One feature that many people miss in Apple Mail is the ability to request and answer return receipts.
People with Panther Mail can use MailPriority. For Tiger Mail users, there is an all-or-nothing solution that involves a Terminal hacking. It adds a return receipt request to all your emails.
The only other option for requesting receipts is a third-party service like ReadNotify. (Not a bad idea if you only need them now and then).
But now there is a way to answer the return receipts that others send to you. Joel Nelson has posted an AppleScript which automatically replies to return receipts sent to you by people who use mail clients that support it (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc). The message it generates looks like this:
Download the script and save it somewhere memorable. You will need to browse to it when setting up the rule that runs the script. Follow the instructions on Joel’s site.
You will very probably need to add a “Disposition-Notification-To” header to the list of conditions in Mail.app’s rule menu. Select the Edit header option:
Then click the plus sign on the next window and type “Disposition-Notification-To” so that it looks like this:
Now Apple Mail will automatically reply through the rule to any emails that request a read receipt.
Personally, I don’t miss them. There’s nothing more annoying than people asking you if you have received their message while you are reading it. But I don’t live in a corporate environment. In business some people have an expectation that you will acknowledge their emails in this way, and now with this script you can.
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