Would you like  to turn a word in an email message into a web page hyperlink? If you use Apple’s Mail, use these simple instructions.

• Open Mail and compose a new email message.

• Address the message and start to type the message.

• Select one or more words in your message.

• Go to the Edit menu and select Add Link.

• In the box that appears paste the web page address (aka hyperlink) and click OK. Use the picture below as a guide.

Pasting a web page address directly into your email is possible, but long addresses can really break up the flow of an email. If the web page address gets divided onto two lines then it can even break and not work when the recipient clicks on it. For example, imagine that you want to send a friend a link to a book available on Amazon’s web site. You could list the address, but it can be long and ugly. For example:

<http://www.amazon.com/The-Mac-Not-Typewriter-Edition/dp/0201782634/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361854496&sr=8-1&keywords=the+mac+is+not+a+typewriter+by+robin+williams>

Using the technique I list above, you’ll be able to hide that entire address by making it a link, like this.

Do you store thousands and thousands of email messages? Do you infrequently access many of these messages? If so, you could archive these email messages using EagleFiler. Once the messages have been archived you can delete them from Mail. Depending upon how many total messages you store in Mail, this might improve Mail’s performance.

Because email is so central to my business, I like to hold onto just about every message I send or receive. This means I have mail messages that I sent between the late 1990s and the present. Rather than storing years of these email messages in Mail, I archive them and store them in EagleFiler. In EagleFiler I can view the individual email messages including all of the header (to, from, date and subject) information and the message itself. I can also search for words contained in the messages. EagleFiler stores both the email message and the attachment. You can open the attachments by simply double-clicking them in EagleFiler. This triggers Mail to display the email message and the attachment.

You can download a trial version of EagleFiler if you’d like to test it. If you continue to use the program after the trial period has expired you’ll need to buy it for $40. Archiving messages into EagleFiler couldn’t be easier. Select one or more email messages in Mail and then press EagleFiler’s Capture Key, which is F1 by default. That’s it. Just sit back and wait for the messages to be copied into EagleFiler which happens pretty quickly. Once you’ve confirmed that the messages are in EagleFiler then you can delete them from Mail.

EagleFiler can actually do a lot more than store your email messages. You could think of it as a digital filing cabinet. EagleFiler can import too many file types to list here, but it includes web pages, PDF files, Word files and jpeg images. You can read the entire list. EagleFiler has a very user-friendly interface and many more features listed here. There are other mail archiving products on the market. Adam Engst of Tidbits wrote brief descriptions of  some of the better known mail archiving products, Mail Steward, Mail Archiver and DevonThink Pro Office. Since I already was using EagleFiler to store, tag and organize other documents, it made sense for me to start to use it to archive my infrequently used mail messages also. I hope you check out EagleFiler.

Do you use Apple’s Mail application on your Mac? It’s a capable email application. One of its best features the ability to extended its functionality using plug-ins. These plug-ins let you customize Mail so it can better meet your preferences and needs. Here’s a list of 10 plug-ins for Mail that’ll let you increase your productivity.

MsgFiler lets you quickly file email messages into one of your existing Mailboxes (aka folders). Using either a menu command or a keyboard shortcut you can file a message into a folder. Simply type the first few characters of the mailbox’s name and select the desired mailbox from the list of matches.

GrowlMail temporarily displays a small notification window on your screen every time a new email message arrives. By glancing at this notification you can monitor your Inbox while you’re working in another application. [Update March 2013: This functionality has now been included in Mountain Lion, OS X version 10.8, as a part of the Notifications feature.]

SpamSieve offers better spam protection than Mail’s built-in junk mail filter. It accomplishes this by using Bayesian filtering methods. It requires some initial training, but it’s very effective.

MailAct-On is an incredibly robust plug-in which lets you use keyboard shortcuts to quickly file, label or flag incoming or outgoing mail messages. That is an over-simplified description of its capabilities. This video introduction and video review will give you a more complete understanding of it’s capabilities.

MailTags let’s you assign keywords, priorities, categories and due dates to actions mentioned in an email. It lets you escape the constraints of folders by allowing you to organize and find your messages by keyword or other metadata that you’ve assigned. Made by the same developers, Mail Act-On and MailTags can be used together or separately.

WideMail reconfigures Mail’s layout. It moves the message preview area from below the list of messages to the right of it. This layout uses your screen’s space more efficiently. Apple realized this layout was very popular, so they made it the standard layout in Mail 5.0, which comes with Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.

Attachment Tamer gives you control over Mail’s handling of attachments that you send. Be default, Mail will display an attachment, such as an image, in the body of the email that you’re composing. Attachment Tamer lets you change this behavior and send the image as a regular attachment instead.

MessageFont lets you set Mail’s default font when you reply to or compose a new email message. Mail’s preferences appears to let you set the default font, but this affects only what you see, not what the recipient sees. MessageFont changes which font is seen by the recipient.

MissingAttachments scans an email message and notifies you if you have referred to an attachment, but forgotten to attach a file. Unfortunately this plug in hasn’t been updated to work with recent versions of Mail.

