MailSteward: You Personal Mail Assistant

Most of us use email for important things as well as just for chatting, and even some of those chats can turn out to be important. We need a way to easily backup and archive email so none of it ever goes missing. Well, MailSteward goes above and beyond that with features like a SQLite database, tagging, and searching.

MailSteward is really one of those applications where you set it, and then forget it. Just go to the settings window and choose how you want MailSteward to work. First, you want to choose what to archive. You can do this two ways: by email accounts and by mailboxes. I suggest you do it by email accounts just to make sure you get everything archived. Once you have chosen that, you just have to click a few checkboxes, and setup a schedule.

One of the most powerful features of MailSteward is its search. I know, you may be saying, “It’s just a search…”, but that is wrong. It is more than just a search. It is more like a Google Advanced Search. You can choose dates to search through, search text for each individual field and whether to only include emails with attachments. You can even search by tags! So, just along the lines of searching, MailSteward is already more powerful than Mail.app. To use this powerful search, just go to the Search window in MailSteward.

Then there is the Browse window — this is where you will set up things like tags. To add a tag to a message, (first make sure you’re in the browse window) just click the Tag toolbar icon. The first time you tag an email you will need to enter a category, but once you have all the categories created, you will just need to choose one from the pulldown menu. Then, you actually enter the tags, or Keywords.

Another notable feature in this window is the Export toolbar icon. Unlike Mail.app’s exporting ‘features’ (or lack thereof), you can actually export to many formats! These include: mbox file, SQL file, MailSteward Database file and plain text. MailSteward does not lock you in because you can export to many commonly used formats. So, do not be worried at all about compatibility. And if you ever need to export your library for any other reason, MailSteward’s got your back.

MailSteward retails for $49.95, and you can download a demo version that can be used with up to 3,000 emails. So, yes, MailSteward is a little pricey, but is also pricey to loose valuable information. So, I suggest that you at least give it a try to see if it is right for you.

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