[Casper TFG]

I am pretty smug about this..

Its a work around the fact that on the iPhone version of OF there is presently no way to move an email into OF with one of the nice 'link to original' links - so when you are back at your home Mac you can re open it back in Mac Mail with one click..

It's also an "inbox zero" methodology helper tool..

Its working for me and I wonder if it will help anyone else or if there is a better way...?

ON YOUR MAC

Step 1: You must be using IMAP email

Step 2: On the Mac - create folder in the IMAP email account named "*Omnifocus" (the * will keep the folder at the top of the folder list)
Step 3: On Mac Mail - create a Smart Mailbox, name it "Action or STOF" (send to Omnifocus) create rules for it to pull in the following emails, all unread, all emails in folder *omnifocus, no trash, no junk) Put this folder uppermost on the left collum of mail accounts.

NOTE: You will now look at this smart mailbox most of the time and will be using your in box(s) as archive only.

Mac operation: With this Smart Mailbox - Look at unread mail - either action it or 'send to OF" . Dont look at the in box - that is now "The Matrix" - yes you can look into The Matrix and scare yourself once in a while but try to spend all your time just clearing the smart mailbox down to zero and then go hang out in Omnifocus more often (full time).

ON YOUR IPHONE

How to 'do some worthwhile OF / email work on the iPhone'.
Either respond to email from iPhone
OR - move emails to the *omnifocus folder for later processing

OK - its not a FULL processing - but when you get back home to your mac. You will only see

NEW / unread emails
And al the *Omnifocus emails you have pre sorted

Either process those - or quickly file into OF

WHY THIS IS USEFUL?

It allows some pre sorting to be done on the iPhone
You wont ever have to look at emails you have dealt with again
You can quickly (hopefully) get everything processed and then LEAVE Mac Mail and go work in OF.

I operate 4 IMAP email accounts - each has an *omnifocus folder so this works for multiple email accounts on an Iphone..

OPERATIONAL TIP on Mac:
Once you have read emails - if you toggle away from the Smart Mailbox and back again - all read emails will vanish from sight!

Do you ever look in the inbox "Matrix"
Of course! But not very often!

This method is a helper tools to allow you to stop living in your inbox and to live more in Omnifocus.

Works for me!

:D

Give it a try..

Anyone doing this already?

[SpiralOcean]

Nice post. I've also struggled with this because I don't leave a computer running all the time to process emails that I send to be put into OmniFocus.

I've recently started moving emails on the iphone that I want to process to a different IMAP folder. When I process that email account I go through that folder and either process into OF, delete or reference.

My question with your workflow... why can't you process the inbox? Is it because you want to keep all those notes searchable and on the iPhone?

Here's an adaptation:
create an IMAP folder for Send To OmniFocus
create a mail rule that processes all mail items in that folder into OmniFocus and then moves the message to an archive folder.

when on the iphone, move messages into the Send To OmniFocus.
When your Mac Mail application processes those emails in the folder, it will add to OmniFocus and move the message out.

[Casper TFG]

Great! An alternate method! I will study this carefully and see if it might suit me better.

Like you, I don't operate an "always on" mac, I use a laptop.

My primary concearn is to have all Mail items in OF have that "link to origional" function and to have filed items that might worry me somewhere "trusted" (In GTD fashion) the moment I have read them (while working on iPhone)

I don't move to any archive, my Smart Mailbox is now what I look at. The in box becomes the archive.

I may have forgot to add that I manually send things to OF and manually send them back to the in box.

Yours might be less work?

Will do a study on it.

Many thanks.

[Casper TFG]

Er..... what (exactly please) would the mail rule look like that processes emails to Omnifocus?

Thanks

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by Casper TFG

My primary concearn is to have all Mail items in OF have that "link to origional" function and to have filed items that might worry me somewhere "trusted" (In GTD fashion) the moment I have read them (while working on iPhone)

The OmniFocus link is fairly robust. I've moved messages around and OF still found the linked message.

I move my messages to a folder called archive after sending them to OmniFocus.

[SpiralOcean]

Originally Posted by Casper TFG

Er..... what (exactly please) would the mail rule look like that processes emails to Omnifocus?
Thanks

Hmm... well I may be wrong here... I thought there was a mail rule to process items in mailbox. But I don't currently see it.

One side note:
once you have set up the preference in OmniFocus, you can go into mail rules and change the rule to be whatever you want.

[Casper TFG]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

The OmniFocus link is fairly robust. I've moved messages around and OF still found the linked message.

I move my messages to a folder called archive after sending them to OmniFocus.

that's not in doubt. This work around is all about the fact that emailing from iPhone to Omnifocus will NOT get you that "back to the origional" link. (or so I understand)

[Casper TFG]

Originally Posted by SpiralOcean

Hmm... well I may be wrong here... I thought there was a mail rule to process items in mailbox. But I don't currently see it.

Well that's the question! Do you have the answer?

[SpiralOcean]

The answer is... 3. :)

There doesn't seem to be a way to process emails from a mailbox using a mail rule.

This could be done in Applescript.

However, even if mail was processing as a rule, it wouldn't have the original message link that you are looking for.

For me, the answer is,
create an IMAP mailbox that I can move messages to from the inbox using the iPhone. (I call mine: Hold For Later)

Then when I process my Mail inbox on my desktop, use the keyboard shortcut to clip the mail message. I set mine to:
control+option+command+t

This makes more sense for me as not all the messages in the Hold For Later mailbox I want to have automagically appear in OmniFocus.

[Casper TFG]

Yes, that's the tip I am trying to share here.

It allows for A "pre sorting" for omnifocus on iPhone (so faster operation on "home Mac"
and avoids you re-reading emails already dealt with (so less to read on "home Mac")