Turn Your Emails Into Reminders In Mountain Lion

Screen Shot 2012 08 01 at 1 01 56 PM

We all receive a lot of email. The last thing we want to do is end up with a pile of messages in our inbox. In fact, some people operate under the philosophy of Inbox Zero. So, what do you do with messages that you need to act on, but not right this second? Put them in the Reminders app!

From your inbox in Mail.app, just pick up a message from the middle column and drag it to the Reminders application icon sitting in your dock. This adds a reminder using the text from the subject line. From there, you can be reminded to act upon the message at a certain time or when you go to a certain location.

My favorite part of this trick is that a reminder added from Mail.app will have a link that, when clicked, brings up the email in question. If you don’t remember exactly why you put that email in your to-do list, this is an easy and clever way of refreshing your memory.

I did have some issues getting the drag and drop to work, but that is almost certainly a bug I’m hitting with my setup. Surely, any issues will be solved in the coming weeks with 10.8.1.

Hat tip: Mac OS X Hints

Grant is a writer from Delaware. In his spare time, Grant maintains a personal blog, hosts The Weekly Roar, hosts Quadcast, and writes for video games.