Mercy! Well, as you know, you can’t take it with you. 
Ouch. I deleted my ripped movie collection, etc. to avoid big backup bills.
Things app has this wonderful utility called “Things Helper”
It will grab URL of the current file / email / webpage, open up a new task tool with link already filled in the notes section. Absolutely wonderful!
Regarding Apple’s “flawed apps”, there is no single answer. It might be flawed app for one whereas it might be wonderful app for someone else 
PS: Regardless Coffee is always a right answer!
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I think what you’re experiencing is the inevitable shift of Apple’s software to be like everybody else’s. Try living in a Microsoft-centric (or should that be Microsoft-manic) world every day and you’ll appreciate what you do have more than you will dislike what you don’t.
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I would go even more simple, explanation wise. Again, this is complete speculation, without being able to identify the format.
Mail uses a folder of EML files. This folder structure mimics the user folder structure in the program. So let’s say, for example, that at one point Mail did not have a UUID based API for accessing a file (or that the API was buggy enough to not be usable). One of Apple’s apps could easily just identify the file on disk, and then tell it to open. Mail would be the default handler for that, and that would work just fine - until the file was moved. But it would be the best solution available at the time.
Then the API comes into existence, or gets fixed, etc., and whatever apps are developed after that (or have the linking feature implemented after that) get to use it.
At that point, it may or may not be as easy as implementing the new method in the old app and just allowing the legacy data to link the other way. There could be code issues with allowing both linking methods to exist simultaneously, there could be data conversion concerns, etc.
This sort of stuff happens all the time in commercial software.
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Does Things 3 retain the email link once the email is moved in Apple Mail?
And yes, coffee makes everything better. 
I did, for over 20 years. I’d never want to go back! I appreciate what I have with Apple; I just get frustrated by these strange quirks.
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That is a good reminder (pun intended 
). It certainly works, and I use DT extensively. It adds steps to the process, but is a viable solution. Thanks for suggesting it.
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Yes. In my experience Things retains the link when you move the message around.
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One thing that I do appreciate about Apple is that even if the default apps aren’t the best. MacOS third party apps are second to none. My issue is is that my work email has it where my work email does not approve of Edison or Spark Email.
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Yes, as confirmed by @A_R above. The forward email to Things feature is the primary reason that I have not explored to move to Reminders entirely.
I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg.
By that, I mean…am I picky by nature, or did I learn to be picky by listening to tech podcasts and reading a lot of tech-related content online? I think a bit of both.
I go through these phases once in a while where I think “Apple Notes is just fine, no need for more”. Then I grab my Apple pencil and start taking down a note. From there I go to pinch the screen to zoom in or out on my handwriting. It doesn’t work. A Google search reveals that it isn’t possible to zoom in or out in Apple Notes. Apple notes also has no versioning and no easy way to back up files. Yeah TIme Machine I guess but I tried that before with little to no success.
Then I think “Reminders is fine”. But as I use it day to day I again find little annoyances. Too many extra clicks, maybe it didn’t recognize the natural language input.
Then I think Apple Calendar is fine. But I can’t hide events, can’t scroll the the events list with the calendar view on top, can’t use calendar sets, no natural language input (or at least, not great) which makes entering events super tedious.
So yeah. I’m picky.
I recently moved to Bear, use Todoist, and Fantastical for the aforementioned apps. It’s just easier and I don’t have to think about them or wonder what will break. It only hurts once a year when the payment comes out, but the other 364 days are way smoother with far less annoyances.
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I’ve hardly used Apple’s apps since they killed iWork and reintroduced the apps with less functionality. Since then their apps are mediocre. Apple’s apps get worse ratings than Microsoft’s equivalent. The number of Mac only people I know that now use macOS with Microsoft’s or Google’s suite of apps is considerable.
I’m not sure Apple really have a focus on producing quality apps. Even their OS is buggy. When I used Apple in the 2000’s I never saw a beachball, now I see them all the time.
