
provides a specific port to use, use that.
User: Airmail automatically enters your email address as the username; however, you should change this to
the appropriate user account used to log on to the service.
Authentication Method: The drop down menu after the User field allows you to select the appropriate
authentication method for your email service. Airmail supports the following methods:
NONE: This implies that no password is sent, but that is not the case. The password is still sent in
plain text.
PLAIN: Sends your account password to your email server as plain text, and is recommended only
over encrypted network connections.
CRAM-MD5: A common cryptographic authentication method typically used when the email server
does not support a secure connection.
SSL Handshake: Most email services protect your logon credentials during transport over the network by using
a version of Secure Socket Layer (SSL). This drop down allows you to specify what type of SSL encryption to
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use, the modern Start TLS or the older SSL. Typically you can leave this set to Auto and Airmail attempts to
automatically determine the best method to use.
Test IMAP: Airmail uses the supplied information to try connecting to the email server.
Sending SMTP: Enter the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your SMTP server. By default Airmail uses
the Incoming servers address; however, please update this if your email service uses different addresses for
sending and receiving email.
Authentication: This checkbox determines if your SMTP server requires credentials before sending email.
Most SMTP servers today require users to authenticate before sending email; servers that dont require
authentication are called Open Relays. You do not have to enter your user credentials if you uncheck this box.
Port: Enter the port number your SMTP server listens on for sending email requests. Typically you can leave
this set to Auto and let Airmail determine the appropriate port; however, if your email administrator provides a
specific port to use, use that.
User: Airmail automatically enters your email address as the username; however, you should change this to
the appropriate user account used to log on to the SMTP server.
Authentication Method: Modern SMTP servers require users to authenticate before it will send email. Before
this change most server were open, meaning they would send any email for anyone, and lead to the
unrestricted rise of email spam. Airmail supports the following methods:
NONE: This implies that no password is sent, but that is not the case. The password is still sent in
plain text.
PLAIN: Sends your account password to your email server as plain text, and is recommended only
over encrypted network connections.
CRAM-MD5: A common cryptographic authentication method typically used when the email server
does not support a secure connection.
DIGEST-MD5: A common cryptographic authentication method typically used by web servers.
Follow this link to read in greater detail about Digest-MD5
Password: The password of the account. You can paste your password into this field instead of typing.
Test SMTP: Airmail uses the supplied information to try connecting to the email server.
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Domain: Microsofts Exchange Servers authentication, authorization and security is built upon Active
Directorys security domains model which stores accounts in various Organizational Units. The Domain field
contains the Domain Name that specifies where your user account lives and is typically written in a DNS-style
format, such as GIANTCOMPANY.COM, or the older NetBIOS style GIANTCOMPANY.
Normally Airmail fills this field in during Autodiscover; however, if Autodiscover fails, it can be
blank. SOME Exchange administrators dont require the domain, but you need to verify that with
your Exchange administrator.
User: Airmail automatically enters your email address as the username; however, you should change this to
the appropriate user account used to log on to the service.
Password: Enter your password.
Endpoint Url: Exchange Web Services uses a URL to communicate with the Exchange server. This is filled
in for you if Autodiscover succeeds; however, if that fails you will need to add it manually.
Check Settings: Airmail uses the supplied information to try connecting to the Exchange server and validate
your credentials.
Reset: Removes any unapplied changes to the last saved state.
Apply: Save any changes.
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Accounts
Mapping >
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Mapping
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The Trash, by default on Exchange, is set to use the Deleted Items folder on the server to store any deleted
messages. However, selecting the menu shows a list of folders on the server you can choose from to store
your deleted mail:
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Gmail
Googles Gmail organizes email very differently than most email services through its use of labels instead
of folders. Even though when you view your mail in a browser or through Airmail it appears to have a folder
structure, thats just for your benefit. Actually Gmail keeps everything in a single folder (ok, not really, but
we wont go into that) and uses labels to organize it all. So all of those folders you see in your browser or in
Airmail are actually labels. You can create as many labels as you like, and tell Gmail to present your labels
to IMAP clients like Airmail as folders (Google explains this in detail here).
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Gmail automatically saves a copy of your sent email in the [Gmail/Sent Mail] folder whether you check this
option or not, which is why this is disabled by default for Gmail or Google Apps accounts you cant really
control it.
Office 365
Microsofts hosted version of Exchange provides a more traditional approach to mail management with actual
folders, unlike Gmail. Office 365 Exchange also automatically saves sent emails into the Sent Items folder
on the server, so Airmail does the same locally without having to check the Copy Sent Mail In the Sent
Folder option. The Starred, Important, and All Mail folders are Gmail-specific and thus have no equivalent
on Exchange, or any other mail service, for that matter. so are unmapped by default. You could map them to
a folder, but they wont behave the same way they do under Gmail, so best not to tempt fate.
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As with Exchange, the Starred, Important, and All Mail folders are unmapped because they dont mean
anything to these servers. We recommend you leave them unmapped to not trip yourself up later.
Airmail also enables the Copy Sent Mail In The Sent Folder option because most do not do this
automatically.
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The marks are mutually exclusive you can only mark a message as either a To Do, Memo or
Done.
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Alias
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The idea is similar to a forwarding phone number people dial one number that automatically gets
forwarded to another number of your choosing. For example, your actual email address might be
sarahbillingsworththerthird@mycompany.com, but thats a bit of a handful for folks to remember, for you
to say and terribly likely for people to mistype. Aliases to the rescue. If your email service allows, you
can create a nickname that can forward to your mail address. Poor Sarah might choose to create an
alias of supersarah3@mycompany.com and give that out to people. Now when folks send email to
supersarah3@mycompany.com
the
server
automatically
sends
it
to
sarahbillingsworththerthird@mycompany.com.
Airmail uses EXISTING aliases associated to your account on your mail server; it does NOT
create them. If you want to create a new alias, you must add it to the server first and then to
Airmail. If you add an alias to Airmail that doesnt exist on your mail server, it may appear to
work when you send the message, but your mail server will reject any responses sent to the
Airmail-only alias.
Aliases have many other uses, such as fake names to use to sign up for newsletters, online shopping sites,
etc. This section describes how to configure Airmail to use your aliases.
On Gmail Aliases
Naturally Googles Gmail handles aliases in a slightly different way, though Airmail handles it with aplomb.
You can learn more about Gmails implementation at Googles help site.
Adding Aliases
Adding email aliases to Airmail is simple:
1. In the Account preference choose the Alias preference group.
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2. Select the + button in the lower left. That brings up the following screen:
3. Enter a name for the alias. This is a descriptive name that appears next to the alias email address in a
recipients Inbox.
4. Enter the email address, e.g. supersarah3@mycompany.com.
Thats the very minimum you need to do to add an alias; however, the remaining options provide finer control
over the aliases behavior:
Default Sender: Tells Airmail to use this alias as the accounts default sender when in the All Mail view. If
you are in a specific Inbox, that is the account Airmail will use for new mail.
Default Replier: Tells Airmail to use this alias as the accounts default reply address when in the All Mail
view. If you are in a specific Inbox, that is the account Airmail will use to reply to email.
Copy on sent: This checkbox tells Airmail to add the following address to the CC or BCC address on any
email composed with this alias.
Auto CC/Auto BCC: This drop down list allows you to choose what address you want added to the CC or
BCC address on any email composed with this alias.
SMTP
You can choose to use the accounts default SMTP credentials or add custom ones if necessary for your
alias.
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Signature
Adding a Signature
1. Select the account in Airmails preferences.
2. Choose the Signature preference group.
3. In the Account, Alias drop down choose the account or alias you want to assign a signature against.
4. Select the + button to the right of the Signature drop down list. This prompts you to name the new
signature. Do so.
5. Enter your signature in the Composer field. You can use HTML, Markdown, plain text or any of
Airmails supported formats.
