I fucking LOVE Hazel and it’s one of those tools that I love to tinker with (but try and limit how much time I sink into it). I’m always looking for new ways to use it and I guess it’s time I give back by sharing some more of my favourite rules. RULES AND CONVENTIONS OF ACADEMIC WRITING The details in this hand-out are based on material first developed by Hazel Hall at Queen Margaret University College in November 1998. This hand-out probably merits consideration for the world's top ten of boring documents. However, if you want to do well in your assignments you need to get the basics.
A Hazel rule to automatically sort attachments from Mac Mail to folders organized by sender.
Best Hazel Rules
I spend an inordinate amount of time downloading email attachments from Mac Mail and sorting them into folders. My challenge was to find a simple process of automatically filing attachments into a folder structure based on the sender of the email. Solving this problem would allow me to increase my productivity by keeping my Downloads folder clean and allowing me to quickly find the files when I needed them.
Google searching for a solution turned up a number of AppleScript based solutions (like this, this, and this) but I wanted something simpler. Enter my favorite productivity application, Hazel.
I created a relatively simple Hazel rule which doesn’t require any AppleScript or external applications.
All told, this simple rule does three things to any attachments I save out of Mac Mail.
- Organizes the attachments by the sender’s name
- Renames the attachments by pre-pending the date of the email to the file name.
- Adds a comment to the attachments containing the Sender’s name and the date it arrived.
Todo: I still need to create Mavericks finder tags based on the available metadata. The only reason this is not done is that I’m still using Mac OS 10.8 on my work computer where most of my attachments arrive. I will update this post once I add that rule.
A Hazel rule to automatically sort attachments from Mac Mail to folders organized by sender.
I spend an inordinate amount of time downloading email attachments from Mac Mail and sorting them into folders. My challenge was to find a simple process of automatically filing attachments into a folder structure based on the sender of the email. Solving this problem would allow me to increase my productivity by keeping my Downloads folder clean and allowing me to quickly find the files when I needed them.
Google searching for a solution turned up a number of AppleScript based solutions (like this, this, and this) but I wanted something simpler. Enter my favorite productivity application, Hazel.
Hazel Rules Not Running
I created a relatively simple Hazel rule which doesn’t require any AppleScript or external applications.
All told, this simple rule does three things to any attachments I save out of Mac Mail.
- Organizes the attachments by the sender’s name
- Renames the attachments by pre-pending the date of the email to the file name.
- Adds a comment to the attachments containing the Sender’s name and the date it arrived.
Hazel Rules Mac
Todo: I still need to create Mavericks finder tags based on the available metadata. The only reason this is not done is that I’m still using Mac OS 10.8 on my work computer where most of my attachments arrive. I will update this post once I add that rule.