Mail strike through keyboard shortcut

You could use a GUI applescript to automate the whole process of bringing up the Fonts window (⌘T) and selecting strike-through from the menu button. Then you could use FastScripts (free for 10 keyboard shortcuts) to make it possible to call the script with a shortcut.

In fact, the GUI Mail Strike-through script that at last report, you claimed was working for you. 😉

Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten that discussion.

Command T makes it available- THANK YOU!

The latest OS (10.11 El Capitan) finally fixes this issue forever: it actually added a "Make text strikethrough" button in the menu tab of each email. No more having to open up the Fonts window, etc etc.

Yay for small upgrades. (see attached image)

That GUI script solution now (haha) breaks in Yosemite 10.10.4.

The GUI scripting solution that I alluded too earlier worked in Mavericks, but no longer works on Yosemite. Not much surprise there.

The simplest solution (before El Capitan Mail) has already been mentioned: command-T. If you want red strike-through, choose the color from the strike-through menu before applying the strike-through itself.

And if one cannot be bothered with mere command-T as a solution, and prior to installation of released El Capitan, I wrote an AppleScript and shell script combination that messages the clipboard RTF text, and inserts a strike-through in the selected text. I built this into an Automator Service, and as you know, a keyboard shortcut can be assigned. This solution works on Mavericks and Yosemite 10.10.4 and completely eliminates the breakage of GUI scripting.

Usage: Simply select the text for the strike-through (ensure there is whitespace behind the selection), and it will be automatically copied to the clipboard, a strike-through applied in the RTF clipboard content, and pasted back into your text selection.

Here is the Automator Service workflow:

Open a new TextEdit document, and from the format menu, choose make plain text (if you don't have a programmer's editor), and copy/paste the following Bash script into it. Save it, and change its location accordingly in the Automator AppleScript accordingly.

#!/bin/bash

#

# rtf_strike.sh

#

# get the raw RTF code from the clipboard, retaining all of the original

# copied selection characteristics (e.g. font, color, size, etc.). Use Perl to

# massage the RTF code, and sed to insert the RTF strikethrough operator

# to produce the strike-through effect on the original selection. Toss it

# back on the clipboard when done.

# Reference

## stackoverflow dot com/questions/2545289/getting-rtf-data-out-of-mac-os-x-pasteboard-clipboard

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'the clipboard as «class RTF »' | \

/usr/bin/perl -ne 'print chr foreach unpack("C*",pack("H*",substr($_,11,-3)))' | \

/usr/bin/sed -e 's/\\cf/\\strike\\cf/;$s/}$/\\strike0}/g' | /usr/bin/pbcopy

exit 0

VikingOSX wrote:

That GUI script solution now (haha) breaks in Yosemite 10.10.4.

You're right, as always. However, my previous version of a GUI script can be updated for Yosemite 10.10.4 as follows :

tell application "Mail"

activate

repeat until frontmost is true

end repeat

end tell

tell application "System Events"

tell process "Mail"

set flag to (window "Fonts" exists)

if not flag then

keystroke "t" using {command down}

repeat until window "Fonts" exists

end repeat

end if

tell menu button 1 of group 3 of toolbar 1 of window "Fonts"

click

clickmenu item 2 of menu 1

end tell

if not flag then keystroke "t" using {command down}

end tell

end tell

And, again, just replacing “click menu item 2 of menu 1” with “click menu item 1 of menu 1” in the above script, you could easily write another script that would remove strikethrough.

Back in business. 😉

El Capitan?

🙂

especially in Notes - there's something very satisfying about completion with a strikethrough versus a tick

Apple has added a strike-thru button for Mail in El Capitan.

Very simple. Use an app like Keyboard Maestro, make a new menu action : Format > Font > Strikethrough and assign a shortcut to it. You can make one per app, like Pages , Numbers or whatever…