[kite55surfer]

Hi all,

I am a new user trying out the program (1.1) and the one feature I really need is being able to turn incoming emails into tasks.

The thing is this emails dont have "+omnifocus" or "--" or anything standard I could use in them.

Does anybody know of a way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance for any help

[brianogilvie]

The +omnifocus or -- patterns are for emails you send to yourself to create tasks when you are away from your computer.

If you want to turn any email into a task, you should open the OmniFocus preferences and select the Clippings preferences. At the bottom, install the OmniFocus Mail Clip-o-Tron 3000. Once you do that, you can use the OmniFocus services to turn any email into an action. I have set up command-F2 as my keyboard shortcut for that service.

If that doesn't do what you want, please give more details.

[kite55surfer]

Thanks for your help, what I am looking for is more automatic.
If an email comes from say "john.doe@macco.com" I want to have it turn into a task.
The only thing I can think of is rules in Mail with a script, but how to do it I don't know, I am an ex-Windoze and scripts are a mistery to me.

Can anybody help
Thanks in advance

[brianogilvie]

OK, here's what to do:

In OmniFocus, open Preferences, then Mail preferences. Select the checkbox to "Add Mail Rule to create OmniFocus actions."

Quit Mail and restart. (I don't know whether this is necessary, but it can't hurt.) Open Mail, select Preferences, then Rules. Scroll down to the "Send to OmniFocus" rule.

Select the rule and choose "Duplicate" from the buttons on the right.

Double-click on the new rule. Give it a descriptive name. Where the rule reads "If any of the following conditions are met: Subject begins with...", select Subject in the popup menu and change it to From. Then choose the proper match criterion and enter the address you'd like to generate tasks in the proper field.

If you want the message to remain in your inbox in addition to generating a task, be sure to delete the "Delete message" item in the rule. The key element is that you want your rule to run the script "/Applications/OmniFocus.app/Contents/Resources/MailAction.applescript".

[kite55surfer]

No way!

Thanks a lot! You are amazing.
I am going to push my luck with your help, is there a way to direct the task to an specific folder?
That would be too much to ask.

Thanks again!

[Lizard]

If you want to direct the task to a specific folder in Mail, add another line at the bottom of the "Perform actions" section with "Move Message" selected from the first drop-down and choose the folder you want it in for the second drop-down.

If you want to direct the task to a specific project in OmniFocus, you'd have to modify the AppleScript, which is a bit more complicated......

[kite55surfer]

I thought so, I was referring to OmniFocus.

Thanks to all!

[Lizard]

If you can persuade the sender of these emails to tweak their format, you can use the following (lifted directly from the OmniFocus help):

To specify a project, use > (greater-than sign) or :: (double-colons), followed by a project name or abbreviation. The colons are nicer for the iPhone because they are on the first shifted keyboard rather than the math keyboard. The project string is matched exactly as if it was entered in a project cell in OmniFocus.
To specify a context, use @ (at sign), followed by a context name or abbreviation. Like project names, the context name is matched exactly as it would be in OmniFocus.

[Lizard]

So an action would look something like this:

-- Action 3 > Project 1 @ Context 1

[Lucas]

You might also direct it to a specific folder by setting the project in Mail Rules with Mail Tags before using the script on it.

Or, you could make a modified version of the script to make it go to the specific project for that particular individual.