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Rich Text
HTML Editor
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Markdown Editor
Repeat steps 3-5 for any additional signatures you want to add to this account or alias.
Removing a Signature
1. Select the account in Airmails preferences.
2. Choose the Signature preference group.
3. In the Account, Alias drop down choose the account or alias that contains the signature you want to
remove.
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4. Select the entry in the Signature drop down list you want to remove and select the - button.
5. Answer Yes or No on the confirmation dialog that appears.
Default Signature
The Default Signature checkbox allows you to determine which signature assigned to an account or alias
should be the default for any new or reply emails. Merely select the signature you want to be the default from
the drop down list and then check the box.
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Composer
Composer Defaults
Airmail provides you several ways to modify the default Composer behavior for new emails or replies.
Default Font
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Default allows you to choose the default font, as well as its size and color to use for new emails or replies.
Understand that your recipients may not have the same fonts as you, so we recommend staying away from
anything too exotic. The truth is, most Windows users will see everything translated into Arial anyhow.
Right-to-left Composer
This checkbox enables Right-to-left support for those languages that require it.
Signature Options
Airmail provides several ways to control how you want your signatures applied to your messages in the
Composer:
Enable signature: Check this if you want all new emails and replies to include a signature.
Signature in Quick Reply: Do you want a signature for Quick Reply messages? If so, then check the box. If
not, carry on.
Signature in Reply: Determines if you want a signature appended when you reply to an email.
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Use as Default Replier (ignore aliases) You can tell Airmail to use the default account as the replier when
using Quick Reply, ignoring any aliases you configured for the account.
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More
Polling Schedules
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Heavy email users typically have numerous email accounts they monitor, each with a different importance,
purpose and need, so why should they all be tied to a single polling schedule? Airmail gives you the ability to
set separate polling schedules for not just each account, but also the inbox and the other folders.
For example, Ariel has 15 email accounts for different organizations and shell corporations shes built over
the years. Only five of them receive email that requires immediate action, so she configures those accounts
to check for new email every minute, and the folder contents every 10 minutes. The other accounts she
sets Airmail to check manually (and adds a calendar reminder to tell her to check them every Friday before
heading out for the weekend). This reduces the time it takes Airmail to check her important accounts for those
important new emails, while she still keeps her local folders in sync on a regular basis. Think about it if she
sets her Inbox schedule for every minute, thats 60 times an hour, but setting the Folder check to 10 minutes
reduces that to only 6 times an hour. Thats a significant reduction in resource utilization on her computer and
the email servers. Her email administrator finds out and buys her an ice cream.
Notifications
Check this option if you want Airmail to notify you of new messages for this account.
Sound
Select the sound Airmail will fire off when new mail arrives. General Settings uses OS Xs default Alert sound.
Labels Color
This applies to both folders and labels, but this options allows you to set the color of all your labels or folders.
There are a couple of important points to keep in mind:
1. If you choose one of the predefined colors from the drop-down list that OVERWRITES any custom
colors you previously assigned.
2. You must use Custom Label Color if you want to apply different colors to individual folders or labels.
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Sent Mail
Airmail allows you to automatically add a CC or BCC address to each message you send.
Server Sync
Airmail allows you to tune how much of a new mail to download by default. Some folks find themselves in
bandwidth constrained environments and so just want to get the mail headers instead of the entire message
or any attachments. This gives you control over how much of a message to download, which reduces load on
the network and your disk space.
Download message bodies by default: Controls whether to download the entire message or just the
message headers and body structure.
Download all attachments by default: Controls whether Airmail downloads any mail attachments by default.
Reset Account
Rebuild Database: There are times when the client and servers versions of the mail database disagree,
which leads to strange behaviors:
Messages that wont sync.
Mail that wont send.
Unread messages that you cant find.
The mail servers version of things should be the truth so to reset things, without removing and reading
the account, you can have Airmail rebuild the database, which causes it to remove its local cache and redownload everything, according to your preferences.
Server-Specific Options
The following options only appear for specific account types, such as Gmail, Exchange and IMAP.
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Message Age Filter: Airmail allows you to filter out how much of your older mail from Gmail, Google
Apps and other IMAP services to download and keep locally.
Import Gmail Contacts: Tells Airmail to import your Gmail or Google Apps contacts into its local address
database. This is enabled by default.
Force Behavior (needs restart): Some Google Apps administrators hide their domains, or have the
wrong DNS records, etc. and this can interferes with Airmails ability to detect it should treat them as
Gmail accounts instead of generic IMAP. This option forces Airmail to treat the account as Gmail and use
Labels, All Mail, sent messages, accordingly.
Exchange-Specific Options
Include sender in message: Older versions of the Kerio Server require special handling when sending
email due to the way they emulated Exchange. Only Kerio users should enable this option, because it
prevents sending mail with true Microsoft Exchange servers.
Import Exchange Contacts: This controls whether Airmail should import your Exchange contacts folder
into its local address book. Typically this isnt necessary as Airmail searches Exchanges Global Address
List (GAL) by default; however, it can help when you expect to be offline for a significant period of time.
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Composer
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General
Generally Speaking
Airmails General preferences cover various global behaviors, such as keyboard shortcuts and where to store
your attachments.
Default Accounts
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Default Sender: Select the account you always want to use when composing new email. This does not
prevent you from choosing a different account in the address field of the message, but most folks forget until
after they hit send, so be sure this is what you want.
Reply With: Select the account Airmail will use by default when you reply to an email. Typically folks use this
if they receive email from many different accounts, but want to use a separate alias for their replies.
Unified Inbox: This provides a single combine view of all of your accounts Inboxes, which can be very
convenient.
System
Invert Addresses: Enable inverted addressing typically used with many Asian languages.
Mark as read
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Airmail provides several options for controlling when it marks an email as read
Clicking on the Message: This is the default and marks the message as read the moment it is selected in
the message list.
Mark on click Delay 0.5 sec: Airmail waits a half a second after you select an email in the message list
before marking it read.
Mark on click Delay 3.0 sec: Airmail waits three seconds after you select an email in the message list before
marking it as read.
Opening the Message: Airmail waits until you actually open the message in a new window before marking it
as read.
Manually mark as Read Your mail stays unread until you choose to mark it as such.
Mark Single Message in Conversation When using Airmails Conversation view it will only mark the
individual message you select as read instead of the entire conversation thread.
Interaction
Interaction preferences control how you use Airmail as part of your mail workflow.
Reply All by default: Controls whether you automatically include all email recipients when you hit reply.
Use Send and Archive: Sends the email and immediately archives the original message. This is helpful if
you want to keep your Inbox clean.
Gestures This enables a series of gestures on the MacBook Air or Pros trackpad or the Magic Mouse on the
desktop.
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Shortcuts
Power users know that there are times when the mouse is the least efficient way to control your computer.
Keyboard shortcuts are an important aspect of improving your mail workflows efficiency, especially for the
commands and features you regularly use. Therefore Airmail provides several ways to set custom keyboard
shortcuts.
New Message: Select the Record Shortcut button to set a keyboard combination to create new email
messages.
Show App: Select the Record Shortcut button to set a keyboard combination to bring Airmail to the forefront
wherever you are in OS X.
Use Gmail Shortcuts: Tells Airmail to support the same keyboard shortcuts as Gmails web interface. You
can see the full list at Googles support page.
Use Delete Key (Backspace) for Move To Trash: Airmails default behavior is to move deleted messages
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into the Archive folder on the mail server; however, you can choose to actually move it to the Trash, which
makes it subject to your servers purging rules, so be sure this is what you want.
Conversations
Airmail provides a very powerful conversation view of your email, which is similar to how Gmail handles
multiple messages in a thread. Airmail gathers related messages into a single collapsable view that simplifies
tracking long mail threads for many people. However, others may find that view confusing or perhaps they
want to tweak that experience. Airmail provides options for both camps.