MailUnreadStatusBar displays an icon to the upper right corner of your screen which lists the number of unread email messages you have. You can customize it to track multiple folders. Its icon then displays a menu listing the unread message count for each selected folder and lets you go directly to any of the listed folders.

In my opinion, these are some of the best plug-ins for Mail, but you can read about many more in this Macworld article.

RSS is a convenient way to stay abreast of news stories or articles added to a particular web site. Rather then needing to visit your favorite web site over and over, you can use RSS to be notified when a new story or article has been added as well as read some or all of that article. I like to read my RSS feeds in my email application, Mail.

Below are instructions on how to add an RSS feed to Apple’s Mail application.

1. Open a web browser, like Safari, and go to a web site that offers an RSS feed. I’ll use Tidbits.com as my example. Go to http://www.tidbits.com .

2. In the right-hand end of the address field you’ll see an RSS icon as depicted in this picture. Click on the RSS icon.

3. If the web site offers ONLY 1 feed then the address of the feed will be listed. In this case, Tidbits.com offers 3 feeds so I choose the “Full Text Feed.” Then you’ll see a window like this one:

4. Copy the feed address, feed://tidbits.com/feeds/tidbits.rss by highlighting it and selecting Copy from the Edit menu.

5. Open Mail and select “Add RSS Feeds” from the File menu.

6. In the Add RSS Feeds window select “Specify the URL for a feed” and select Paste from the Edit menu to paste the feed address (aka the URL) into the field. Use the picture below as a guide.

7. Click the Add button.

8. In a few seconds, you’ll see the Tidbits feed listed on the left-hand window of the Mail window under the “RSS section” as depicted below. The number to the right of the RSS feed’s name is an indication of the number of unread articles.

9. If you have added a number of RSS feeds, you may want to rename them so they sort in a particular order as I’ve done by adding number prefixes.

Did you know that Apple’s Mail application automatically builds a list of all recipients to whom you’ve sent email? I think it’s very useful to review this list a few times each year. By reviewing this list you can easily add useful email addresses to your Address Book and delete outdated email addresses or ones that contain typos.

Before we review this list, it’s important to understand how it is used by Mail. When you are creating a new email message and you begin to type a person’s name or email address in the To: field, you’re typically presented with a list of email addresses which match the letters that you’ve typed. This list of email addresses is a composite of email addresses from your Address Book as well as addresses listed in your Previous Recipients list.

If you ever made a typo in an email address and then sent the email message, this incorrect email address was likely added to your Previous Recipient list. By reviewing this list you can remove such undesirable email addresses.

To view your Previous Recipient list, open Mail, click on the Window menu and select Previous Recipient. You can search this list using the search field in the upper right corner. You can also sort this list by any of the columns listed: Name, Email, or Last Used. You can also sort by the left-hand most column which is not named. This column indicates if the email address is saved in your Address Book. If it is then you’ll see an icon which resembles a Rolodex card. If the address is not in your Address Book, this space will be blank. I like to sort by this column to find common recipients whose email addresses I want in my Address Book. I then select them and use the Add to Address Book button. If you don’t typically add people to your Address Book, this can be a fast way to add a whole lot of people to your Address Book.

In order to remove an email address containing a typo, I often use the search field to locate it. Then I’ll click on the address to select it and use the Remove From List button.

I like to sort the list by the Last Used date. I review the oldest addresses listed and if I don’t recognize them then I select one or more and remove them from the list too.

Dealing with spam or junk email in your Inbox is a waste of time. If you run a small business, the time wasted identifying and deleting email can add up over weeks or months. This is true whether you are one person or a multi-person team. Here are a couple of ways to reduce the amount of spam that you receive in your email Inbox.

First, make sure that your email provider’s email filtering feature is turned on. Almost every email provider has such a feature so let’s take advantage of it if it’s offered. Many of them, however, are not very capable and thus I often recommend an additional layer of spam filtering such as SpamSieve or Big Mountain’s spam filtering service. Both of these services are described below.

For the general Mac user I recommend SpamSieve. SpamSieve is an application which gets installed on your Mac and it has plug-ins to let it work in conjunction with your email application. You can try SpamSieve for free and, if you find it effective, then buy it for $30. SpamSieve works with the most common email client applications including Mail, Entourage, Eudora and Thunderbird. This is a good solution for individuals. SpamSieve is a good option if you don’t have your own custom domain name. In other words, SpamSieve is a good choice if you have an email account provided by AOL, Comcast, Earthlink or other major email service providers.

If you own your own domain name then you have additional options to consider. You could sign up for a email filtering service such as Big Mountain Hosting’s MailFoundry spam filtering service. In order to set this up you need to modify the MX (mail exchange) record within your DNS (domain name system) records. Specifically, you set your MX record to deliver all incoming email to the email filtering server. The server then scans all email messages and delivers legitimate email messages to your Inbox. All email messages that were identified as spam or contain a virus are put into a quarantine. You then receive one email that lists all quarantined messages. If a legitimate email was quarantined then you can  click a button to release the message from its quarantine and have it delivered to your Inbox. I use Big Mountain’s spam filerting server and find it highly effective. Their plans start at $2 per month per mailbox. They have tiered pricing for larger groups of users.

