Very Important Mac OS/X Feature – Rebuilding All Mail Boxes
I won’t rant about the lack of a rebuild all mailboxes in Mac OS/X’s Mail application. Entourage had it – but Mail does not. I also won’t rant about how the conversion from 10.4 to 10.5 left my mail in a strange state that required the hand-rebuilding of about 300 folders. And I am also not going to rant about how Automator is impossible to figure out – If Automator was easy to use, I should have been able to do a “rebuild all my mail boxes” in Automator in about 5 minutes. And I am also not going to rant about how AppleScript is the weirdest language on the planet – it is like perl – if someone gives you code that works – sweet – if you want to change it to do something every so slightly different it is impossible.
This post is a positive post and has some really cool info that will make it so that all the things above fade into quiet background grumbling.
Make a key that does the work for you. Damn sweet.
System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse – Keyboard Shortcuts -> Press the + to make a new One -> In the add new pop up -> Pick the Mail Application -> Enter the menu item exactly as shown – In my case it was “Rebuild” no quotes – and then pick a key – I picked Apple-Y.
Then restart Mail – and look!!! The menu now has a shortcut it never had before. Click on a mailbox and press Apple-Y – viola – your mail box rebuilds!
Since Mail does the rebuild in the background – you can click the next one and press Apple-Y as fast as you can go – I got a whole page ahead of the rebuilds once – than sat sipping coffee watching it catch up.
Now Mail search works through all the boxes.
After about 10 minutes I am half way through my mailboxes- and I have rebuilt the key stuff I look and search regularly. Now I have an important task to do when I don’t want to think much – building the 200+ mailboxes I have yet to rebuild.
I do like the new Leopard mail – particularly the feedback at the bottom as it tells you what is going on instead of just staring dumbly at you when it is busy doing something in the background.
