I’ve tried before to move a lot of messages between Google/Gmail accounts by just dragging the messages from one IMAP account into another (using a regular IMAP client such as Thunderbird or Mail), but it never works for a lot of messages. Then I found out about the Google Email Uploader tool, and gave it a try.

My first attempt was to use the Mac version of Google’s Email Uploader and just upload all messages I had downloaded in my local OS X Mail setup. The upload was supposed to take around 18 hours and I tried twice but both times, the uploader seemed to get stuck on some message(s).

I downloaded the source for the app and tried to figure out if I could patch the app to make the work easier. But instead of digging through all code, I thought I should give the Windows version a try instead. It has been around for a longer time and therefore probably a bit more reliable.

So I set up Thunderbird in my Windows installation (running VMware Fusion), and downloaded all messages from my IMAP server, and then uploaded them using Google Email Uploader for Windows. Everything went smooth and took about 20 hours.

For the next batch I imported the messsages into Thunderbird for Mac and then used the uploader tool for Mac. This time it worked great (but was fewer messages).

So, lesson learned: Try to import the messages into Thunderbird if the uploader get stuck when uploading from Mail.app. If that doesn’t work, try the Windows version.

Instead here’s an AppleScript which will take the selected message(s) and automatically create one task for each email in the “Next” focus in Things. It will then archive the mail messages and show a Growl notification. The todos in Things will get tagged with the “Reply” tag (which in my setup is a subtag of “Email”).

The script is a modified version of the one found here. I also put the script in an Automator action like described in the article so you can assign a shortcut key to it without including third party software.

Before upgrading to Snow Leopard I had a QuickSilver trigger (⌃⌥⌘M) to open the currently selected file(s) or folder(s) in TextMate. It was setup as a QuickSilver trigger using the Proxy Object “Finder Selection”. Too bad it doesn’t work for me in the later QuickSilver versions and/or Snow Leopard.

I missed this trigger so I made a 10.6 Service to accomplish the same task:

1. Run Automator and select “Service” from the template chooser.
2. Select “Files and Folders” from “Finder”
3. Find the “Open Finder Items” action from the left pane and select TextMate as the application.
4. Save the service in ~/Library/Services. I called mine “Open With TextMate”

To run the service from the keyboard, run “System Preferences” and select “Keyboard”, then select “Services” in the left menu and locate the “Open With TextMate” service on the right side. Add a keyboard shortcut (I choose the same as I’m used to, ⌃⌥⌘M).

1. Sign up for a new iChat screen name and add your normal user as a buddy.
2. In Transmission, open Preferences → Transfers and set the folder for incomplete files to something different than the “Default download location”.
3. Start Automator (in /Applications) and create a new workflow
4. Add the “Run AppleScript” action and paste in this code (replace YOURBUDDY with the scree name of your own iChat account:
5. Save as a plugin and choose “Folder action” in the “Save As” dialog. Select the folder you setup Transmission to use as the “Default download location”.
6. Done! The script should now send you an iChat message whenever a new file is added to the folder.

I created this setup a pretty long time ago and still use it, but these days together with a Growl notification plugin that also twitters me when the download is complete.

To work around that, run the scheduled jobs as root and exec screencapture like this instead:

Get the updated versions here (one with blue background and one with the white default).

Update:

Just a quick note that RailsTerm, my AppleScript to automatically open the tabs (in OS X 10.5 Terminal) needed for Rails development), is bumped to version 0.3.

Since I use Passenger (mod_rails) and Passenger.prefpane for my local development the script will now auto detect the virtual hosts available on your system (in /etc/apache2/passenger_pane_vhosts/*.vhost.conf). I use the script daily and is a real time-saver for me.

RailsTerm or browse source is on GitHub.

By default, Spotlight will index all your mail Mail.app messages and attachments, even those in your Trash and Spam folders. To exclude these folders from the Spotlight results you can add the folders to the “Privacy” section of the “Spotlight” pane in “System Preferences”.

I’m using IMAP on Gmail so your path may be a little different if you’re on another setup. The paths I choose to exclude are

~/Library/Mail/IMAP-user@imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Trash.imapmbox
~/Library/Mail/IMAP-user@imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Spam.imapmbox
~/Library/Mail/IMAP-user@imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/All Mail.imapmbox/Attachments

You might not want to use the last one if you tend to keep attachments in the mail message but I usually save the important ones to a real folder.