Technical Note 20210507: EFA Helper

EFA Helper is a utility for EFA and EFA Pro. Its purpose is to change the message selection in Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook, moving it up or down. This saves the user from performing another click in the mail client, making email management more fluent.

If you experience that EFA Helper rarely or never changes the message selection in the mail client as instructed, then follow these steps

We recommend you upgrade to EFA Helper 2.1 Beta since it contains a diagnostic output to help determine the root cause.

1) Ensure that Next Please is set in EFA. Check your settings following these instructions

2) Occasional issues: This due to a peculiarity of macOS' implementation of multiple screens. In a nutshell, Apple Mail will only allow for its message selection to be changed programmatically if there is no draft email open, or, if one is open, then the window of that email has to be on the same physical screen as Apple Mail.

3) Permanent issues. These are most commonly caused by EFA Helper not configured correctly in macOS’ System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility. Hence macOS will block System Events that EFA Helper tries to send to your mail Client to change the message selection.

To correctly make the settings, follow these instructions. Note that you may need to manually remove the list entry System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility for EFA Helper and then add it again, depending on your circumstances.