Mail in EssentialPIM is coming up on its 13th anniversary. The Mail module was introduced in May 2009, supporting POP3 and IMAP, and has been enhanced continuously. For example, EPIM added native support of Microsoft Exchange accounts in v10.
Here are some other changes to Mail as of v10.
Two improvements for organization
Categories have been available in the Calendar and Tasks modules from the beginning; EPIM v10 extends them to Mail. Figure 1 shows how the category column can be displayed, allowing you to sort by category. Category colors further help to organize messages visually.
Figure 1. The addition of categories to Mail allows sorting and provides visual cues.
Two new ways to view messages when you group them have been added: Classic and Wide (Figure 2). To access these, select View > Layout from the menu. Figure 3 shows the groups.
Figure 2. Prior versions displayed groups only in the vertical view (#1). Mail can be grouped now in two more views: Classic and Wide (#2).
Figure 3. Groups collect messages according to the date received.
Three new features
Mail has three new features to note.
- You can archive messages in the pro version now in one of two ways: manually or automatically via a folder setting.
An archive button has been added to the toolbar (Figure 4). Select one or more messages, click the Archive button and EPIM automatically moves them to the archive folder. You can also access the manual archive for selected messages by bringing up the context menu or using the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+H.
Automatic archiving allows you to archive or delete messages after a designated number of days. This is not a global feature, but is available folder-by-folder. Right click on a folder for the context menu, select Properties, and select the Auto Archive Tab.
Figure 4. An archive button has been added to the Mail toolbar. - When you email a note, files attached to the note are automatically included.
- You can see the total number of email messages in mail folders (on the menu, select View->Total Number of Emails) (Figure 5).
Figure 5. A new View menu option (left) toggles displaying the total number of messages in mail folders. When the option is off, only the number of unread messages appears (Image #1). Viewing total emails is turned on in Image #2.
Better conversion of emails to notes
EPIM v10 improves converting emails into notes (right-click on an email message and choose Convert to -> New Note). EPIM automatically populates the Note title with the subject of the email as a hyperlink. This links the note to the original mail, making it a Related Item.
This concludes our series about major changes in EssentialPIM v10. If there are subjects you'd like to see us cover in the blog, leave a comment. Looking forward to hearing from you.
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