What is the easiest way to convert e-mail to tasks or appointments in OSX?

December 13, 2006 10:10 AM

I am considering making the switch to the Mac, and I am wondering how you all convert an e-mail to a task or appointment in OSX. In Outlook, I just drag it to the Calendar or Tasks button (or use one of the ClearContext buttons). I understand this does not work in Entourage.

I don't believe I have to use Entourage, but I just thought I would begin there, since it is closest to what I already use.

Thanks for your help.

posted by 4ster to computers & internet (7 comments total)

There are some AppleScripts you can associate with Entourage (thre is a little script menu in the menu bar). Those include "Create Event From Message", "Create Task from Message" and "Create Note from Message".

Alternately, you can click on the link icon in the tool bar (it looks like a couple links of a chain), and link the message to a new calendar event, task or whatever.
posted by willnot at 10:22 AM on December 13, 2006

Good question. There are a few ways. Let's start with what we have available now:

MailTags: although slightly buggy in beta, MT is a Mail plugin that allows task and event creation from individual mail messages.

But here's what's coming:
Mail in Leopard: Automatic creation of events and to-dos simply by highlighting the relevant text in an email.
posted by Señor Pantalones at 11:01 AM on December 13, 2006

I just take the 10 seconds to dump it into iCal. It's not a pretty "one click" solution like Outlook, but it's really not that bad.

Are you talking about shared calendars at all? That's a totally different ball of wax.
posted by drstein at 12:13 PM on December 13, 2006

Sorry to not mention that earlier. No shared calendars, and I will be syncing (via, Missing Sync, I suppose) to a Treo 650.
posted by 4ster at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2006

Oh, ok. If it's your own calendar, then yeah, you might like Mail.app and iCal. I only use mail.app for work mail, and we use Meeting Maker for all other calendar stuff.

I use Thunderbird for my own stuff and iCal for calendaring. It syncs with my .Mac account and my home Mac very easily. I also sync up my Bluetooth phone with it.

So far, I haven't mucked things up, and I'm really lazy and sloppy. iCal & iSync might work out well for you.
posted by drstein at 3:02 PM on December 13, 2006

Check out Event Maker

Here are some applescripts Mail2iCal and Mail2iCalToDo

Basically both allow you to get selected mail and create an event or Todo in iCal.
posted by shr1n1 at 7:22 PM on December 13, 2006

Thanks everyone for the help. I really appreciate it.
posted by 4ster at 11:52 AM on December 19, 2006