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Expand By Default: Choose whether you want Airmail to automatically expand and entire conversation in
the message list view or let you control that manually.
NOTE: Expansion shows the unquoted portions of the messages in the list you still need to
select the ellipsis [] to see the entire quoted message.
Invert Order: This controls whether you want mail sorted by the Newest first, which is the default, or the
Oldest first.
Conversations in Sent and Draft Folders: Select this if you want to use Conversations in your Draft and
Sent message folders.
Signature
Choose whether you want your signature before the quoted contents of the message or after. Airmail uses
Before Quote by default.
Attachments Location
Select the folder you want Airmail to use when downloading attachments.
Search
Include spam folder: Include the mapped Spam folder in search requests.
Include trash folder: Include the mapped Trash folder in search requests.
Security
Phishing attacks are on the rise and use fairly sophisticated methods to get you to give up your personal
information. Airmail helps combat this by integrating the Web of Trusts link-validation technology, which is a
crowd-sourced website reputation and review service. You can read more about them and their technology
at their site.
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WOT links validation: This enables Airmails integration with the WOTs link validation service. When you
hover your mouse over a link you see a colored banner at the bottom of the message that shows the WOTs
trustworthiness rating for that link, which ranges from a deep red (Very poor):
More
Appearance >
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Appearance
Making Airmail Yours
You spend a lot of time in email, and you want want it to be more personal to you as well as more functional.
Airmail provides several options to control its look and feel that allows a personal touch while also improving
your workflow by visually distinguishing messages from different accounts.
Styles
Airmail provides several themes to choose from that alters the overall look and feel of the message viewer.
The XL themes are designed for those with very high resolution or large monitors.
Messages Style: Affects the overall look of the Message viewer.
Window Style: This controls the look and feel of the toolbars.
Modern: The toolbars are darker.
Classic: The toolbars match the color of the titlebar.
Composer Style: This controls the look and feel of the address field area of the composer window. You can
select:
Classic: which is gray.
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Sidebar
Show mail description tells Airmail to add the accounts Description contents, if you added one.
Message List
Conversations in Search Results: This groups search results by conversations, if applicable.
Message View
Use Full Width Preview: This controls whether AirMail crops the end of a long-running text string or wraps
at the edge of the Preview pane. Enabling this is very useful for smaller screens, but those blessed with huge
displays can disable it and see the full flow.
Extended Recipients: Adds the entire mail header to your reply. For example, the first image below shows
a reply with this option OFF, while the second has it ON. Notice how the second has more detailed header
data in the reply body?
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Visual Marks
These options control whether Airmail offers additional visual queues to quickly visually identify important or
unread messages in the list.
Important: This enables a color flag on the message header in the message list that shows the importance
setting on an email.
Priority: Adds visual marks to messages with a priority assigned.
Unread Highlight: This adds additional highlight colors to any unread messages in the list to ensure you can
quickly identify unread messages.
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Folders
Show Folders in Unified Inbox: Show your folders in the Unified Inbox view. This will unify any common
folders, such as Sent messages as well.
Show Messages Count This shows a count of the number of messages in the current view in the title bar.
Big Fonts: Use larger fonts in the Folder view.
Show Icons: Show small icons next to each folder. Some folders have individual icons, such as Sent
Messages or Trash, while user-created folders get a color circle to the left of the name.
Badge Count
Combine all Accounts: Determine whether you want the Airmail dock icon to show the unread message
count for all inboxes.
Inbox Messages Count: Controls whether Airmail shows the number of messages in your inboxes on the
badge icon
Show Badge
Accounts Sidebar: Controls whether Airmail adds a badge with the Inbox message count in the Account
sidebar
Dock: Controls whether Airmail adds a badge with the Inbox message count in the Dock icon.
Data Detector
Airmail can automatically detect certain kinds of information in your email messages, such as phone numbers,
and provide a list of options specific to that data. For example, if you enable detecting Phone Numbers,
Airmail translates that into a tel:// format link so when selected it launches whatever default app handles that
handle.
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Menu Options
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You can choose which items you want to detect from this drop down menu:
Links, Dates, Phone Numbers (Default)
Links, Dates
Links
None
Quote
Vertical Quotes: Most mail clients today quote the previous message using vertical bars and indention, with
more bars indicating the quote level, and Airmail supports this mode as well by default:
This is fine in most cases; however, if you typically deal with long email chains these quoting levels quickly
become unmanageable.:
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Horizontal Quoting
Flat Quotes: Airmail introduces a new way by offering horizontal or flat quoting that places a small horizontal
line between the previous messages:
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General
Notification >
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Notification
Notifications
Getting Notified
Airmail integrates with OS Xs Notification Center, which Apple introduced in OS X 10.8, and naturally allows
you to customize that experience to suit your needs.
Notification
Controls whether Airmail should register with Notification Center or not. If you disable this feature, the only
notification is an increment of the Dock badge, if enabled (see Appearance and potentially a system sound.)
Notification Sound
You can select the sound Airmail uses when new mail arrives from the list.
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Reply: Compose a quick reply and send it using your reply settings for that account.
Reply and Archive: Same as Reply above, but also Archive the message.
Archive: Just Archive the message.
Trash: Trash the message.
Mark as Read: Mark the message as read, but nothing else.
Show Images
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Airmail can show the picture associated with a user in the contact list in the notification.
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Appearance
Languages >
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Languages
Airmail, like OS X was built with an eye to international users. You can choose what language Airmail uses
for the interface, though any changes require restarting the application.
Supported Languages
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Notification
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Internationalization Options
Addressing
Airmail provides several features that take local customs and forms into account when addressing users.
Invert Addresses
Several languages and cultures address messages with the last name first, followed by surname. This option
tells Airmail to add addresses in this manner.
Composing Messages
Right-to-left Composer
Many languages read and write from right-to-left instead of Western languages which tend to write left-toright.
Writing Direction
Some users mix languages in a single message and therefore need to support different writing directions for
different parts of the message. Fortunately Airmail easily supports this via Writing Direction found under the
Composer->Text menu when writing a new message.
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You can set the writing direction on either the paragraph or the current section.
Languages
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Advanced
Controlling Airmails Advanced Features
Airmail offers numerous ways to tune its behavior and performance. Do be aware that these are GLOBAL
options vs. account-specific.
Contacts
Clean and Sync: This forces Airmail to immediately clear its contact lists and sync again. By default Airmail
does this every time it starts, but if you made changes to the contact list and want to ensure you have the
latest information, you can do this.
This forces a resync for EVERY account, so dont do this indiscriminately if you have numerous
accounts or accounts with large numbers of contacts.
Sync on start: Tells Airmail to clean and sync the contacts each time it starts.
Initialization
By default Airmail takes a fairly conservative approach at startup to the initial fetch operation against your
mail server, mostly because many servers limit how much mail you can download during a request. However,
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if you know your server doesnt have such limits and you want to speed up the initial fetch operation, then
you can choose from the dropdown list:
Low Resources: This is Airmails default and takes a conservative approach to that initial fetch.
Medium Resources: Less conservative, more demanding.
High Resources: Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead!
Recover Pending Operations: If Airmail closed with pending operation tasks still pending, this option tells
Airmail to attempt to complete them at the next startup. This is enabled by default.
Message Order
This determines whether Airmail sorts mail in the message list by the Received or Sent Date.
Sending Delay
Ever accidentally sent an email you wish you could get back? Well, Airmail cant do that exactly, but it can
give you a grace period to get that message before it goes out! The Sending Delay determines how long
Airmail waits before actually attempting to send a message after you hit Send.
Local Messages
Airmail is designed to minimize email loss and uses Local Messages to help achieve that goal. Local
Messages are essentially a local cache of messages that ensures you dont lose any messages to network
loss, server issues or other problems.
