Email Options: Problems with Apple Mail under Sonoma

[MysticScholar]

I have a vast number of emails in a vast number of mailboxes on Apple Mail--many of which are stored locally on my hard drive. Up till now I have been able to Use Mail Suite (from Small Cubed) which allows me through hot keys to bring up a search rectangle box, type in the name of the mailbox, then copy or move emails to selected mailboxes. I can also open mailboxes the same way,

That said, Apple Mail is soon discontinuing its support for Plugins under Sonoma. This means that this plugin will no longer work under Sonoma (and presumably afterwards).

Though the company is creating a new email client (Mail Maven), I have no idea how reliable it will be. Apple Mail is well supported and reliable as it stands.

I looked into Outlook which has the above features, but I believe that the .pst files for local storage are easily corruptible--especially since you only get one file for all mailboxes (as opposed to .mbx or .eml files for each one of your mailboxes).

Postbox is interesting--except it does not provide native support for Microsoft Exchange servers--nor does Mail Mate.

So Apple Mail under Sonoma will cause me some serious problems. Drag and drop is extremely slow for me and massively diminishes the effectiveness of my work flow.

I really don't know how to proceed from here.

Any suggestions?

Thank you very much!

 

[kitKAC]

I looked into Outlook which has the above features, but I believe that the .pst files for local storage are easily corruptible--especially since you only get one file for all mailboxes (as opposed to .mbx or .eml files for each one of your mailboxes)

Outlook only uses .PST files on Windows, on macOS emails are stored as individual files so Spotlight can read them (as used by the old Outlook interface).

So Apple Mail under Sonoma will cause me some serious problems. Drag and drop is extremely slow for me and massively diminishes the effectiveness of my work flow.

You're using developer beta.

 

[ThrowerGB]

Take a look at Thunderbird. Not sure if I completely understand what you're trying, but I suspect it can do what you want. I have a large number of emails in a large number of local and server based folders. ~43GB locally. I'm connected to 2 different mail servers. TB is quite reliable. I have emails going back to 1998 and can't recall having had problems.

 

[MysticScholar]

Thank you, ThrowerGB, for the comments on Thunderbird.

 

[MysticScholar]

That was really helpful, kitKac. Thank you.

Apparently Outlook creates .olm files which are designed for Macs. Am I right about that? I'm not sure if that's any better than .pst files have been. .pst files are notoriously easy to corrupt, and that has worried me, given how large my local archives are.

I'm not using a developer beta. I know what's coming based on info from the company that makes the plugin I use.

 

[gilby101]

Apple Mail is soon discontinuing its support for Plugins under Sonoma.

Not quite true.

For the last 2 years Apple hs been warning that legacy Mail plugins would at some point in the future no longer be supported. And the time is now (or when Sonoma is released).

But Apple Mail does support plugins via the MailKit framework (Monterey onwards) and developers have been encouraged to move to it.

It would seem that Small Cubed has got its act together with the release of MailMaven. I assume it uses the MailKit framework.

What is wrong with moving to MailMaven?

I really don't know how to proceed from here.

1) Continue to use Ventura (except for testing).
2) Test MailMaven with Ventura, ready for when Sonoma is released later this year.

 

[MysticScholar]

MailMaven is not a plugin, but an email client. That's a big change. An email client is not an easy program to create and make work effectively. Many email clients have various issues, and I'm concerned that this one could have them too. So I'm trying to prepare myself for the possibility that MailMaven might not work as well as I would like it to. I certainly hope it will, and I would be thrilled if this turned out to be an easy transition. But I want to have options in the event that I need to explore other options.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I'd say continue using Ventura until there's an application that you absolutely need that won't run on it anymore…or until security updates are no longer provided for Ventura. At that time you can re-address the issue and the available options.

 

[koolhaus]

I have the same problem and more. I've been using MailSuite for years and rely on their excellent Mailtags feature. Can't do without it as I have to stay on top of multiple projects on a daily basis. It basically functions like Safari's Bookmarks where I can set up multiple folders and then populate those folders and subfolders. The problem with staying with Ventura and waiting is that you can't synch your other Apple devices (iPhone and iPad) to your Apple Calendar, Contacts, etc. with your MacBookPro unless you also don't upgrade your iOS devices. The problem for me is that I bought a new iPhone and iPad with the new iOS already installed and Apple won't let me synch to my Ventura MacBook Pro. I refuse to synch everything to iCloud as this has always given me duplicate calendar events in my Apple Calendar sometimes 10 or more of the same event and then I have to manually delete them all. I've also looked at alternatives to Mail Suite & MailTags and it seems Outlook allows you to customize Categories and tag emails that way. However, MailTags seems to have better search and grouping as it gives me a pull down menu which shows all my Projects and KeyWords that I've tagged under subheadings. Not sure if Outlook allows that as I'm still early in investigations.