MailFollowUp (Mail Plugin for Mac OS X)		Français
© 2007, Gregory F. Welch, All Rights Reserved
Synopsis:	Adds a "Follow Up" items to the Message and contextual menus (and optionally a toolbar button) of Apple's Mail application that allows you to compose (and then send) a quoted version of the original message to all of the original recipients, keeping the To, Cc and Bcc addresses exactly as they appeared in the original message.	Download 10.5/Leopard Version (See installation instructions below)
A Little Press:	Tim Gaden (Hawk Wings) has a nice description of MailFollowUp. Surprisingly (to me) Dan Frakes (MacWorld) has also written about it and my MailRecent plugin in his MacGems Weblog.
Author:	Greg Welch
Current Version:	1.2.1  (1.1 for 10.4/Tiger)
Requirements:	OS X 10.5/Leopard with Mail 3  (10.4/Tiger version available to the right)	Download 10.4/Tiger Version
Cost:	Free. If you like MailFollowUp please let me know.
Updates:	Sign up here if you want to be added to a mail list for MailFollowUp announcements.
	Mac and the Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Usage

Once installed (see instructions below) you should be able to select one or more messages and then choose "Follow Up" from either the Message or contextual menus. You can also use the keyboard shortcut -Shift-O. If you initially select a portion of the text from the body of the original email, only that (quoted) text will appear in the followup. A Follow Up toolbar button button can be added via the toolbar customization panel, either as a stand-alone FollowUp button, or in a Reply-Reply All-Follow Up-Forward group.

Known Issues

Background

I have long used Apple's Mail application, and have generally been very pleased with it. However I regularly found myself wanting to send an additional thought or comment to the original recipients of an email message, i.e. to "follow up" on the message. The "Reply All" option wasn't really what I wanted, because it would put only the original sender in the To field, and everyone else in the Cc field. This would make it seem like I was primarily addressing the original sender, and including others simply for their information. (Personally, I pay closer attention to mail that is sent "To" me than mail where I am included in the "Cc" field.)

Instead what I wanted in this case was to send a quoted "follow up" message to the original recipients, as they appeared in the original To, Cc, and Bcc fields. To accomplish this I usually did a "Reply All" and then manually moved the original To recipients from the Cc field back to the To field. This got old, and so I set out to develop a Mail application plugin that did what I really wanted. With some help from Scott Morrison (see below) I was able to develop a MailFollowUp plugin. As with my MailRecent plugin, I wrote this MailFollowUp plugin for myself, but hope that others might find it useful too.

Installation (Simple)

You can use the provided installer if you like. It essentially does the steps shown below in "Installation (Manual)".

1. Quit the Mail application.
2. Download (see above), expand, and mount the MailFollowUp disk image.
3. Launch (double-click) the "Install MailFollowUp" application .
4. Launch the Mail application again and confirm that the Follow Up menu items appear.
5. Sign up here if you want to be added to a mail list for MailFollowUp announcements.

Installation (Manual)

These are the steps (essentially) the above installer takes. You can do them yourself if you like.

1. Quit the Mail application.
2. Download (see above), expand, and mount the MailFollowUp disk image.
3. Drag MailFollowUp.mailbundle to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles ("~"means a user's home directory). You might need to create the Bundles folder if it does not already exist.
4. If you have never used another Mail bundle, you will need to run two special commands in the Terminal application (omit the % prompt). If you are using OS X 10.5/Leopard (MailFollowUp 1.2 or later) type
   

   % defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool true % defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 3

   
   If you are using OS X 10.4/Tiger (MailFollowUp 1.1) type
   

% defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool true % defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 2

1. Launch the Mail application again and confirm that the Follow Up menu items appear.
2. Sign up here if you want to be added to a mail list for MailFollowUp announcements.

Installation (Manual) for MailFollowup 1.1 on OS X 10.4/Tiger

These are the steps (essentially) the above installer takes. You can do them yourself if you like.

1. Quit the Mail application.
2. Download (see above), expand, and mount the MailFollowUp disk image.
3. Drag MailFollowUp.mailbundle to ~/Library/Mail/Bundles ("~"means a user's home directory). You might need to create the Bundles folder if it does not already exist.
4. If you have never used another Mail bundle, you will need to run the following two commands in the Terminal application (omit the % prompt):
   

   % defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles -bool true % defaults write com.apple.mail BundleCompatibilityVersion 2

5. Launch the Mail application again and confirm that the Follow Up menu items appear.
6. Sign up here if you want to be added to a mail list for MailFollowUp announcements.

Un-Installing the Plugin

1. Quit the Mail application.
2. Launch (double-click) the "Uninstall MailFollowUp" application or move ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/MailFollowUp.mailbundle to the trash.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Scott Morrison (developer of the wonderful Mail Act-On and MailTags) for help and code snippets that allowed me to develop both the MailFollowUp and MailRecent plugins. Thank you to Maurice Scharf for the French web page translation and localization help, Matthias Fichtner and Jan-Michael Frahm for the German localization help, and Paolo Boni for the Italian localization help.

The installation instructions were adapted from James Eagan's Attachment Scanner plugin web page. Another wonderful plugin!

Revision History

Support

You are welcome to ask for support via email. I will respond if/as I can.

Last updated Sat, Dec 29, 2007