Reply to multiple email messages in Mail
I've been tagging messages with the label "Singularity Badges" in GMail as the emails were coming in (note to self: next time, also reply to the message at this point and they won't pile up!) So I thought I'd fire up Mail app, select all the messages with the label, hit Reply and Bob's your uncle.
If you've tried yourself in the past, you are probably aware that Bob is most definitely not your uncle! (The reply option is grayed out in Mail when there are multiple messages selected.)
So if you want to work this way, you have to write some AppleScript.
Being an AppleScript newbie, I was happy to see that Jake Albert had already done most of the work for me and shared his solution on Mac OS X Hints. I started with his code in Script Editor and applied the follow-ups suggested by Peter Bukowinski, Matt Harris, and Tom Wible. Instead of putting all the senders in to To field, however, I made the script put your default account's email address in the To field and put all the other recipients in the BCC field.
Here's the final script, released here under the open source MIT license:
set thesenders to {} set thesenderstext to "" tell application "Mail" set themessage to the selection repeat with i from 1 to the number of items in themessage set thesender to (extract address from (the sender of (item i of themessage))) if thesenders does not contain thesender then set thesenders to thesenders & {thesender} end if set the was replied to of (item i of the themessage) to true end repeat set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ", " set thesenderstext to thesenders as text set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "" set newMessage to make new outgoing message tell newMessage set visible to true make new bcc recipient with properties {address:thesenderstext} end tell set toAddress to email addresses of item 1 of accounts as text tell newMessage make new to recipient with properties {address:toAddress} end tell activate end tell
Finally, I saved the script under ~/Library/Scripts as ReplyToMultipleEmails.scpt and used Quicksilver to add a hotkey combination to trigger the script.
To do this, I first made sure that my scripts folder was included and selected under Quicksilver → Catalog...

And added the Trigger from Quicksilver → Triggers... and assigned it to the hotkey ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ R.

With this script in place, you can reply to multiple email messages in Mail by selecting them and hitting your chosen hotkey combination. So I'm off to email everyone who put the Singularity badge on their sites with an update.
Hope you find this useful... enjoy!
Update: I noticed that when you use this script to reply to multiple messages, the "was replied to" flag on the messages is not set. I've modified the script so that the flag is now set but be aware of an issue with this: If you use the script to create a new message and then don't send it, the "was replied to" flags on the messages you were replying to will remain set. If you don't like this behavior, remove the line that reads set the was replied to of (item i of the themessage) to true from the script.
The Reply to multiple email messages in Mail article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Subscribe to my blog






Marius van Zundert
A really nice solution for your problem Aral
only I get the impression you didn’t expect Singularity (or the way you put it out into the world) would generate this kind of interest.
I’m Curious about it !!
January 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pmAral
Hi Marius,
Thanks!
Once it launches, I think Singularity is going to generate _lots_ more interest.
January 15th, 2008 at 3:10 pmMarius van Zundert
Well As soon as i’ve got all the problems with the webserver figured out i’m posting the singularity badge on my blog
Just hope I’m on time to still get a glimpse before everyone else
January 15th, 2008 at 3:30 pmBill34d
If anyone is looking for a great place to buy vitamins and health products, check out
January 20th, 2008 at 5:54 pmhttp://www.healthbuy.com/?aid=449667
Jon
Greetings,
Love the idea, but I get this error when running the script in Leopard using Mac’s Mail.app:
“Error number: -2753
Message: The variable thesenders is not defined.”
Can you advise?
Jon
June 13th, 2008 at 6:39 pmBEDAVA SITEM
bedava sitem, tr.gg trgg tr gg bekleriz
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 amMathieu Christe
Dear Aral,
Thanks a lot for publishing your script. I was an Eudora user for years, switched to Apple Mail a year ago and they’re still some features that I’m missing. One is the Multiple reply with copy of each message, like you get when you reply to one message.
On Sep 9, 2008, at 11:02 AM, xxxxxxxx wrote:
+ message w/ quote level
What’s strange is that I can Forward 2 messages in a newly created one… Anyway, I was wondering why you chose to have a blank message? Well, at least this is what I get when I try using your script, with of course the e-mail addresses from the selected messages.
Thanks in advance, kind regards,
Mathieu
September 9th, 2008 at 11:06 amsvat
Hello,
How could this be modified so that the reply will quote the text of all the messages being replied to?
December 15th, 2008 at 2:43 amHow to Get Six Pack Fast
Hey, nice tips. I’ll buy a bottle of beer to that man from that forum who told me to visit your blog
April 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pmAlex
Thanks for this AppleScript.
May 25th, 2009 at 4:06 pmBut I have a question, this works only for senders of emails. If there’s a Reply-To address for every email, how can I manage to reply to all Reply-To addresses for multiple email messages in Mail?