[Mischka07]

Hi all,

I know I can email myself inbox items via <name>+omnifocus@gmail.com, but is there a way to have Omnifocus recognize the item without having the email show up in my Mail inbox?

For instance, is there a way to set up a filter in Gmail so that all Omnifocus-related items go to a certain folder, and have Omnifocus only listen to that particular folder in Mail?

It's not critical, but I prefer to have my email uncluttered with various items, and I tend to email myself quite a bit during the day.

Thanks!

[whpalmer4]

I'm not sure I understand -- are you actually having a problem, or speculating about the possibility of one?

if Mail is running, it will process those messages as it receives them, and you can either uncheck the "archive processed messages" option in the OF Mail preferences, or set it to archive in a different folder if you want to keep those messages around. You shouldn't see them in your Mail inbox at all unless you are reading the mail with another application before Mail gets to pull in the message (the rule won't be applied in that case). I just mailed myself an action to my gmail acct + omnifocus, with Mail running, and the archive box unticked, and the only indication that I had that Mail had ever seen the message was the "new mail" audible indication and the appearance of the action in my OmniFocus inbox. Normally, I archive them to a different folder, just to have a bit of a safety net in case I send something that doesn't get processed successfully due to some HTML or Rich Text content, or for debugging purposes, but there again it doesn't appear in my Mail inbox unless some other mail client grabs it before Mail does.

[Mischka07]

Thanks for the suggestion. It's not a problem, just a preference. I have not toggled the "archive processed messages" option, so I'll give that a whirl. Basically, when I email the task to my +omnifocus gmail account, the email stays in my gmail inbox and doesn't go away until I manually archive it. I don't want the email to show up in my gmail inbox after OF has processed it.

[whpalmer4]

Maybe some of the confusion is due to a lack of clarity about which applications are in use. When you say something stays in your "gmail inbox", how are you viewing said "gmail inbox" to notice? If you do what I described using only the Apple Mail app, you should never see the message. If you send yourself the message from the gmail web interface at gmail.com and don't have Mail running at the same time, then yes, you'll see the message arrive in your gmail inbox, but as soon as Mail processes the message and you next reload the gmail page, it should disappear. OmniFocus isn't looking at your mail file in any fashion -- it just sets up a rule in Mail that passes along any matching messages when they are encountered (and will launch OmniFocus if necessary in the process).

[Brian]

I think the simplest solution here would be to set up a separate account for the OmniFocus items, wouldn't it?

EDIT #1
No, wait, that wouldn't work.

<great_and_terrible_oz>IGNORE THE ONE WHOSE COFFEE STILL HASN'T KICKED IN YET!</great_and_terrible_oz>
END EDIT #1

EDIT #2
Oh wait, it totally works.

<great_and_terrible_oz>Hey Brian: GO GET MORE COFFEE!</great_and_terrible_oz>

[Mischka07]

Originally Posted by Brian

I think the simplest solution here would be to set up a separate account for the OmniFocus items, wouldn't it?

Haha, I was just thinking this! I'll probably go this route unless something else comes up.

whpalmer, I largely access Gmail via an IMAP connection in Outlook 2003. I think part of it may be that I did not set up OF's mail procedure properly.

[whpalmer4]

Hey Brian, no fair thinking outside of the box, okay? :-)

[Brian]

Well, what Bill is saying here is pretty much correct. Mail does need to know about the account you use, and the messages won't disappear from the inbox until that app fetches the mail and processes the messages.

That said, I guess you could set that account up in Mail.app and just make sure to *not* tell Outlook about that account. That would hide those items from the mail account you use most often, at least.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Brian

Well, what Bill is saying here is pretty much correct.

Brian, I promise to do better next time, if you'll just tell me which part wasn't entirely correct :-)

I think I'm going to adopt the different account approach myself. I often forward stuff to myself using my Mac.com address as both source and destination (with +omnifocus), and if I do this from my iPod, as soon as the message is sent the iPod's Mail app reads the incoming message, the desktop copy never gets to process it and my attempt to get it into OF is temporarily stymied.

Mischka07, about all I know of Outlook is that I want to keep my current level of Outlook knowledge where it is, and so I hope we've solved your problem :-)

[Mischka07]

Yes you guys did solve my problem. I ended up setting up a +omnifocus email on my MobileMe account, that should do it.