My quest to duplicate the functionality of OutLook using Mac Mail seems to be chugging along.

1. When forwarding, you get an automatic insertion of a “quote” line which goes along the left margin. To eliminate this line, highlight the text. Then Select Format->Quote Level->Decrease This will eliminate the quote line.

2. I didn’t “get” the inbox, and the smart mailbox paradigm, until somewhere I saw it pointed out that this is similar to the ITunes interface where you see your entire collection all at once, but you can create “playlists” from the whole collection. Think smart mailbox=playlist, and miraculously it works.

3. What I was really looking for are rules that I can define which causes inbound mail to be moved to a custom folder. In fact in the “On My Mac” section allows you to do just this. Create a folder for a subset of inbox messages. Then create a rule which moves the message from the inbox to the folder.

With these revelations, and further refinement of iCal and Google calendars, I could almost dump Windows. Exceptions are Word for Windows (Mac Word is too weird), and OneNote. So, I’m still running Parallels with Windows Vista Business for these applications.