If you own your own domain name but only want to filter some of your email accounts then you could consider GFI’s MaxMail Protection. This is also a robust spam and virus filtering tool. The setup and day-to-day operation is very similar to Big Moutain’s MailFoundry, but GFI MaxMail Protection offers a unique feature of allowing you to filter only some of your email accounts. Thus, you also only get charged for each email account that you filter. The cost is about $2 per month per mailbox (aka email address).

Here’s a list of features in Apple’s Mail application which I use regularly and people appreciate when I point them out.

1. Connection Doctor – Go to the Window menu and select Connection Doctor. A small separate window will appear. It quickly tests all of your incoming and outgoing connections to your mail servers. After a few seconds you should see green dots to the left of each item listed. If you see yellow or red dots then there’s a problem. If you’re having problem sending or receiving email, open Connection Doctor. It might give you some information that helps you figure out where the problem is. If you see green dots next to all items and you still can’t send a particular email message, then it’s time to look for typos in the recipient’s email address.

2. Send Again – To use this feature just click on a message in your Sent mail folder or any other mail folder, for that matter and then select Send Again from the Message menu. I use this feature when I want to send the same email message to different people but I want to address the message individually to each of them. This feature is also handy if I send a message and immediately remember that I forgot to include a piece of information. I’ll select the message I just sent from the Sent folder and add the missing information at the top of the message.

3. Remove Attachments – To use this feature select one or multiple messages and then select Remove Attachments from the Message menu. One can use this feature to quickly stip email messages of all attachments while preserving the message itself. This is useful for housekeeping purposes. Most people don’t need to hold onto the attachments for messages that they sent since that document is typically saved elsewhere on your hard drive.

4. QuickLook – This feature requires that you have Mac OS X version 10.5 or 10.6 installed. As you may know, QuickLook is feature of the Finder. Click on a file in the Finder and press the Space Bar key. OS X will show you a quick preview of the contents of the document without having to launch the application that created it. QuickLook doesn’t work with every type of document, but it works with the most common file types such as jpeg image, PDF and files made with Word, Excel, Pages or Numbers. Apple built QuickLook into Mail. If you have an email message with an attachment, look for the QuickLook button near the Attachments line of the email’s header information. It’s just a quick way to look at the attachment.

Do you access your email account from multiple computers? Have you added a smartphone to the mix as well? If so, you should be aware of IMAP. IMAP-enabled email accounts offer better email handling than old-fashioned POP email accounts.

Both POP and IMAP are communication methods used between email programs, like Apple’s Mail or Microsoft’s Entourage, and an email server. POP has been around for many, many years. It works just fine, but it’s model is outdated. IMAP was developed around the realization that people increasingly want to check their mail from multiple computers (or cell phones or other devices). Thus, some or all of your email is stored on the server, not on just one computer. Then you can setup a home computer, a work computer and a smartphone to all access (view) that email (using IMAP). You’ll see the same list of messages on each device plus you’ll see which messages are “new” or have the “replied to” mark next to them. If you delete a message from one device, it’ll be deleted from the server, then subsequently from each of the other devices when they next talk to the mail server.  In other words your Inbox stays synchronized across multiple devices. This same type of synchronization can be setup for other mail folders like Drafts, Sent, and Trash, as well as saved messages.

IMAP is very useful. Personally, I think everybody should be using IMAP, even if you’re only using one computer currently. If you’re interested in using IMAP you could contact your email provider. Not all email providers offer IMAP service. Or if they do offer it, they sometimes charge more since IMAP requires increased storage space on the server and increases the server’s workload.

There is a common myth that if one uses IMAP that email messages ONLY reside on the mail server. This is not true. Each computer will store it’s own local copy of email messages on its hard drive. This way you can read or review email messages even if you don’t have internet access, such as while on a train or plane.

This recent article in TidBITS gives some more detail about IMAP and its features. You don’t have to read the entire article, just a few paragraphs about how IMAP works.

MsgFiler (read “Message Filer”) is critical to me. Recently, I held off on upgrading my Mac to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) until MsgFiler had been updated to be compatible with the new version of Mail in Snow Leopard. I should note that Mail uses the term Mailbox instead of mail folder, but in this context they are synonymous.

MsgFiler is a plug-in for Apple’s Mail application. It lets me quickly file email messages into mail folders which I have already created using only keystrokes.  This way I don’t have to waste time moving my hand onto the mouse to open a folder or sub-folder. Here’s how it works: I select one or more messages in my Inbox. I then press Command-9 which brings up the MsgFiler window. Next, I type the first few characters of a folder name. MsgFiler displays a list of folders whose names match the characters I’ve typed. I can either type a couple more characters until the list of matches is only one folder or I can use the arrow key to select the folder from the matches. Pressing the Return key then moves the email message into the selected folder. MsgFiler gives me the option of copying the message if I prefer that instead of moving it.

MsgFiler can also be used to quickly open a mail folder using only keystrokes. This is a fast way to open a folder that is buried inside several levels of folders.

You can watch a short video on the developer’s web site to see how MsgFiler works. You can download and give it a try before you pay ($8) for it.