Lion mail To Do?

And that, of course, is why they didn't tell you.

I still understand why they removed it. What harm was it doing? Why make Mail LESS functional? Why do any of this in an "upgrade" when people trust you not to disturb what already exists? Can't make sense of this. I just wrote to Apple about it (and complained about the new Spaces all-horizontal format). Maybe they'll restore it in 10.7.1....

I too would like to know why. One possibility is that Apple doesn't intend the Mac to be a business system anymore. If that's the case, I'd like to know so I can at least get different productivity software (of course there's no way I'm giving up Mac OS X).

I have just noticed that you can drag email to ical. But not directly to reminders, you have to drag it into some particular date and it retains link to email. And then you can drag it from there to reminders. Well, thats enough for me. Maybe too simple for some who were used to use it in more sophisticated way?

Honestly, I don´t uderstand why apple decided to change "ToDo" label to "Reminders". In my view it is now confusing with "Alerts" :-/

Hi Tomatej

Are you talking to me about "You can drag email to ical". I need to clarify that I can only highlight "less than a sentense" in the email, not the whole email, to iCal. And there is no trace from iCal back to the whole email. I think that's not enough.

Reminders is a name not so commonly use by apps. ToDo is a better name and thus much more commonly and abondonly used everywhere. Apple needs to apply for patents. Just like the forward reminders. i.e. reminding you one or multiple times after the task due date.

Hello Ivan,

I was just generaly speaking about my findings :-)

I´m able to drag email preview (middle column) to ical and it creates event with link to email.

If I drag email address to iCal, it creates appointment with that name.

If I make a note in mail, I can also drag it into iCal and it links back to it. (but it seems that if you edit the note, link breaks)

good luck

Just to be clear, again, dragging whole email messages or notes to iCal to create a Reminder or event is not the same thing as the missing feature.

Even if there is a back-link, linking to whole messages, not to specific text, is imprecise enough as to be almost completely useless for To-Do/Reminders.

Toolbar and popup menu support is also missing.

So I didn't use the feautre all that much, but have recently found it missing. So after reading this thread, I decided to give Outlook 2011 for mac a try. It's been sitting on my comptuer since I upgraded to Lion, but never used the program on mac.

I work with several companies, so I have 5 email addresses, and here is were outlook lacks:

If I start an email message, I have to be sure I start it from the correct mailbox otherwise the signature doesn't work. For example, if I start a new message with Company 1 mailbox selected, the signature for company one shows up, but if I need to change who I'm sending the message from, it won't change the signature to match.

With calendars, I can't synch with google calnedars, so since my companies all use Google Apps back end, I cannot use Outlook for a calendar at all.

Since I can drag emails and selected text into iCal and create events and/or reminders, I think it works for me. It would be nice if it was integrated into Mail so I didn't have to drag crap around and have to visable windows available.

Yet again, Apple begins to frustrate me. This is the latestest in an unfortuante growing list of "features" or "upgrades" that diminish actual usablility and functionality. As I'm preparing to consult with a new provate school on ordering computers, I'm giving more thought to using windows rather than Apple, and that makes me very sad.

Hi Serendipitytech,

I just spent $210 for a two installs copy of Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac Home and Business Edition. My life is now back to normal, thanks to Outlook. Microsoft should thank Apple. Without OS X Lion and its disappointing Mail, I might not buy Microsoft Office for Mac.

Interestingly I read an article from Mashable that Apple helped boosting Adobe Premiere sales and Apple is now selling older version of its Final Cut software. Maybe Apple should sell older version OS, i.e. Snow Leopard. Anyhow, besides Microsoft Office for Mac, I have created a new partition and will use it to install back the Snow Leopard where I can use Mail with ToDo feature. Then, I'd have to decide if I shall choose Microsoft Office 2011, or Mac Mail 4.5 as my email-to-do partner.

I have made the switch to Outlook 2011 all the way. I was using Outlook 2010 via Parallels and still do for certain things that Outlook 2011 doesnt have (Options>Read Request, etc...).

I can't imagine using the Apple Mail app again, until they really make this useful for business. Period. iPads = business and personal and games, but apple needs to distinguish what they want to be... business and personal is what we use it for.

While I LOVE the boolean search features of the Lion Mail, the fact that I can't get a "to do" from an email is a major shortcoming.

Another major shortcoming is you cannot create a folder using mail! That's a major oversight!

I don't want to go back to Outlook...I'm hoping that the new reminders in IOS 5 will integrate to mail and allow to do's.

While I have just started off Outlook 2011 for Mac, I'm still running Outlook 2003 via Fusion 3.1.3. If not OS X Lion is pulling the leg of Fusion 3 making it running like a nail, OUTLOOK 2003 is still outperforming Mail 5.1 in features. I tried running Outllok 2007 on Fusion 3.1.3, but my 8 GB RAM on Macbook Pro i7 should "sacrifice" half to VMware Fusion 3. Outlook2003 needs 1.5 GB RAM allocation for Windows 7 Pro.

Who's in charge of OSX Lion Mail strategy in Apple? Microsoft should salute to him.

4injas here is the Automator flow. Then you can highlight any text from email or a document and go to the service to add it as a to do in iCal.

Just more sour grapes here, but seriously what is wrong with the product teams at apple? They finally add "reminders" to iOS and as far as i can tell you STILL can't set a reminder (or a to do) from mail.app and have it sync to ical let alone icloud and your mobile devices.

It's stunning that this is still an issue.

Oh this is not the news I wanted to hear. I'm getting my new iPhone tomorrow and was hoping this would cure my need to make reminders from emails.

I hope perhaps I can find a workaround...doesn't look good.

I also find it crazy that the Mail app causes emails to turn into crazy fonts when forwarded to folks with Outlook...not the type of thing you'd expect from Apple!