There are three types of Local Messages:
Local Draft: Any emails you compose, replies, new or forwards, are saved to a local folder every 10
seconds. Airmail also converts any message that fails to send, for whatever reason (no network,
server down, etc.), into a local draft again.
Pending (Sending folder): These are messages that are ready to send, delayed or sent when offline
and ready to process.
Local Sent: After a message is sent a copy gets stored in this cache. This does NOT change the
option to store the sent messages on the server as well.
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This preference controls how long you want Airmail to store these messages. For example, if you want to
only keep your drafts or sent messages on the server, enabling this tells Airmail to remove a message from
the local folder after it successfully stores it on the server.
The options are:
Not Remove: Never remove the messages from the cache. This is the default.
30 Days: Remove these messages after 30 days.
7 Days: Remove these messages once a week.
One Day: Remove these messages every 24 hours.
Remove Always: Remove these messages immediately after successfully processing them.
Image Cache
Airmail caches the images attached to email to enhance reading performance and allow you to see them
while offline. This allows you to clean that cache out if Airmail gets too sluggish.
Operations
Airmail tracks all of the various changes (move, copy, transfer messages between accounts, etc.) in its
Operations Log:
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Clean does exactly that clears the Operations Log. Overtime this log will become very large and regular
pruning is something to consider.
GPU Acceleration
Airmail makes extensive use of the power Graphics Processing Units (GPU) available in modern Macs.
However, if battery life is of upmost priority, you can disable this support and rely solely on the computers
Central Processing Unit (CPU) for all of its work.
Use SpamSieve
SpamSieve is a powerful Bayesian-based spam filter for filtering out the vast volumes of email space
that plague users. This option activates automatic integration with SpamSieve, causing it to launch in the
background when Airmail starts and allows you to add to SpamSieves corpus, both positive and negative
mail, from Airmails message list.
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External Services
External File Sharing Services
AirMail allows you to use a variety of file sharing services to simplify sending large attachments to your
recipients. Historically, when you send a 5 MB file to 20 users, the mail server sends out 20 copies of that
file, or over 100 MB of data. Today file sharing services like Dropbox offers a much more efficient model
the 5 MB files is upload the file once to the service and a link is sent in the email. The recipient downloads
the file by selecting the link.
AirMail supports these file sharing services:
FTP Attachments
Dropbox
Google Drive
Droplr
CloudApp
Evernote
Open Directory
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FTP Attachments
If you own, or have access to, an FTP server, its easy to use Airmail to automatically upload and store your
message attachments there. First, go to any Preferences page and at the top-right, click on FTP which will
present the screen below.
Add your complete server path to the folder where you want to store your attachments, your Username and
Password, then sign in. Airmail will remember your settings (but for your privacy Airmail will not retain them).
This is similar to choosing Dropbox, Google Drive, or Evernote for the same purpose of storing attachments
from your email. If you have selected FTP to store your attachments, youll see the world globe icon at the
top of the message composer.
External Services
Dropbox >
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Dropbox
Using Dropbox
Dropbox is a popular file-sharing service that AirMail can leverage to send attachments. Once Dropbox is
configured, you can choose to send attachments as a link instead of the complete file.
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3. Enter your credentials to allow Airmail to create a folder, AirMail Attachments, in the Apps folder of
your Dropbox account and save files to it. AirMail cant access any other folder or files in your
Dropbox account.
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Once successfully configured, you can now use Dropbox to send attachments.
Airmail does NOT delete the attachments at any point to ensure that the reference link remains
valid.
3. Browse to the file or files you want to send in the picker window that appears.
4. Select Add Files to Dropbox.
5. A progress bar appears in your email showing AirMail uploading the file to Dropbox.
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FTP Attachments
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Google Drive
Using Google Drive
Google Drive is Googles shared storage solution tied to your Google Account. AirMail allows you to use
Google Drive to send attachments as links instead of the entire file, saving on bandwidth and mail server
resources.
Entering your credentials allows AirMail to access your Google account information, including your
email address and to modify files on your Google Drive.
3. Once successfully configured, you can now use Google Drive to send attachments.
3. Browse to the file or files you want to send in the picker window that appears.
4. Select Add Files to Google Drive.
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5. A progress bar appears in your email showing AirMail uploading the file or files to Google Drive. Once
complete, it becomes a link.
Dropbox
Droplr >
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Droplr
Using Droplr
Droplr is a popular secure file sharing service. AirMail allows you to use Droplr to send attachments as links
instead of the entire file, saving on bandwidth and mail server resources.
Configuring Droplr
1. Select Droplr in AirMails preferences
2. Enter your Droplr account credentials
3. Once successfully configured, you can now use Droplr to send attachments.
3. Browse to the file or files you want to send in the picker window that appears.
4. Select Add Files to Droplr.
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5. A progress bar appears in your email showing AirMail uploading the file or files to Google Drive. Once
complete, it becomes a link.
Google Drive
CloudApp >
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CloudApp
Using Google Drive
CloudApp is a popular shared storage solution that AirMail can use to send attachments as links instead of
the entire file, saving on bandwidth and mail server resources.
Configuring CloudApp
1. Select CloudApp in AirMails preferences
2. Enter your CloudApp credentials:
3. Once successfully configured, you can now use CloudApp to send attachments.
3. Browse to the file or files you want to send in the picker window that appears.
4. Select Add Files to CloudApp.
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5. A progress bar appears in your email showing AirMail uploading the file or files to CloudApp. Once
complete, it becomes a link.
Droplr
Evernote >
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Evernote
Using Evernote
Evernote is a popular cloud-based information management system that Airmail can use to store messages
as notes or to create reminders. This integration allows you to save off important pieces of information or
whole email threads in Evernote without having to use the Evernote Helper application.
Configure Evernote
Configuring Airmail to use your Evernote account requires creating a link that gives Airmail limited
permissions to create items within your default notebook.
1. Select Evernote from Airmails Preferences.
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4. Select Authorize to give Airmail the necessary rights to your account for a years term:
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Linking Evernote grants Airmail the listed rights to your account for a years term, after which it
needs to be re-authorized.
If you do not have an Evernote account, you can select Create a new account from the
authorization sheet. Please consult Evernotes documentation for more information on this
process.
Unlink Evernote
Unlinking Airmails access to your Evernote account is a simple matter of selecting Unlink Evernote from
Airmails Evernote Preference.
Select Save to Evernote and Evernote will open (even if its closed), and you will see the following window
(this is an example for an email with the subject of Evernote Tutorial.
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Later on, if you want to find this email while using Evernote, click on the hyperlinked Evernote Tutorial (local
machine hyperlink) and if Airmail is open, it will find the original email from which you created the task. If
Airmail is closed, it will open it, but youll have to click on Evernote Tutorial a second time to locate the
message.
To use Create Evernote Reminder with Airmail, right-click on a message in your inbox or anywhere in the
body of a message and youll see the following contextual menu.
Click on Create Evernote Reminder and a new reminder will be created in Evernote for Evernote Tutorial
(just an example). You must then open Evernote Reminders to configure the reminder parameters.
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Later on, if you want to find this email while viewing the Evernote Reminder, click on the hyperlinked
Evernote Tutorial (local machine hyperlink) and if Airmail is open, it will find the original email from which
you created the task. If Airmail is closed, it will open it, but youll have to click on Evernote Tutorial in the
reminder a second time to locate the message.
Should you ever want to unlink Evernote with Airmail, go to Preferences > Evernote and click on Unlink
Evernote
CloudApp
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Open Directory
Using Apples Open Directory for Contacts
Open Directory is Apples Directory Service that comes with OS X Server and allows organizations to
provide centralized management of user and group accounts. AirMail allows you to use your companys Open
Directory server to look up mail addresses for other members of your organization.
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Navigation
Menus
Keyboard Shortcuts
Menu Extra
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Menus
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Airmail
Navigation
Airmail
Keyboard Shortcuts
Gmail
Shortcut Shortcut
Apple
Definition
Action
Label
Move to
Label
?S
Mark as Star
Move To
?N
New
Message
??]
