MailTo: Select multiple Contacts *and* Groups and compose in your favourite email app

[deanishe]

Not sure, to be honest.

Could you use Alfred's debugger to check the XML output? (Set "Log" to "All information" to see the XML.)

Verify that each <item> has a value for autocomplete and valid="yes".

If that's the case, the problem is probably not with the workflow.

[Sebastian Daza]

Solved! It had to do with my configuration for file action on Alfred (tab, not the right arrow). 

[deanishe]

Bump this thread, as I've released version 2.
 
Rewritten for much better support for Contacts and email clients. You can also add your own clients.
 
Download from GitHub or Packal.
 
Documentation is here.

[mikedvzo]

I am unable to set the mail client.  The debug output and Growl reports it being changed but it does not take and still results in using the default Client.  I have tried multiple clients.  The only way to change the client is change the default and force a reload.  Unfortunately I am trying to use this with my non-default client.  

[deanishe]

Sorry about that, and thanks for finding the bug.

 

Fixed it. Go into the settings with "mailto" and action the "MailTo is up to date" item to force an update.

[brian_diehl]

I am attempting to run the latest version (2.1.2) on OS X 10.10.5, and am given this notification:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

 

Any thoughts?

Edited July 30, 2015 by brian_diehl

[deanishe]

A very silly bug crept in while I was fixing the last one.

 

2.1.3 should run as intended. Update as described above.

[brian_diehl]

deanishe, you are an artist. Thanks for the update!

[incott]

Hi. I'm having the same problem as Newbie, but with the last version(2.1.3) and Mailbox. 

[deanishe]

Hi. I'm having the same problem as Newbie, but with the last version(2.1.3) and Mailbox. 

 

I don't know which problem you're referring to. Please provide either a description or a link.

[incott]

I don't know which problem you're referring to. Please provide either a description or a link.

Sorry... 

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

[deanishe]

You're not having the same problem as somebody else because those problems have been fixed.
 
I've no idea what the problem you're experiencing is because you're providing no useful information. Please read the thread describing how to report problems with workflows. If you post a debug log on here, be sure to anonymise any email addresses in the log first.
 
What you're seeing shouldn't be happening, but Mailbox doesn't currently work anyway. As far as I can tell, Mailbox doesn't actually support mailto: URLs (despite saying it does). Or its support is currently broken.
 
You'll have to take that up with the Mailbox developers, I'm afraid.

Edited August 20, 2015 by deanishe

[incott]

You're not having the same problem as somebody else because those problems have been fixed.

 

I've no idea what the problem you're experiencing is because you're providing no useful information. Please read the thread describing how to report problems with workflows. If you post a debug log on here, be sure to anonymise any email addresses in the log first.

 

What you're seeing shouldn't be happening, but Mailbox doesn't currently work anyway. As far as I can tell, Mailbox doesn't actually support mailto: URLs (despite saying it does). Or its support is currently broken.

 

You'll have to take that up with the Mailbox developers, I'm afraid.

I'm new at this and I'm learning....

 

What I meant is that 'brian_diehl' posted here the same problem on 30 july 2015 >>>> he wrote:

 

"I am attempting to run the latest version (2.1.2) on OS X 10.10.5, and am given this notification:

 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

 

Any thoughts?"

 

 

The same is happening to me.

 

I have used(with Maibox beta) with no problem for a long time, but today I received this notification.

Edited August 20, 2015 by incott

[deanishe]

I figured out that you meant brian_diehl. As noted, that error has been fixed. Brian's error report was useless, too, but fortunately (or rather unfortunately), I'd introduced a massive bug that always broke the workflow. That means it was easy for me to replicate the bug and fix it based on my own debugger output.
 
This is not the case with your problem. I tried Mailbox and it doesn't work, but that's because Mailbox is currently broken.
 
The workflow itself isn't failing for me, so I can't replicate the problem you're having. As a result, I don't have any debug output or an error log to help diagnose the problem.
 
I understand you're new at this, and that is why there is a sticky thread describing how to provide a useful bug report.
 
If you follow the instructions in the bug-report sticky thread and post an actionable bug report, I'll be happy to try and fix the problem.
 
That said, as noted above the current version of Mailbox (0.7.1) is broken and doesn't work with MailTo (or anything else that relies on the mailto: URL scheme, which is basically everything).
 
You can verify this by trying to send an email with Alfred's email keyword: it doesn't work.
 
So, as happy as I am to try and fix the workflow bug, MailTo still won't work for you until Dropbox also fixes Mailbox.

Edited August 20, 2015 by deanishe

[unclebarry]

Any way to make this work for Fastmail?

[deanishe]

Yes, but currently only using the Fluid SSB method (Chrome and Safari don't support mailto: URLs).

Follow the instructions for Roundcube webmail, but use the following script instead:

function transform(inURLString) {
	inURLString = inURLString.replace('&', '&');
	
	return 'http://www.fastmail.com/action/compose/?mailto=' + inURLString;
}

I will look into adding native support for various webmail services (Fastmail, Gmail etc.) that will open the compose page in your default browser.

[Geir]

Thanks a lot!....

 

Is it possible to get this even quicker?

 

Can you use a hot key and then just type in the contact-name you want to send an email to?

[deanishe]

Sure. Just add a Hotkey action to it (and connect it to the @ Script Filter).

[cands]

Thanks for a great workflow! There is just one thing that I'd like it to handle better: letters like Swedish å, ä, ö

If I select a contact whose name includes one of the letters å, ä or ö their names are strangely formatted when the mail is created in Outlook (2016). Can this be fixed? 

