Automated Reply and Delete of Selected Messages in Mail

Question

First the situation, I do support work and have been receiving direct e-mails for support requests for the last 14 years. With additional people in the group, I want to force people to send e-mail to our helpdesk e-mail address to get support so other group members can provide assistance. Of course, these are old habits to break. I've been sending a canned message stored in Stickies saying something like "Your e-mail has been deleted, go to the helpdesk for support", but would like to automate that process.
I found that in Entourage, you can create a rule, not have it active, and then manually run that rule by selecting "Message -> Apply Rule -> <Rule-Name>". Unfortunately, I don't normally have Entourage open.
How would one use Rules in Mail.app, Automator, and/or AppleScript to accomplish this? I looked around at the default actions in Automator for Mail, but didn't really find what I thought would work. I also searched around for new actions to Mail, but still didn't find a way to reply-to and delete selected messages.
Any suggestions or pointers on where to look?
Steve

Answer 1

When I try to reply in Mail, I hear the sound of a new window opening
What do you mean? There is no such sound in Mail...
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
The problem you have in Mail is usually caused by some Launch Services cache or preferences corruption. The following article describes how to manually reset Launch Services -- the notes at the bottom of the article also provide information about the side effects of deleting each of the files involved:
Resetting Launch Services
If you prefer using a cache cleaning utility instead of following the manual procedure described in the previous article, this other article provides links to some utilities that can be used for troubleshooting and cache cleaning:
Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption
It seems that the most appropriate utility for solving this particular problem is Tiger Cache Cleaner, but you may also want to consider other utilities, such as OnyX, or Cache Out X, which are free. Whatever utility you choose, be sure to read this first:
Side effects of System cache cleaning
As an example, this is how you should proceed with OnyX:
1. Quit all applications.
2. Launch OnyX and enter your administrator password.
3. Click Maintenance. In the Reset section, check LaunchServices database.
4. You may uncheck any other pre-checked options if you wish.
5. Click the Execute button.
6. Restart the computer.