Select Next
Conversation
??R
Refresh
?U
Mark as
Unread
?.
Cancel or
Extended
View
Abort Mails from being sent the status should be Pending in order to use
this shortcut. If no pending status in Sending function Airmail will extend
the view of interface if pressed the shortcut.
?U
Remove All
Filter
???R
Redirect
Redirect mail to another recipient with exact body without quote level.
??D
Send Again
??
Go to First
Go to Last
Filter Unread
Filter Starred
Filter
Attachments
Filter
Conversation
??
Archive
Airmail
Move to
Trash
Select mails
for same
sender/
receiver
?I
Mark as
Important
?I
Mark as
unimportant
??C
Dispatch to
Calendar
??R
Dispatch to
Reminder
??T
Dispatch to
Things
??2
Dispatch to
2Do
?R
Reply
?R
Reply All
?E
Quick Reply
?E
Quick Reply
All
Quickly Reply to all recipients at the same time without opening composer.
??B
To Do
??N
Memo
??M
Done
??.
Clear
Show body
Hide body
?J
Load Image
? null
Switch
accounts
?T
Operations
Show Operations
?A
Attach
??F
Reveal
hidden folder
Airmail
Menus
Airmail
Menu Extra
Airmail places a Menu Extra in the OS X Menu Bar that provides a few nice options:
Airmails Menu Extra obeys the Badge Count preferences (see Appearance), though changes
may not take immediate effect.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Airmail
Composing Messages
Composing email is made up of various tasks: addressing, writing and signing. Airmail removes the friction
that normally slows these tasks to a crawl. The overall goal is to ensure your fingers never leave the
keyboard.
Addressing Messages
Writing
Replying
Using Signatures
Using Attachments
Delay Messages
Airmail
Addressing Messages
Addressing
Airmail
Many users have multiple accounts and signatures: Airmail provides simple keyboard shortcuts to
quickly switch between accounts and signatures.
Address View
You can access Airmails address database via the Window->Address View menu option. However, this
view is designed to let you see what Airmail sees, it isnt designed to allow you to select mail recipients, so
you cant drag and drop addresses to the addressing bar.
The view show five columns:
User Name: This is the users display name.
Email Address: The address as stored in the source database.
Source Database: Which database Airmail found the account, such as Contacts, Gmail, etc.
Email Domain: What is the mail domain for the address, such as yahoo.com, gmail.com, etc.
Edit: 1.3.3 allows editing any manually added address in Airmails Address cache. You can learn
more about this feature in the Address View section of the manual.
Switching Senders
All modern email clients let you pick which email account you want to send from; however, Airmail gives you
the added ability to switch accounts without leaving the keyboard.
Airmail
3. Select the menu option Composer->Next Sender to cycle through your list of accounts until you find
the one you want.
Composing Messages
Writing >
Airmail
Writing
Writing
Airmail leverages all of Apples modern text management and rendering technologies, in additional to the
extremely popular Markdown syntax. You can find far more information about Markdown at its creators site
or refer to David Sparks definitive work, Markdown.
Airmail also provides a formatting toolbar with an array of formatting options:
Text Formats
Airmail supports the following composition formats:
Markdown 1.1
HTML
RTF
Plain Text
Quick Reply
Airmail
Despite the ever increasing volume of email, the majority of messages dont require an involved reply but
rather a quick response. Airmail provides a Quick Reply feature that displays a small text box above the
current message where you can type a reply. No fuss, no muss.
You can initiate Quick Reply through one of two methods:
1. Select the menu option Messages->Quick Reply.
2. Use the keyboard shortcut CMD+e.
Quick Reply removes several options in the interest of speed and efficiency. Therefore you cant change the
sender account or signatures or the like.
NOTE: Quick Reply only replies to the original sender; use Quick Reply All to send it to the
entire distribution list.
Addressing Messages
Replying >
Airmail
Replying
Quick Reply
Despite the ever increasing volume of email, the majority of messages dont require an involved reply but
rather a quick response. Airmail provides a Quick Reply feature that displays a small text box above the
current message where you can type a reply. No fuss, no muss.
You can initiate Quick Reply through one of two methods:
1. Select the menu option Messages->Quick Reply.
2. Use the keyboard shortcut CMD+e.
Quick Reply removes several options in the interest of speed and efficiency. Therefore you cant change the
sender account or signatures or the like.
NOTE: Quick Reply only replies to the original sender; use Quick Reply All to send it to the
entire distribution list.
Redirect
Last update: April 7, 2014 23:26:50
Airmail
There are times when you accidentally get a message sent to you that you want to send on to the rightful
recipient, but forwarding makes the message come from your account instead of the original sender. Some
mail servers allow you to redirect the message, which means you can send it to someone else and it appears
to come from the original sender.
You can redirect a message in three ways:
1. Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+OPTION+CMD+r.
2. Right-click on the message and select Redirect from the context menu.
3. Select the menu option Messages->Redirect.
Few mail servers allow users to redirect messages, given the potential for nefarious uses,
so you need to check with your mail administrator. For example, no Exchange servers allow
redirects they dont even have the concept of mail redirect from the client (Send As is NOT
the same thing).
Bouncing
Typical spam and phishing attacks are solved using products like SpamSieve; however, while these products
keep your inbox clean, there are times you want to ensure the sender doesnt even have a valid target.
You can bounce messages, which means Airmail returns the message with a cannot find this address
notification to the sender, which indicates an invalid address.
You can access the Bounce feature in three ways:
1. Use the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+CMD+B.
2. Right-click on the message and select Bounce Message from the context menu:
Writing
Airmail
Using Signatures
Signatures
When formal letter writing was still taught in schools the materials presented several different ways to sign
a letter, depending on the recipient and the situation. Modern email is no different you tend to sign your
messages in accordance to the subject, recipient and at times your mood.
Airmail lets you assign multiple signatures to each account and even each alias within an account. (See
Aliases for a more detailed description of email aliases).
The following section quickly walks you through adding and using signatures, but for more details please see
Signatures.
Adding Signatures
Airmail created a simple signature when you added your account. This is always referred to as the Base
signature. You can add as many signatures to an account as you like:
1. Select the + button to the right of the Signature drop down menu.
2. Enter a descriptive name for the signature and select Done.
Thats it with that name selected in the Signature drop down you are free to change the signature in the text
field below. You can use any of Airmails formatting features, but do realize it could be lost if you later change
the messages format from say HTML to Plain Text.
NOTE: You can make the new signature your default by selecting it from the menu and checking the Default
Signature checkbox.
Aliases
Airmail allows you to add signatures to any aliases you create for that account. For example, if I add the alias
themermail@gmail.com to my account, it appears in the Accounts, Alias drop down menu on the Signatures
Airmail
pane.
Thats it now any signatures you add to the alias appear when you choose that alias as your Sender
account.
Deleting Signatures
Deleting signatures is simple:
1. Select the signature you want to delete from the Signatures drop down menu.
2. Select the - to the right of the drop down menu. Airmail prompts to verify this is what you want to do.
3. Select Yes.
That it!
Choosing Signatures
You can select a signature to use in three ways:
1. Use the keyboard shortcut CMD+CTRL+i. This cycles through the signature list associated against the
sender account.
2. Select the signature from the Address Bar:
Airmail
Replying
Airmail
Using Attachments
Attachments
Airmail supports several popular online file sharing services, such as [Dropbox], [Google Drive], [Doplr], and
[Cloudapp], as well as the traditional method of directly attaching the file to the message. Online services are
much more efficient at sending out large attachments, since you only store the file once and send out links to
the recipients.
Airmail offers several ways to attach files, depending on whether you use an online service or local
attachments.
2. Attachment Button: The Address Bar has an Attach button that allows you to browse for the file on
your system and attach it.