Edited January 8, 2016 by cands

[deanishe]

Maybe, maybe not. I don't have Outlook, so I can't test it.
 
The workflow works very well with non-ASCII text. The problem is almost certainly with Outlook's handling of mailto: URIs. A lot of email programs don't handle them properly and the workflow has specific rules for certain clients. But not Outlook because I don't have it.
 
Some email programs are smart enough to add the name from your Contacts if you just enter an email address. Try changing the Format to Email only in the settings (Enter mailto in Alfred) and see if it works any better.
 
Beyond that, better support for Outlook is dependent on either the Microsoft team implementing better mailto: URI handling or someone else (who has Outlook) figuring out a fix for the workflow. You could try writing your own set of rules for Outlook.

[cands]

Maybe, maybe not. I don't have Outlook, so I can't test it.

 

The workflow works very well with non-ASCII text. The problem is almost certainly with Outlook's handling of mailto: URIs. A lot of email programs don't handle them properly and the workflow has specific rules for certain clients. But not Outlook because I don't have it.

 

Some email programs are smart enough to add the name from your Contacts if you just enter an email address. Try changing the Format to Email only in the settings (Enter mailto in Alfred) and see if it works any better.

 

Beyond that, better support for Outlook is dependent on either the Microsoft team implementing better mailto: URI handling or someone else (who has Outlook) figuring out a fix for the workflow. You could try writing your own set of rules for Outlook.

 

 

Thank you, then I understand that the problem is caused by Outlook. Unfortunately, Outlook is not smart enough to add the name from just an email adress. But changing the Format to Email only as you suggested works well anyway. If the mail has many recipients it gets somewhat more cluttered with the full email addresses, but that's a minor issue. So for now I settle with this workaround, and if I ever dig deeper and find a solution I'll update this topic to inform other users of Outlook.

 

Edit I did find a set of rules that make it work:

 

{

// Outlook (2016)

  "com.microsoft.Outlook": {

    "spaces": false,

    "names": true,

    "mime": false,

    "no_commas": false,

    "inline_to": true

}

}

 

(Other combination of rules may work as well.)

 

Thanks for the advice!

Edited January 9, 2016 by cands

[deanishe]

Marvellous. I'll add your Outlook rules to the next release. Thanks for fixing the issue for other Outlook users.

[jfcg]

Hello deanishe,

 

Could it be possible to handle duplicates? I have all my contacts in google, and because groups are not synchronized with Address Book app, I also have them in my Address book as "In my Mac" groups. The problem is that they appear twice in the workflow. Do you think it could be easy to fix it?

 

Thanks in advance!

[deanishe]

It's a tricky problem with no obvious works-for-everyone solution.

I deliberately allowed duplicates, as it's possible that someone might have assigned the same email address to multiple people, e.g. I might have both Andrew and Vero with info@alfredapp com as their email(s). (The workflow organises everything by email address.) Filtering duplicates by name is a non-starter (damn your eyes, John Smiths!), and filtering by email AND name would only work well if you're careful naming your contacts.

I can think of a couple of ways it might be fixed in the workflow, but neither is ideal. Basically, the difficulty of spotting duplicates is why syncing accounts is so hard to do in the first place (and "Apple and Google can't do it. We'll have to call Dean." is not something anyone said ever.) Still, I guess a few dupes is okay in the workflow. It's not like it changes your address book.

May I ask why you can't disable your Google Contacts on the Mac? I'm trying to figure out if it would be better to be able to ignore certain accounts (though I don't yet know if this is possible with the Contacts API) — which strikes me as a fairly clean solution — or whether I should try to implement some sort of duplicate filter (exclude duplicate emails or exclude duplicate email AND name).

Edited February 2, 2016 by Vero

[jfcg]

Thanks for your reply.

 

I meant with duplicates to the same email AND the same name. I think it's the approach most of the applications take. I use MailMate and duplicates don't show. It's clear that if you aren't very carefully, some duplicates can't be filtered. But at least, it's up to the user to maintain its contacts list clean. Also, from a usability point of view, it's weird that a selection list is populated with exactly the same entry several times.

 

Do you think it could be interesting to implement this approach?

 

Thanks!

 

PD: I don't disable my Google Contacts account, because I would like to keep my contacts synchronized. It's a pity that groups don't synchronize and I have to do it manually, causing problems like this issue.

 

It's a tricky problem with no obvious works-for-everyone solution.

I deliberately allowed duplicates, as it's possible that someone might have assigned the same email address to multiple people, e.g. I might have both Andrew and Vero with info@alfredapp com as their email(s). (The workflow organises everything by email address.) Filtering duplicates by name is a non-starter (damn your eyes, John Smiths!), and filtering by email AND name would only work well if you're careful naming your contacts.

I can think of a couple of ways it might be fixed in the workflow, but neither is ideal. Basically, the difficulty of spotting duplicates is why syncing accounts is so hard to do in the first place (and "Apple and Google can't do it. We'll have to call Dean." is not something anyone said ever.) Still, I guess a few dupes is okay in the workflow. It's not like it changes your address book.

May I ask why you can't disable your Google Contacts on the Mac? I'm trying to figure out if it would be better to be able to ignore certain accounts (though I don't yet know if this is possible with the Contacts API) — which strikes me as a fairly clean solution — or whether I should try to implement some sort of duplicate filter (exclude duplicate emails or exclude duplicate email AND name).