New task from Mail attachment only?
 

Hello.

I am looking at OF to (potentially) replace Things. One feature in Things that I use constantly is being able to drag an attachment from a Mail message onto the Things dock icon and have that bring up the Quick Entry dialog, so I can create a new task with the document as an attachment. Sometimes I just don't need the entire mail message.

Is there any way to do something like this in OF? It seems like my choices are either to clip the entire message, or to save off the file then attach it later, which is many more steps.

Thanks in advance,
Robin

There is at least two ways to do this, probably more that I have not discovered. The first is to bring up the OF Quick Entry window while in Mail and drag the attachment to the note field. This is the most minimal approach.

What I do most is select the attachment in Mail and bring up the Quick Entry window with the Send to Inbox shortcut. This gives me the email title as the task, but the entire entry is selected so I can type a new task name to replace it. Also the sender info and a link to the email is included in the note, along with the attachment.

[img]http://grab.by/grabs/d06d9aff3aca447f2b3b881059da3c04.png[/img]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I think I must be doing something wrong, because your first idea isn't working for me. When I have my mail message and open up an OF Quick Entry window and drag, the icon with my attachment adds a little arrow, as if to be able to attach it. But then, when I drop it over the Quick Entry, it doesn't get attached. Nothing happens.

As for the second option, I don't see where I have a Send to Inbox shortcut at all. If I just select the attachment while in Mail, there are no services available. If I open the document (in this case right now, a PDF), again, no services apply.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
Robin

For item #1, you have to drag the attachment over the paper clip icon, OR click on the paper clip icon before dragging so that the note field is active, then drag anywhere in the note field.
[IMG]http://grab.by/grabs/8546ecc5aa24234e3888dc49bb889ebd.png[/IMG]

For item #2, you need to drag to highlight the attachment, rather than just clicking on the attachment's icon. Then the Services option will be available to capture the attachment.
[img]http://grab.by/grabs/017da4d4ca66d259a84663b83e288671.png[/img]

I almost wonder if there is something different about my Mac setup. Even when I highlight the attachment, as you suggest (and showed - thanks), there are no available services. When I highlight some text and then send it to inbox, only the text comes over, not the attachment. The only time I am able to get the attachment without detaching it first is when I use the Clip-o-Tron functionality of selected a message in the list.

Any ideas about what could be different? I am using OS X 10.6.3 on a relatively new Macbook Pro.

Thanks.

I am with RFBriggs on this one - neither of the two methods illustrated works for me either (with .doc or .pdf files)

I'm not having any success with Greg's techniques, either. I'm also running 10.6.3, latest OF Sneaky Peek (v77.49.0.132925). I am able to drag and drop files into the notes field and use the Send to Inbox service from other scenarios.

I'm on Leopard myself, so I expect that could be the difference.

Yep, looks like one of the changes from 10.5 to 10.6 broke this - doesn't work on my machine, but does work on one of our testing machines booted into 10.5; filing as a bug. Thanks everyone!

Hey, I'm not sure what it means when I have been using OF for less than a day and found a bug, but I'm glad I'm not losing my mind!

Thanks for all of the quick responses, this kind of forum activity is great to have.

- Robin