3. Keyboard Shortcut: Use the shortcut SHIFT+CMD+A to bring up the attach dialog.
4. Menu: Select the menu option Composer->Attach to bring up the attach dialog.
Using Signatures
Airmail
Delay Messages
Airmail allows you to add a delay before it sends the message, which gives you time to realize and stop any
mistaken messages from going out. This feature is controlled in the Advanced preference pane.
Delayed messages are stored in the local Sending folder:
The message is NOT deleted, but left in the Sending folder with a Canceled status. You can choose to either
edit the message, delete it or send it again.
Airmail
Using Attachments
Airmail
Managing Mail
Organizing the ever increasing volume of email becomes as personal as your choices in food or music
everyone has a style, but no two are exactly alike. Some people ascribe to the one Inbox to rule them all
model and store everything in their inbox while relying upon search to find messages, while others strive for
the Nirvana of Inbox Zero while still others use some combination of the two, and many use none at all.
Airmail provides the tools to manage your mail your way. These tools include folders, labels, archives and
task manager integration, which are explained in detail in the following sections.
Airmail
Folders
Differences between folder and Label
Folders
Folders operate just like they do in the physical world, providing a location to store either individual items
or more folders and so on. Their simplicity and familiarity typically make them straightforward to understand
and use; however, their heirarchical nature can be rigid and increasingly difficult to change over time as your
needs change.
The different mail systems all rely on the folder concept to one degee or another. For example, Exchange
stores everything, calendars, contacts, tasks in different folders under the users main Inbox, but tends to
hide this from the user. Gmail, on the other hand, only SIMULATES folders, for the sake of the user and the
different mail clients. Behind the scenes all folders are actually labels (see Labels below) that email clients
tend to interpret and present to the user as standard folders.
Special Folders: All mail services have the concept of special folders for storing specific kinds of
information, such as the Inbox, where all new messages go, Drafts for unsent messages youre
working on, Sent, which stores a copy of messages youve sent, etc. Airmail lets you specify
these folders on the server, see Mapping for more details.
Viewing Folders
You can see an accounts folder structure by either selecting Show Folder View from the View menu, or
using the keyboard shortcut (see Keyboard Shortcuts). The screenshot shows how Airmail displays folders
as their name with an icon to the left. Nested folders, which are folders that contain more folders, have an
expansion triangle to their left.
Organizing Folders
By default Airmail sorts your folders in alphabetical order from A-Z; however, you can change this and
sort them in any order you like by choosing Arrange Folders A>Z from the Folder menu to unselect the
Airmail
checkmark next to the option. In this mode you can rearrange your folders to your hearts content. You can
also nest folders by dragging one on top of another, or unnest them by dragging them out to the same level
as the parent folder.
Hiding Folders
Airmail allows you to hide any mail folders that may not be currently relevant to your life, such as old projects.
This does NOT hide them on the server youll still see them if you use another client or the services web
interface.
Right-click on the folder you want to hide and select Hide Folder. Boom simple as that.
You can bring it back by selecting Reveal Hidden Folders from the Folders menu. Once visible, you can
right-click and choose Unhide Folder to ensure it stays visible after you select Hide Hidden Folders from
the Folders menu.
Currently (1.3.2) hiding a nested folder grays it out in the folder list but doesnt actually hide it.
Hiding a parent folder hides all nested folders.
Creating Folders
Creating folders is very straightforward simply select the spot in your accounts folder structure to create
the new folder and:
Choose New Folder from the Folders menu,
Right-click on the folder list and choose either New Folder or New Sub Folder from the list.
Select the keyboard shortcut, CMD+SHIFT+N.
Airmail
Sub Folders Also called nested folders, are simply folders stored in other folders.
Deleting Folders
Deleting folders is as simple as selecting the folder you want to delete and choosing Delete Folder from the
Folders menu, or Right-click on the folder and choose Delete Folder.
Renaming Folders
Renaming existing folders is very simple: select the folder you want to rename and either Rename from
either the Folder menu or right-click and choose it from the context menu.
Airmail
Colors
Airmail allows you to assign a color to both messages and folders. Some folks prefer using colors to organize
their mail as it allows them to identify where they are in the folder structure at a glance. You can change
a folder or messages color by selecting the item and choosing Change Color from the Folders menu or
right-click on the folder and choose Rename from the context menu. Both bring up the Rename menu which
contains a color box to the left of the name. Select this box to bring up the color picker and choose your color.
Managing Mail
Labels >
Airmail
Labels
Understanding Labels
Labels are basically a very flexible way to characterize your mail messages and how they relate to other
messages. Labels tend to confuse people at first because, by themselves, they dont define a hierarchical
structure like youre used to on your computer and with other mail servers. Instead they describe whats
important or interesting about a message and Airmail or other software can organize messages as needed.
Folders, by their very nature, have a fixed, hierarchical structure. Messages are placed in a specific folder, at
a specific place in the folder structure and therefore does not exist anywhere else, unless it is copied. Labels,
however, reverse this paradigm by making structure just one another attribute of the message. For example,
lets say you have a folder structure for your new project:
Now an email arrives that describes an engineering problem with your new Clanger3000 line that makes
manufacturing them as designed impossible. Where do you store the message for future reference? Folders
demand that you pick a single destination folder or copy the email to other locations, which takes extra
storage space. Labels allow you to assign labels for the relevant topics the message covers, including
Marketing, Engineering, Promotions and Cow Bells. Later you can search for both Cow Bells and Marketing
and find the message, or Cow Bells and Manufacturing, etc.
Did I mention the message is stored only once?
Airmail
Currently only Gmail and Google Apps accounts support labels, simply because labels are how these
services actually structure mail behind the scenes. This means you can create multiple labels and store your
messages in each one in the Folder View; however, the message is actually only stored once.
NOTE: Users with multiple accounts need to switch to the appropriate account first. Airmail will
only show the New Label option if it recognizes its talking to a Gmail or Google Apps account.
1. Go to the Folders menu and select New Label. This brings up the Edit Folder dialog thats
expected.
2. Enter your label name and choose Done. Your new label appears in the Folder View.
Airmail
Drag & Drop: You can drag and drop messages or conversations into labels as well; however,
doing so removes the source label. For example, if I had a message in tagged with the labels
Inbox, Widgets, and Marketing that message shows up when I view any of those label
views in Airmails Folder view. If I am in the Marketing view and drag my message to the
Promotions label, Airmail removes the Marketing label and adds Promotions. Now my
message has the labels Inbox, Widgets and Promotions.
Airmail
3. Select the color box to the left of the name to bring up the color picker:
You can read more about this process in our knowledge base article, Change the color folder.
Folders
Exporting >
Airmail
Exporting
Airmail provides several options for exporting messages to your local file system or another mail account.
However, you might want to think about WHY you want to export a message.
Exporting
There are numerous ways to export emails in Airmail, dragging the email to a folder, using the menu item or
dragging it in to an email.
Menu Item
Airmail
1. First, find the email that youd like to export and select it. This method only supports one email at a
time, if you need to copy multiple emails use the above method.
2. Open the Airmail menu at the top left of the screen and click Export To EML.
3. Browse to where youd like to save the email then click Save. Your email should now be exported.
You can read more about this in our knowledge base article Export an email
Labels
Archiving >
Airmail
Archiving
What is Archiving?
Historically archiving messages meant exporting them to a local mailbox file or folder for backup or storage
because local storage was expensive and hardware was fairly slow, so the only way to keep things humming
along was to remove any messages you dont need right now. This made finding old messages a slow and
cumbersome process that only really worked for a highly organized person.
Google changed all this by modeling Gmail around the idea that you should keep everything and just search
for it. Storage became cheap and searching was Googles forte. However, Google understood people didnt
want to see everything all the time, so changed the idea of archiving to mean tucking unneeded messages
away in a special folder you dont see unless you want to; however, your searching still look there, so you
wont lose anything.
