Hi Bryan, I'm still using Snow Leopard, so ToDo lists in mail are supported, but here's a suggestion for a way to solve this in Lion: use Automator to create a service consisting of a single action, "New To Do Item", then assign it a keyboard shortcut under the Services menu so you can access it from anywhere via the shortcut. This should bring up a dialog window that lets you set all the information you used to have through the ToDo items in Mail.
You may have to experiment if there are differences with Lion, but here are instructions that work for Snow Leopard, that should also work for you: 1. Launch Automator (e.g., from Finder, use Command-Shift-A to go to your Applications folder, press "a u t" to navigate to "Automator", and press Command-Down Arrow to open it; or just use Spotlight to find and launch "Automator" by pressing Command+space bar, typing "a u t o", and pressing "Return".) 2. Select "Service" when prompted to choose a template for your workflow 3. You'll be in a Workflow window named "Untitled", in a search text field for finding actions. Type in "New To Do" and press return to launch the search. 4. You should be focused on a "New To Do Item" in an "Actions Table". VO will say "actions table 1 row selected column 1 New To Do Item". Press "Return" to add this action to your workflow. 5. VO will say "Untitled workflow 1 selection. New To Do Item… action" and move focus to the workflow. Interact with the action. 6. Navigate (VO+Right arrow) in the "New To Do Item" action to "Options" and VO-Space to check this checkbox. Then continue navigating (VO+Right arrow) to the "Show this action when the workflow runs" checkbox and use VO-Space to check it. This ensures that the dialog box that allows you to set due date, title, and priority, will show up when this service is run. If you want, you can also check the box for "Show only the selected items". Then the only items shown are the ones that are checked (such as "Due date", if you don't want to specify "Priority"). You can also set the pop up menu buttons to specify a default calendar to use. 7. Stop interacting with the "New To Do Item" action and navigate with VO+Left arrow to the "text in service receives selected in any application Replaces selected text group", and interact. 8. This group is a general Service preamble, that sets up what kind of information gets passed to your service, and what applications access this service. The default setting is set to pass text between services. But in this case we want to be able to set up "To Do" entries in the calendar without selecting or passing text. So navigate (VO+Right arrow) to the pop up menu following "Service receives selected", VO-Space, and change this from "text" to "no input" (e.g., by using your down arrow key to navigate to this selection, or using Command+Down arrow to move to this entry at the end of the list, or by typing "no input", etc. then pressing "return"). 9. Save the service workflow you've just created (e.g., give it some name like "My New To Do".) 10. To make this easy to use, assign this a services menu shortcut. While you can go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts and then select "Services" in the "Shortcuts Categories" table, I find that the fast way to navigate there is to go directly to the Services menu entry for any application and find "Services Preferences…" in the submenu. In most applications these sub-menu entries won't appear unless you select something first, since most services typically act on what you've selected. In Mail, I believe that the Services menu appears whether or not you have made a selection. In any case, select something (word, or character), then use VO-M or Control+F2 to navigate to the Apple menu on the menu bar, VO+Right arrow to the application, then arrow down to the menu, press "s" to move to "Services", right arrow to the submenu, arrow down to "Services Preferences…" and press "Return". You'll be placed in the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of System Preferences with "Services" already selected under the "Shortcuts Categories" table. Use item chooser menu (VO+I) to locate your "My New To Do" service in the "Keyboard Shortcuts" table (e.g., type "My New" then either press return or VO-Space to navigate to the item, then VO-Space again to select it. Tab twice to activate the edit field for a shortcut assignment, then type in your selected shortcut, e.g., Command+Option+Shift+M. Press Command+W to close the Keyboard shortcuts window. Now, from any application, you can press the shortcut Command+Option+Shift+M (or other shortcut of your selection), and bring up a "New To Do Item" window. Assign a title, priority, and date. When you set the date, you also have access to alarm options. This should show up in your calendar and sync with the cloud. More generally, you can browse or choose other actions in your Automator library to add to workflows. By default, the library selection for actions is set to your entire Library, so typing search terms into the search text field will pull up any action matches to keywords. But if you wanted to explore the available actions by category, you could navigate back (VO+Left arrow) from the search text field to the "actions checked checkbox" that is the first element in the window, following the title bar. VO+Down arrow from this to the "actions description, split view, split group" and interact. This area contains your library table, actions table, and a section for a description of the action you select. The library and actions table constitute a split group that is the result of your first interaction. If you interact with the group, you can navigate first through the various groups within your Library (e.g., VO+Right arrow to "Calendar", "Contacts", "Documents", "Files & Folders", etc.). When you select one of these groups, then the results of the search and the listed actions in the associated "actions table" (that you can jump to with VO+Command+T) are limited to your selection. When you select/highlight an action in the "actions table", you can then use VO+Command+T again to jump to the description. For example, I could have selected "New To Do Item" by navigating to "Calendar" under the "Library table" for actions. With "Calendar" highlighted, VO+Command+T would jump me to the list of available "Calendar" actions in the "actions table" (e.g., "Delete iCal Event", "Event Summary", etc. and "New To Do Item".) With "New To Do Item" highlighted in the "actions table", VO+Command+T takes me to the description. If I VO+left arrow I'll hear "This action creates a new To Do item. If given input, it will use the input as the titles of the to dos." To add any action to your workflow, highlight the action you want in the "actions table" and either press "Return" or double click with mouse or trackpad. Selection gets done in the left half of the Automator window, while workflow assembly and editing gets down in the right half of the Automator window. To reorder actions in your workflow, interact with the action and navigate to the action's title bar (e.g., "New To Do Item"). Then press Option+Up arrow or Option+Down arrow to move the selected action's position up or down in the workflow. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Jan 17, 2012, at 07:48, Bryan Jones wrote: > Hi Folks, > > I'm pretty certain apple inexplicably removed the previous ties between > Mail.app and To-Do items created in iCal when they introduced Lion and > morphed the To-Do functions into Reminders. However, I noticed that when I > interact with the mailboxes table in Lion's mail.app and use VO to navigate > down the list, I encounter an item labeled "Reminders." When I expand this > item, I am presented with my "Notes" mailboxes where items created as Notes > are stored. Much to my chagrin, AFAIK there is no way to view, manage or > otherwise integrate Reminders with mail.app. > > I've done the usual googling for information regarding this oddity and am > throwing this out to the list JIC anybody here might have some insight. > > TIA, > Bryan > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! 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