How to set priority?

Question

Hello,
Is there a way to set a priority symbol or number or anything of the sort beside a message in mail?
I heard of it being done but I'm not sure.
Also, how do I use mail and create an out of office reply or an email that will be automatically sent when someone sends an email to a given address?
Thanks.
Dorian

Answer 1

You mean when sending a mail, how do you set priority? Is there a little rectangular box in the lower left-hand corner region of the message header area in your new message window composition window, that has three little horizontal lines and a downward pointing triangle in it? Click on it and select Customize....
Check the far-right checkbox that has a pull-down menu with a "!" in it. That is message priority. "!!" means high priority, "!" means regular priority, and "-" means low priority.
Or do you mean how do you display the priority of incoming mail? You can display priority of incoming messages by enabling the "Flag" column in your message list viewer pane. In the Mail's menubar, go to Mail > View > Columns and select Flags. You can drag that column to the desired position (mine is 2nd from left) and adjust its width in the column title row using your mouse. If you have placed the Flag icon in the toolbar of the main mail viewer window, then when you click on the icon, you can locally "flag" it (displays a little red flag in that column next to the message) to remind you that you have to do something with/about this message. To add the Flag button to your toolbar, in Mail's menubar, click on Mail > View > Customize Toolbar and drag the Flag icon into your toolbar.
The best way I would know to create an out-of-office reply would be to create a temporary rule that says "if account is 'whatever' then reply" and enter text in the reply text window. Problem is, I don't know whether the rule would be executed until after the message was downloaded in your running mail application, or until the message was actually viewed. You'd have to experiment. If your computer is going to be shutdown or you will be logged out, that won't work, and you'd really need to be able to do something at the mail server level, not your mail client level.
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