Over time other mail servers and clients introduced similar implementations.
Archiving in Gmail
When you archive a message against a Gmail account, Airmail moves the message to the All Mail folder on
the server and locally. This means you can always see any archived message by selecting All Mail from the
folder list.
Archiving a Message
Airmail
Gestures
Alternatively any user with a multi-touch capable trackpad can use the Swipe to Archive gesture:
1. Put your cursor over the message and swipe two fingers from the left to the right of your trackpad.
You should see a grey area appear on the left side of the message.
2. Keep swiping your fingers until the grey turns light blue as shown below.
Menu
Another way to archive an email is by using the menu.
1. Ensure that you have selected the email you want to archive.
2. Go to the Messages menu and choose Archive,
Keyboard Shortcut
You can also use the keyboard shortcut, Command + Delete. The Delete key can be used for either
moving a message to trash or for archiving a message. To configure this, go to Preferences > General > and
check the following button appropriately.
You can read more about archiving email in our knowledge base articles
What Happens When I Archive a Message?
Archive an email
Unarchive an email
Send and archive
Airmail
Exporting
Flagging >
Airmail
Flagging
Email growth over the years pushed standards bodies, as well as client and server vendors to implement
various tools designed to help users and administrators cope with this deluge. Flags are one of the earliest
and simplest attempts since they allow users to add a colored flag to a message. Users could decide what
the flag meant, though many mail clients assigned them to a priority level by default (e.g. Red = High Priority,
Yellow = Medium Priority, etc.).
Airmail naturally provides flags though you can select through a variety of means:
Airmails Flags
Airmail provides the following flags:
Assigning Flags
You can assign flags to a message in a couple of ways.
Airmail
2. Select the Flags menu and choose the flag you wish to assign:
Context Menu
Last update: April 7, 2014 23:26:50
Airmail
Starting in release 1.3.3 you can assign flags using the Context Menu:
1. Right-click on the message and select the Flags menu.
2. Choose the flag you want to assign.
Removing Flags
Removing flags is simple use of the two options above to access the Flags menu and select the None
option.
Filtering Flags
Airmails Filter Bar provides a quick way to show only messages with flags. See Filtering for more details.
Archiving
Searching >
Airmail
Searching
Hierarchical folder structures are a great way to organize your email and make it easier to quickly find what
you want.
Provided all of your mail fits into that structure
and it never changes over time
or projects change
Well, you get the idea.
Search is the key to managing and retrieving the astronomical volume of email we accumulate over time.
Fortunately Airmail provides a very simple but powerful search facility that makes culling through old
messages quick and easy.
Searchable Fields
Airmail allows searching on any of the address fields:
Sender Name
Any
From
To
CC
Any address
Airmail
Searching
You can enter a simple term in the search field and Airmail brings up a list of all matching messages:
However, Airmail also allows you to add multiple search terms for specific fields by selecting the blue field at
the top of the results. This prepends your current search term with a drop down menu you can use to narrow
the results down to any of Airmails searchable fields.
You can add several of these phrases to refine your search; however, be aware that Airmail treats all phrases
as ANDs, which means it only shows messages that meet BOTH criteria.
You can learn much more about searching in our knowledge base article How to Use Search with Airmail.
Airmail
Flagging
Airmail
Troubleshooting
Likely the FAQ contents.
Airmail
Airmail
Address View
If you send a message to, or reply to, someone who is not in your Address Book that email address is stored
in Airmail. At some time you may want to find or take other actions with this address, such as deleting it, and
Airmail makes it easy to do this.
Go to Menu*-> *Window -> and select Address View which will bring up the Address View screen below.
To find a contact you can search for Name or Email Address.
Contacts that have the Apple Address Book icon beside them can not be deleted, but those contacts with the
Airmail icon can be deleted. Click on Info and select Delete.
Airmail
Filtering
Filtering in Airmail is all about showing you certain messages in the current folder quickly using the Filter Bar.
You can select a folder and then a filter to enable it. Select it again to disable it.
Airmail
Getting Help
Please see our support page for knowledge base articles, FAQs and submitting any questions or issues that
arise.
Airmail
Release Notes
How to Use Apple Calendar
How to Use Reminder with Airmail
How to Use OmniFocus with Airmail
How to Use Things with Airmail
How to Use 2Do with Airmail
How to Use Evernote with Airmail
Airmail
New Features
New Exchange Engine Airmail sports a rebuilt Exchange Web Services engine designed to improve
performance, reliability and stability. Users do NOT need to touch their accounts to see the
improvements.
New OmniFocus Integration Airmail allows you to turn any mail message into an OmniFocus task
via the context menu. Merely select the message you want to create, right-click and choose Create
OmniFocus Task. This brings up OmniFocuss Quick Entry dialog, with the mail subject in the title
and a URL points to the original message in the comments. You can use the URL to view the original
message in Airmail. ??See the related Knowledge-base article.
New Things Integration Airmail allows you to turn any mail message4 into a Things task via the
context menu. Merely select the message you want to turn into a task, right-click and select Create
Things Task to bring up Things Quick Entry dialog. Airmail pre-populates the task name with the mail
subject and adds a URL to the original mail message in the comments. The URL allows you to view
the original mail message in Airmail. ??See there related Knowledge-base article.
New Safe Link Detection Airmail leverages the World of Trust link detection technology to
determine if a hyperlink in a mail message is safe. Hover your mouse over a link and a colored
horizontal bar appears at the message bottom that indicates the links relative safety. The colors
range from solid green (very safe) to red (very UNsafe). You can learn more about how this
technology works at the World of Trust web site. ??
NOTE: You can disable this features via WOT links validation checkbox found in the General
preference pane.
New Per user Autoload Remote Images Airmail allows you to determine which accounts will
autoload remote image links.
New Plain Text Rendering There is a greatly improved plain text rendering engine that greatly
improves rendering larger plain text messages.
Airmail
NOTE: You must rebuild or re-add a mail account to use this new facility.
New Edit Folders in Unified Inbox Users can now edit an accounts folder structure from within the
Unified Inbox. Previous versions required switching to the individual account to make any folder
changes.
New Fetch Time limited to 1, 3, 6 months This release adds new limits of 1, 3 and 6 months to the
amount of mail Airmail maintains locally. Some people like to keep everything, while others like to only
keep the most current emails without actually deleting them.
New Indent Shortcut You can now quickly indent or outdent text in the composer using the CMD+[
or CMD+] keyboard shortcuts.
**New Quote selection ** You can transform any selected paragraph into a quoted block using the
new Quote Selection action in the Composer menu (or select the paragraph and use the
OPTION+CMD+Q shortcut).
**New Print in Composer ** You can now print your messages from the composer view, instead of
only from the message list.
**New Service URL to link back ** Airmail now provides a service URL to individual messages in your
mail store you can use in other applications. Selecting the URL will show the original message in
Airmail. For example, if I select a message and choose Messages->Services-Copy link to
pasteboard, Airmail creates a URL to that specific message that I can paste elsewhere. They look like
this: [airmail://message?mail=arielnewman451%40gmail.com&
messageid=etPan.52dcc6cc.3d1b58ba.157d%40legion.local]?
NOTE: Like any URL, this is only valid if the original message exists in Airmail. If you delete it,
the URL wont work.
**New Font Size in Plain Text ** You can now change the font size of plain text messages.
**New Power Shortcut D To dispatch messages to services ** Along with the new service
integration, Airmail provides several keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly send your current
message to OmniFocus, Things, Calendar, etc. The Dispatch options are under the Messages menu.
See the knowledge-base articles on creating Calendar, Reminders, and 2Do events.
New Preference for disable Idle/Push Connection This update brings the ability to disable an IMAP
accounts support for Idle/Push support via a new checkbox in the accounts More preference pane.
