OmniFocus-only incoming email account on gmail
 

i thought i would post this recent experience for anyone that is thinking of ways to use omnifocus to input tasks through email. i have not found this hack specifically addressed anywhere on the forums.

i wanted to separate my omnifocus task emails from my regular emails since they sometimes clutter my regular inbox and the sync takes longer.

i therefore decided to create a dedicated free gmail account only for receiving my omnifocus bound tasks and by doing this i managed to eliminate the requirement for a leading marker for omnifocus emails since this account would only receive tasks and would not be used for sending emails at all.

here are the steps:

(1) create a unique gmail account with any address that makes sense to you.
(2) enable IMAP access on this account (i could use pop but imap is more reliable i find)
(3) go to Mail.app (i use leopard but it should not matter) and set it up to access the gmail account through IMAP.
(4) go to the omnifocus created rule in Mail.app's settings and modify it to only run for emails received on the dedicated account that was just set up.
(5) remove the OF text string condition (--OF or any other that was there) completely since all emails are tasks anyway.
(6) optional: i have deleted emails once the task is imported put in the trash box of the same gmail account to keep everything in one place.

i have just started using it but will update if there are any issues or glitches. since it is relatively simple to structure and run i doubt there would be any.

update here if you find better ways of doing this.

Nice! I can't believe that no one thought of that before.
Adding this to the FAQ.

brian - glad you like it and i also was surprised not to find something like this especially now that i have used it for a few days and it is working beautifully without a hitch. the whole mailbox is basically out of sight and just acts like a pipe to OmniFocus.

btw do you know of a way to prevent omnifocus from using the double hyphen flag to parse multiple tasks in one email?

i have a problem when forwarding email tasks to OF when they have message threads within them since forwarded or reply messages start with "----" or more hyphens when processed by MS Outlook and that causes inaccurate message parsing by OF to multiple irrelevant inbox entries vs. the one task that I am looking for.

I am guessing there may be an alternative script for mail rule handling or a modification to the existing script or even a preference in OF?

I personally don't know how to tweak that - you'll probably want to send in email via the help menu so your question gets in front of more knowledgeable eyeballs.

thanks. i've just sent them the same question. lets see what they come back with.

This mysteriously stopped working for me. I had everything setup fine the mail script works all the way up to adding a task.

Do you have the Safari 4 beta installed?

-Dennis

I do

There's a bug in the Safari 4 beta (Apple Mail uses Safari's WebKit to render email contents) that prevents the OmniFocus script from working. From what I've read, it sounds like an issue Apple has to fix. Only solution now is to revert back to Safari 3.

-Dennis

Thanks for finding that out. Hopefully they'll address that issue before they launch the final version.

[QUOTE=reign7;58799]Thanks for finding that out. Hopefully they'll address that issue before they launch the final version.[/QUOTE]

I think it'll be fixed in the next Safari release (whether that's another beta or the final). The Omni Group has reported it and Apple is aware of the problem.

-Dennis

[QUOTE=Toadling;58800]I think it'll be fixed in the next Safari release (whether that's another beta or the final). The Omni Group has reported it and Apple is aware of the problem.

-Dennis[/QUOTE]

Erm, isn't the latest release a final release? As of WWDC Safari 4 was officially released from beta.

This still isn't fixed for me. Is OmniFocus planning on addressing this, or are we going to keep waiting for Apple releases?

ETA: I looked a little bit closer noticed emails that are being sent to email+omnifocus@gmail.com are coming into Mail.app as [email]email@gmail.com[/email], hence no rule is being applied. Could anyone tell me what the story is there?

[QUOTE=devn;61732]Erm, isn't the latest release a final release? As of WWDC Safari 4 was officially released from beta.
[/quote]
Yes, and Toadling's post is from April, well before that :-)
[quote]
This still isn't fixed for me. Is OmniFocus planning on addressing this, or are we going to keep waiting for Apple releases?
[/quote]
It might be that there is a different issue affecting you here, as the general experience is that Safari 4's release did fix this issue.
[quote]
ETA: I looked a little bit closer noticed emails that are being sent to email+omnifocus@gmail.com are coming into Mail.app as [email]email@gmail.com[/email], hence no rule is being applied. Could anyone tell me what the story is there?[/QUOTE]
You are sending them to email+omnifocus@gmail.com yet when they arrive at your gmail account they are addressed to [email]email@gmail.com[/email]? Who do you think is rewriting them in this fashion? It certainly isn't a practice gmail applies to everyone's account! I'd try sending a similar message except with a cc to another email address so you can see what actually got sent.

Gmail 2 omnifocus
 

does the mail app needs to be running al the time? I use mailplane as email reader, not making use of apple mail.app.

Dominique

Yes, the email is transferred to OmniFocus by an action triggered by a rule in the Mail.app. Another email application that is Applescriptable might be able to do the same.