Hi gang; It's been a month or so since I chucked this feature request up to the list, which I admit isn't a long gap, but recent events have brought it very much to the fore for me.
The matter at hand is the Recent Mail Window (RMW). I love it. I use it for most of my hour-to-hour email usage, leaving mail in there until it is dealt with. Why? Well, because most of my mail gets filtered into folders as it arrives, and the RMW lets me see it all in one convenient location. Once a message is gone from the RMW it is out of sight.. and hence out of mind. As a consequence, I often wish to have a message remain in the RMW for several days, until I am ready to act upon it, just so that I don't forget about it. The RMW effectively becomes my *working file*. The problem, as I have mentioned in this list previously, is that the RMW gets cleared every time PM quits. Which means every time I intentionally quit PM, every time PM crashes (not often, but it happens), every time I switch user environments or compact the database, every time I install some software that requires a re-log-in or full restart... Quite a few things can clear the RMW. My current (partial) solution is simply to avoid quitting PM if at all possible. And this is what has come back to bite me recently. We all know that performing regular, ideally daily, backups of one's machine is a good idea. But PM being a database-based app, I need to quit it in order to perform a backup safely. Which means I run into the problem of having my 'emails to act upon' file (the RMW) cleared every time I want to backup. As a consequence, backups get repeatedly postponed until a more convenient time. Result: when my hard drive went into cardiac arrest 1 day before Christmas (yeah, great) my nearest backup was a couple of weeks old. Al because I needed the RMW to stay populated. Now maybe this is simply a case of my having idiotic working habits, but I don't think so. As it stands, I can have my pending email work presented conveniently and helpfully for many days at a time, or I can back up regularly. Not both. There are workarounds -- eg. give all 'action pending' emails a label and then search by label every day, remembering to un-label them when they have been actioned -- but these solutions are not elegant. The database nature of PM is not going to change, and that's fine, but any one of the following improvements (IMO) would help the situation: 1. Keep the RMW populated when PM quits. This could be a preference. 2. Introduce 'smart' folders such as those appearing in Apple's own apps. That way I could just set up a Smart folder to constantly show all non-spam mail received in the last 72 hours (say). 3. Permit a 'flagging' system, and build in a 'standard' folder (like the In and Out trays) that ONLY shows any and all flagged mail. Flagging has been discussed before, and many people's response has been "Well, I don't have a use for that". But I think I do, as long as I can quickly see all flagged mail without having to do a full search, and I think a dedicated folder would provide that. Right, this email has been quite long enough. Sorry for the long post. Rick -- G5 2GHz x2 :: 2GB RAM :: 10.4.3 :: PM 5.2.2 :: 3 pane mode Shark Attack: A Design Studio <www.sharkattack.co.uk>