Airmail
This helps resolve issues with some IMAP mail services that dont reliably support IMAPs Idle/Push
protocol.
**New Preference to customize Data Detectors ** Data detectors allow applications to identify and
process common types of information, such as dates, times, etc. Airmail now lets you determine what
kind of data it attempts to detect via the Appearance preference pane. You can choose :
Links, Dates, Phone Numbers
Links, Dates
Links.
None
**New Preference to include original message in reply ** Airmail now allows you to choose to include
an untouched version of the entire original message when you reply instead of a quoted version. This
is controlled via a drop down found under each accounts Composer preference pane.
**New Preference to Move To-Do, Memo, Done ** Airmail supports To-Do, Memo and Done tasks
using either Labels (in Gmail and Google Apps) or Folders everywhere else. Previously when you
created To-Do messages Airmail copied these messages and they wound up creating multiple copies.
1.3.2 introduces the option to move these messages to the To-Do, Memo or Done folders (as
appropriate). This is controlled via the Move To-Do Messages checkbox on the General preference
pane. ??
Improvements
Improved Search in Unified Inbox
Improved Messages Rendering improvements
Improved Font List
Improved Preserve formatting on composer
Improved Explode address group to single addresses
Improved Remove address from AM Address book
Improved Mouse over signature area
Improved Save image from inline attachments
Improved Exclude Spam and Trash in search results
Improved Account switch on composer shortcuts
Improved New Signature switch on composer shortcuts
Improved Rendering
Improved Local Accounts
Airmail
General Fixes
Changed Button Star now replaced by Mark as spam.
Fixed Spellchecking issue.
Fixed Editing Online draft.
Fixed Exchange Plaintext messages.
Fixed win.dat preview.
Fixed YAHOO account service auto detection
Fixed Single attachments selection
Many other small fixes and improvements
Airmail
New Features
MultiMarkdown: Airmail adds MultiMarkdown support, which is a superset of the Markdown markup
language. You can simply use Multimarkdown-syntax and Airmail now compiles it to HTML.
New EML import by drag and drop: You can now drag messages stored in EML format onto Airmail
to import.
Address View Editing: This release adds the ability to edit Airmails address cache in the Address
View. You can learn more details about this feature here.
New Flat quote visualization: Airmail adds a new visualization mode to reduce the depth and visual
chrome for quoted portions of a message. You enable this in the General preference pane, though it
is disabled by default.
New FTP attachment: This release adds the ability to use your own FTP server as a shared storage
service when sending attachments, like Dropbox, Google Drive, Doplr, and CloudApp. See the FTP
Attachments section of the manual for more details.
New Flag Menu: This release adds a new Flags menu to the context menu when you right-click on a
message, allowing you quick access to setting message flags.
New Language Latin American: Airmail now offers support for Latin American Spanish in the
Languages preference. You need to restart Airmail after changing the default language.
Enhancements
Improved overall Things Integration.
Improved Search performance.
Improved OS X Calendar integration.
Improved OS X Reminder integration.
Improved AppleScript support for Mavericks.
Improved Short Link features.
Improved attachment integration with Dropbox and Google Drive.
Improved WOT Link integration.
Improved Airmails ability to detect whether it is Offline or Online.
Airmail
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue with the cursor disappearing from the Search dialog.
Fixed an issue with the unread message count being off in certain situations.
The cursor in the Search display now appears correctly.
Airmail no longer randomly resizes when you change screens.
Fixed an issue with our AppleScript integration when contacting BusyCal.
Fix Local Transfer
Things now launches correctly when attempting to add messages as tasks.
Fixed an issue where certain messages wouldnt encode correctly when adding them to OS Xs
Calendar.
Fixed an issue rendering certain messages against mail servers using the Generic IMAP protocol.
Quick Reply All now correctly adds all of the recipients.
Fixed an issue where you couldnt mark messages as Important using certain themes.
Fixed an issue with the Spell Checker preferences.
Several other small fixes.
Airmail
Advanced Features
Airmail
Data Detector
Airmail makes it easy for you to selectively choose what information you would liked hyperlinked in your
displayed email messages. The choices Airmail provides are URL links, dates, and phone numbers, or a
combination of these. To select which you would like to see, go to Preferences > Appearances > and click on
the Data Detector drop-down window as in the screenshot below.
From the drop-down menu you can select Links, Dates, Phone Numbers or Links, Dates or Links only,
and finally, None, which means no information in your email messages will be hyperlinked.
The following screenshot gives examples of the the selected data detectors.
Airmail
Apple Reminder
Airmail interfaces with Apple Reminders to allow you to create Reminders from email messages. To use this,
right-click on a message in your inbox preview list and select Create Reminder.
You will hear a sound as Airmail creates the Apple Reminder. Go to Reminders and you will see your
Reminder has been created similar to the following screenshot.
The URL in the Apple Reminder will take you to the specific message from which you created the reminder.
NOTE: If Airmail is closed, clicking on this URL will only start Airmail. Next, you must open the Airmail
interface and click on the Reminder URL a second time and Airmail will automatically find and select the
message.
Airmail
Apple Calendar
Airmail interfaces with the Apple Calendar to allow you to create calendar events from messages. To use
this, right-click on a message in your inbox preview list and select Create Calendar Event.
A calendar event with the subject of the selected message will be instantly created in your Apple Calendar.
You can edit this event as with any other calendar event. NOTE: if you select a message in your inbox from
a date in the past, thats the date the message will be added to your Calendar.
Airmail
OmniFocus
OmniFocus is a popular Mac app that contains a task manager with which Airmail has been configured to
interface. To use Airmail with OmniFocus, simply right-click on any email in your inbox, or right click on any
message body to present the following contextual menu.
Select Create OmniFocus Task and you will see the following window, with the subject of the email already
pre-filled (you can edit the subject at this time, or after your task is added to OmniFocus). NOTE: in this
example the subject of the email is Learn to use OmniFocus.
Click on Save and the task will be added to your OmniFocus inbox for further processing. After you click
on Save the window will disappear. Then go to the OmniFocus inbox to view your taskit will appear as
follows:
Airmail
If Airmail is open, clicking on the local URL will open Airmail and select the message associated with the task.
If Airmail is closed, clicking on the URL will only open Airmail, but clicking on the local URL a second time will
select the message associated with the task.
In the future, Airmail will includ deeper integration of OmniFocus, such as in Rules and more.
Airmail
Things
Things is a popular Mac task manager with which Airmail has been configured to interface. To use Airmail
with Things, simply right-click on any email in your inbox, or right click on any message body to present the
following contextual menu.
Select Create Things Task and you will see the following window, with the subject of the email already prefilled (you can edit this subject at this time, or after your task is added to Things). NOTE: in this example the
subject of the email is Learn to use Things.
Click on Save and the task will be added to your Things inbox for further processing. After you click on Save
the window will disappear. Then go to the Things inbox to view your taskit will appear as follows:
Airmail
If Airmail is open, clicking on the local URL will open Airmail and select the message associated with the task.
If Airmail is closed, clicking on the URL will only open Airmail, but clicking on the local URL a second time will
select the message associated with the task.
In the future, Airmail will includ deeper integration of Things, such as in Rules and more.
Airmail
2Do
2Do is a popular Mac task manager with which Airmail has been configured to interface. To use Airmail with
2Do, simply right-click on any email in your inbox, or right click on any message body to present the following
contextual menu.
Select Create 2Do Task and 2Do will open on your Mac, with the subject of the email already pre-filled and
highlighted in case you want to change the subject title. NOTE: in this example the subject of the email is
Learn to use 2Do.
Airmail
If Airmail is open, clicking on the local URL will open Airmail and select the message associated with the task.
If Airmail is closed, clicking on the URL will only open Airmail, but clicking on the local URL a second time will
select the message associated with the task.
In the future, Airmail will includ deeper integration of 2Do, such as in Rules and more.