you can use your keyboard to quickly accomplish many tasks in mail, here are the ones we find the most useful:
| Create new compose window | Command-N |
| Open Activity Viewer | Command-0 (zero) |
| Add senders to Address Book | Command-Y |
| Attach file to message | Command-Shift-A |
| Increase quote level | Command-‘ (single quote) |
| Decrease quote level | Command-Option-‘ (single quote) |
| Send message | Command-Shift-D |
| Forward message | Command-Shift-F |
| Mark as read/unread | Command-Shift-U |
| Reply to sender | Command-R |
| Reply to all | Command-Shift-R |
| Collapse the thread containing the selected message (when organized by thread) | Left Arrow key |
| Expand the currently selected thread (when organized by thread) | Right Arrow key |
| Move to next message in thread | Down Arrow key |
| Move to previous message in thread | Up Arrow key |
the full list of mail shortcuts is available under:
‘apple mail > help > mail help > search: keyboard shortcuts’
another trick we have not been thinking of ourselves before, is the following in an article on essential shortcuts over at macworld:
You can select any mailbox in Mail’s sidebar to see its contents, but many people don’t realize you can select multiple mailboxes at the same time to display the contents of all of them. […] I find this particularly useful in combination with message threading (View -> Organize by Thread). For example, I can select my Inbox and my Sent mailbox together and use threading to see the entire flow of a conversation between myself and another person.