For a long time, I thought of software and apps in terms of their capabilities, but I think that is a dead end. There will always be apps with “more” ways to do and produce things…but in the end, it comes down to the idea, the sentence, and the meaning of it. For that apple apps are just fine.
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I could not duplicate this problem. I shared emails to Reminders and regardless of where I moved the email (different iCloud mailboxes) and regardless of where I moved the reminder (different Reminders lists) I could not break the connection. I only have iCloud email. Does this happen to you when you move emails to a different account?
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I have a question @Bmosbacker; how much is your time worth? While I’m no fan of subscriptions, an app that saves me time is well worth it. I don’t know about you, but I have more money than I have time, and I don’t have a lot of money! So, if you pay the subscription and take that time saved and invest it in your family or community (I’m making assumptions here based on your prior posts), I’m willing to bet you’d find it a worthy investment.
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I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but I’m fairly confident I’m not crazy! 
After reading your post and wanting to confirm that I wasn’t imagining things, I ran a quick test: I added several emails to Reminders from both my Mac and iPad. Then I clicked the Mail links in Reminders on both devices. After archiving the messages, I clicked the links again—still working. I repeated the process several times with multiple mail messages and to my utter (and delighted) surprise, the links continued to work across both devices!
I don’t know if this is a fluke or if a recent OS update quietly fixed the issue. I’m reserving judgment for now—because as soon as I post this, the links will probably stop working. But if this stability holds, I take back everything I said earlier and I will be one happy camper!
I invite others to test this and report back. Do the links work for you after moving the message and or accessing them on other Apple devices? I’m genuinely perplexed. This has been an ongoing frustration for a long time.
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You’re absolutely right—if a subscription-based app saves sufficient time that can be redirected toward family or community, it’s a worthwhile return on investment.
For me, however, the issue isn’t so much time as it is the friction caused by unreliable features—in this case, links not being preserved between Mail and Reminders, though, as noted above, that may now be resolved. I remain skeptical, but I’m holding out hope.
In any case, your point stands: I need to be mindful that my aversion to subscriptions doesn’t become counterproductive and end up costing more in frustration and time than money.
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A quick side note as someone who follows this forum, your app journey, and who uses mostly non Apple apps…
While I see the benefit of going all in with Apple, you have a few posts on this forum about lost notes and hiccups with reminders and Mail. That’s a red flag to me because as I go out on to the wider web and Reddit, these issues - and issues like them - are not super uncommon in the Apple suite.
In addition to the added functionality of third party apps, I see fewer issues with third party apps. Anecdotally, I admit.
Third party apps also (generally) seem better equipped to restore themselves from more reliable backups should something go wrong, There are more roads for finding a fix and more reachable support for help.
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You’re not helping me avoid app switching! 
You’re right in noting that I’ve had issues with syncing Apple Notes, but I haven’t run into that problem for quite a while now. I like the Pencil support, headings, and Smart Lists now built into Notes. It’s also very fast and easy to capture notes across my devices.
I have had syncing issues with Ulysses—which I’ve stopped using because of the random and unpredictable sync failures.
As for Mail and Reminders: until today—and time will tell if this holds or is just a fluke—I was able to get Mail links to remain functional in Reminders if I moved the message or tried to open the link from another Apple device.
Because of these linking issues, I’ve seriously considered going back to OmniFocus—which I use competently. I don’t find it overly complex. But OF doesn’t work in CarPlay, and capturing tasks via Siri is a bit trickier. I’m aware of—and have used—the Reminders Capture feature in OF, but I still run into small frictions. For example, if I invoke Siri on the Mac to add a task to OF, I consistently get this:
OF IS on my Mac.
It’s these sorts of inconsistencies and frictions that cause so much frustration. “It doesn’t just work.”
That said, I’m probably letting relatively minor frictions cause more frustration and app reevaluation than is warranted. I don’t have many vices, but this seems to be one of them.
I’d genuinely appreciate any advice from the community. I’m not too proud to be corrected.
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