I don’t know about you, but I suffer from Debilitating Email Affective Disorder (or DEAD). This horrible affliction is when you have so much email that needs your attention that you enter a form of stupor—you become DEAD.
So I started to think that there must be a better way to manage my email. The first thing that I wanted was to be able to classify my email as Projects. This is probably a carryover from using earlier versions of Microsoft’s Entourage. I have the 2011 version of MS Office so I started by trying Outlook. That had all the Project tagging that I wanted, BUT I didn’t want to use the calendar, address book, etc., of Outlook. I also didn’t like the Outlook interface so I quickly gave up on trying to move my email—I just love Apple Mail.
I did some research online for Mail plug-ins and came across the mention of MailTags. Since they had a demo available to check out, I decided to give it a try. At the time, my operating system was Snow Leopard, so I started using MailTags 2 and within about 2 days, I was completely hooked. I started by setting up Projects and marking email with the appropriate Project (like Advertising, Hammerhead, SDInternal, etc.). I can then set the priority or give the email a keyword or even add notes. If I have to follow up, I’ll mark the email with a “tickle” date.
Now that my email is MailTagged; what’s next? I set up Smart Folders that relate to what I might need to find, such as SDInternal with a due date. If I set up my Smart Folder to include all of my mail folders, I can file the email appropriately to get it out of my inbox. That way, I can still easily find the email when I need it.
Since I started using MailTags 2, I updated my OS to Lion which meant I could finally try MailTags 3. All I can say is I LOVE the new interface of MailTags. Not only is it visually appealing, it is easier to use. Apple’s Mail app itself is a big change from 10.6 to 10.7, but the MailTag plug-in feels very similar between MT 2 and MT 3 which is comforting.
The MailTag developers, InDev Software, are really quick to respond to questions which makes using their app even more enjoyable! I asked the developer, Scott, if there were any specials that were available and he let me know that MailTags 3 is on sale through the end of April for an introductory price of $19.95. They also have a demo so that you can try the product for 10 days, which was enough to get me hooked.
I guess that MailTag 3 has helped me become UNDEAD (or User Nolonger DEAD)!