OSXFAQ Reader Tips 

Entourage Autoreply Trick

OSXFAQ Reader Tip By Douglas Weittenhiller

Thus, in response to a Macworld article's solution to setting up an autoreply in Entourage, I'm also sending to you my autoreply technique.

Hello Chris,

I read your response to the autoreply query in February's Secrets section and I wanted to report on some problems as well as my solutions.

[Quick configuration: TiBook 550 (16MB vid)/512MB RAM/10.2.3 running on external FW 60GB IBM 7200RPM HD/Entourage 10.1.1]

Up until this point, I had been using the Mailing List Manager to sort my mail. I receive mail from four different address and have it sorted into folders in the Inbox. The reason for choice of the list manager was that three of the four address receive mail with the "to:" header information something other that the email address. [Forward note: I now see I can do this with rules too.] After doing your triple-rule suggestion, I discovered some problems. Rules negate the mailing list manager. Mail that should be sorted into the folder for the address that I want the autoreply set for just lands in the Inbox. Secondly, I found that using the rename technique also renames the new inbound message. Thirdly, when a new message is created, it isn't sent until the next Send & Receive cycle. Finally, and this is not meant to sound harsh, but I found the autoreply kill inefficient.

Ok, ok. It takes a simple man to sit a criticize another's work and not offer any other solution. Hence, here's how I solved those problems.

First of all, I moved all the mailing list manager accounts over into rules and ensured that they were working. Then I created two rules and used that super-powerful, oft-forgotten AppleScript to make life simple again. The first rule (top priority) is the Autoreply Kill. In my autoreply, I make a little blurb like "Message 1234" or something not likely to be common. The rule is based on two conditions. First, the Any-to-Recipient must contain the email address for the Autoreply account. Second, the Message Body must contain the phrase "Message 1234". If both of those conditions are met, then I have that rule sort the mail into a sub-folder for that address's sorted mail in the Inbox aptly named "Autoreply Kills". For reasons that I'm a little unclear on, after the message has been sorted, the autoreply rule no longer takes effect.

Half done. The second phase was to create a rule using an AppleScript that 1) solved the naming issue and 2) sent the autoreply immediately upon arrival. It turned out to be incredibly easy to code. Listed below is the code with comments:

set theBody to "Type your autoreply message here, spacing and returns included."

-- You can set this to false if you want to delay the sending of the email. set AutoSend to true

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set selectedMessages to the current messages
repeat with theMessage in the selectedMessages
set theSubject to subject of theMessage
set theSender to sender of theMessage

set MyReply to make new outgoing message with properties {account:POP account "Type account name here as it appears in Tools:Accounts", recipient:theSender, subject:"My Autoreply: " & theSubject, content:theBody}
if AutoSend then
send MyReply
end if
end repeat
end tell

I think this is more complex than needed, however I was unsure how AppleScript would handle multiple new incoming messages so I set the repeat to be sure. The advantages are this. Now, rather that changing the incoming message, a new message is created using the desired account with the prefix ,My Autoreply: ,. A person can either have AutoSend set to true or false deeming the message to be sent immediately (same Send & Receive cycle) or later (next Send & Receive cycle), respectively.

Finally, I had to implement the script. The second rule (in priority) states that for Any-to-Recipient is of the autoreply account, then do two things. First, run the AppleScript (I stored mine Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Entourage Scripting Additions) and after then sort the original incoming message. Runs without a hitch. The next three rules after that are the sorting for my other three email accounts.

I hope you can find some value in this. I know some people fear AppleScript, but this is so easy and elegant (and short) that I think it will work for anyone. It avoids some caveats of using only the rules, and it sends same-cycle.

Enjoy :-)

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