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10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name Apps
Thu, Apr 3 2008 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: Anonymous
Mail.app in Leopard creates an IMAP folder for its To Do list and by default calls it "Apple Mail To Do." It's hidden when looking at the IMAP box in Mail, but it's not hidden on the iPhone. I would rather not have it at the top of the list on the iPhone, so changed its name.

To change the default name, quit Mail. Open com.apple.mail.plist in your favorite editor. Look for the Mail Accounts section; each account has its own list within that section. Find the ToDosMailboxName entry, and change the associated value to your preferred title and save. Important: Before you launch Mail.app, you need to log into your IMAP account with a web interface (or command line if you know how), and change the Apple Mail To Do folder to its new name.

[robg adds: Apple's Mail prefs are stored in binary form, so you'll need to use a binary-capable editor such as Plist Edit Pro, BBEdit, etc., or convert the plist to XML first as described in this hint.]
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10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name | 10 comments | Create New Account
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The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Disable Apple Mail To Do completely?
Authored by: mkuron on Thu, Apr 3 2008 at 8:07AM PDT
Any way to completely disable Mail To-Dos?

[ Reply to This | # ]
Disable Apple Mail To Do completely?
Authored by: ryanjbonnell on Sun, Apr 6 2008 at 8:38PM PDT

I was able to successfully disable and remove the "Apple Mail To Do" folder from appearing altogether by simply deleting the entire "ToDosMailboxName" key from my ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file — this of course assumes you've already removed the IMAP folder from webmail.

Note: if you have more than one e-mail account in Mail.app you'll need to find and delete all instances of the "ToDosMailboxName" key, since Mail stores a key for every mailbox you have setup.



[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: ZZamboni on Thu, Apr 3 2008 at 1:44PM PDT
If you have the Developer tools installed, you can also use /Developer/Applications/Utilities/Property List Editor.app to edit the preferences file. It has no search function, so here's the path you need to expand: Root -> Mail Accounts, and then search through the items 0, 1, etc. until you find the appropriate one which contains the ToDosMailboxName item. Double-click on its value to edit, and save the file.



[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: jalex on Sun, Apr 6 2008 at 8:11AM PDT
Also, it is probably worth noting that if you make this change in one place, but you use Mail.app on more than one machine with that email account, you'll need to make the change to all of your Mail.apps. For example, I have Mail on my desktop and my laptop. If you do this hint, quit all of the Mail.apps that might be checking mail on that account. Modify your plists on all of them, and change the name on the server (e.g. through a web interface, or you could use a different email client that will allow you to change the name of the folder), then you can start everything back up.

Basically what I'm saying is that changing this in one place will not change it for you everywhere.

[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: ryanjbonnell on Sun, Apr 6 2008 at 8:42PM PDT

I was able to successfully disable and remove the "Apple Mail To Do" folder from appearing altogether by simply deleting the entire "ToDosMailboxName" key from my ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file — this of course assumes you've already removed the IMAP folder from webmail.

Note: if you have more than one e-mail account in Mail.app you'll need to find and delete all instances of the "ToDosMailboxName" key, since Mail stores a key for every mailbox you have setup.



[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: ryanjbonnell on Wed, Apr 9 2008 at 10:25AM PDT

After further testing, the Apple Mail To Do folder(s) automatically reappeared less than a day after editing the Mail preferences file.



[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: badtz on Sun, Apr 20 2008 at 11:51PM PDT
Has anyone been able to find out how to get rid of it all together?

It's very annoying.

Especially since it doesn't work with my courier-IMAP server on my shared host .... :X

[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: maskerader on Wed, Jul 23 2008 at 5:40AM PDT
There is another way to stop creating the Apple Mail To Do mailbox if your using an IMAP email system quit Apple Mail log onto your server and remove the folder next open you finder and navigate to your Home/Library/Mail, in there you will see a folder corrasponding to your mail account, look inside there if you see Apple Mail To Do .imap.mbox trash it and then set the permissions on the folder that it was in to Read only this will stop Apple Mail creating anything else in this folder including an Apple mail To Do mailbox. if you want more help see www.matthewskennedy.co.uk

For help on removing the Apple Mail To Do folder off a Mobile me server leave a reply and i'll post up details

[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: maskerader on Fri, Jul 25 2008 at 9:52AM PDT
http://web.me.com/m.kennedy/IPhone_mail_/Part_1.html
use this link instead

[ Reply to This | # ]
10.5: Change the Apple Mail To Do mailbox name
Authored by: withinavoid on Wed, Apr 29 2009 at 12:53PM PDT
This was really bugging me, I had a reverse problem where my Mail app on one machine decided to start using a different mailbox name for ToDo and my other machine kept with default "Apple Mail To Do". I was able to change so both use default and now I have correct ToDos. Thanks!

[ Reply to This | # ]

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