I was always a user of Microsoft Entourage on my mac, having come from a PC background, it just felt right – having all my emails, names and dates was really useful. But recently I changed, and moved all my email from there to Apple’s own Mail program.

Mail is great, it’s simple for what I need and does it all well, except for a few minor things and these can be rectified or enhanced by the use of a plugin. There are a ton of these and they’re all Leopard compatible, unless otherwise stated.

My favourites:

• SpamSieve – Spam filter (Commerical) In my opinion, it’s the best out there.
• Related Mail – Displays related messages to viewed email (beta)
• Attachment scanner – Avoid the embarrassment of missing attachments
• Mail Unread Menu – Menubar app that notifies you of any new mail
• Mail Followup – Allows you to compose (and then send) a quoted version of the original message to all of the original recipients, keeping the To, Cc and Bcc addresses exactly as they appeared in the original message.
• Letterbox – It rearranges the interface into three vertical columns.

And the rest:

• OMiC – If you deal with a lot of Microsoft Outlook winmail.dat files, this is for you (Commercial)
• Mailboxer – Automatically makes Smart Mailboxes for your address book contacts
• Event Maker”:http://www.mamooba.com/EventMaker – Event Maker allows you to create normal and all-day events and To Dos from a selected message in Mail.app or from scratch using quick launch scripts
• HTTPmail – Hotmail and MSN access for Apple Mail
• MailTags – Tag you messages with keywords
• Mail Attachments Iconizer 2.0 – Toggle icon view for image attachments
• Growl Mail – Mail plug-in for growl notification system
• WideMail – Provides wide-format view option
• MiniMail – Process mail from a tiny window (commercial)
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner – Eudora to Apple Mail migration tool
• EagleFiler – File your mail and other things (commerical)
• MailAppetizer – Email notification (beta)
• MailTemplate – Templates system for emails
• DockStar – Lets you keep track of email in various accounts and folders, RSS feeds, Notes, and To Do items with customizable badges in the Mail icon, menu bar, Dashboard, and even in a Screen Saver.

If you want to find more tips and tricks, head on over to http://www.hawkwings.net/ it is a blog all about Mail