Preventing Apple Mail column sorting

My 84-year-old grandmother has a Mac that she's never truly grokked, including Apple Mail. Her incoming messages are sorted by date, and all she knows is that if she moves the "blue blob" (scrollbar) to the top of the screen, she'll find her newest messages.
But sometimes she accidentally clicks the "From" or "Subject" column header and re-sorts everything so that she can't find her new messages anymore. When this happens, she has no idea how to fix it. I'm happy to do so, but is there any way to nip this in the bud by preventing those headers from being clicked? Maybe there's a boot-time Applescript that could run that sets "Date Received" to the default?
-Ken

I have a similar problem except it happens whenever I
use the search function within mail. After I have
finished with the list of emails generated by search
and return to my main view window, my column settings
will have changed. In particular the attachments
column will have widened and the date column will
have narrowed - these are the two most annoying
things. However, the "to" and "from" columns will
also have changed size.
After every 'search' from within mail, I have to
re-adjust the main window and it's driving me balmy!!
Glad to hear there is a fellow sufferer. The open point is though: Now that we know that the search function causes the trouble, is Apple going to patch the hole? I had hoped that 10.4.6 would have incorporated it, but no such luck.

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Apple mail sender sort reverts to end of alphabet

I was in a string where the issue of Yosemite's Apple Mail sorting on sender (or subject) resulted in a sort that reverts to the end of the alphabet, rather than retaining the selected name or subject. This requires scrolling back through the entire list (now inconveniently sorted) to find the original highlighted sender or subject. Before Yosemite the selected sender or subject would be retained, so that I could deal as I wished with the sorted group. This is a huge time waste and Yosemite is a major down-grade IMHO for this feature which I formerly used frequently to organize a string of senders or subjects. APPLE WHAT GIVES? As well, I would have preferred to add my voice to the already-existing string on this topic, but of course when I signed in I was given a fresh page to start with. Kinda like getting sorted to the end of the alphabet. Convenient way for Apple not to hear a concerted chorus of voices on a particular topic. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ANYMORE HOW PEOPLE USE COMPUTERS??

Greetings: Similar problem here after moving to 10.5 on a G4 MMD. MAIL.app has been working fine for a year - and still is on my MacBook with 10.4 and iPhone - but 10.5 mail is ignoring my attempts to get send using ssl with exact same settings. The new "connection Doctor" is a nice touch, but it still does not clear. Incoming mail OK, and my Eudora path to same smtp servers using SSL is also running fine under 10.5, so I assume it is a MAIL app issue.
I need to go the ssl route to get through my cable broadband provider's servers into my web-hosting site servers for send. Send to provider's servers sans SSL, and getting out through mac.com mail is also fine.

Apple mail changing sort function. Please HELP.

After a recommended update early last week,email keeps changing sort function. I set for date and keeps changing it to subject.
PLease help repair this.
thanks,
don
Don

Hi Carlo,
My Mail seems to work now.
I should have done a screen capture to show you something.
When I was about to send the message in Mail, a notice came up:
It had 2 mail accounts:
1. Mail
2. my new e-mail address
I think I pressed Mail (if I remember).
However, when I just sent another test message, there was no window warning coming up.
Also, the "new Mail account" has nothing in it like the one that I deleted.
The one that I deleted had lots of material (messsage, sent message, saved messages etc...) but nothing critical.
I can live with that.
The critical point will be when I go to a site and when I want to send a messafge, my Apple Mail account window opens.
So far, your solution has worked even if the second part of your instructions could not be followed.
Thanks again,
Stacey

How to prevent Apple Mail from downloading old emails from Yahoo (Imap)

I started using Apple Mail and decided to use it to access my yahoo mail. Apple mail worked well in setting up my account but the problem is I have more than 10,000 emails in my yahoo account and Apple mail is downloading each and every one of them. Even if i choose for it not to download attachments, it will still take a long time to download. Is there a way or Mail to just download emails starting now, or at least within this year only?

Good question. I have the same issue. Too many old Yahoo emails. My iMac struggles to download the email to the client and it doesn't work - it seems to time out and stop downloading the old mail.

Vonage email notifications and Apple Mail client

Vonage provides a very nice feature in which, as soon as someone leaves a voice mail message, Vonage sends out an email notification to up to five different email addresses, in addition to sending a text message to a cell phone alerting you that someone has left you a voice message on your Vonage phone. Besides getting just a text-based email notification, you can also opt to have Vonage attach a .WAV file to the email it sends to those email accounts you list in your account settings page on the Vonage web site. I think this is a great feature, because I have my iPhone set up to receive the text message, and I also configured my email accounts to receive the email notifications together with the attached .WAV file, so I can listen to the recorded voice mail messages right on the iPhone, without having to dial in to a Vonage number, or go to the Vonage web site to listen to the voice mail via a computer.
While the Vonage email notifications with the attached .WAV files arrive just fine in my mac.com and my aol.com email accounts, those same email messages are NOT being sent to my the roadrunner.com email account provided by Time-Warner cable, my Internet Service Provider.
When I brought this matter up the tech support people at Vonage, they theorized that the roadunner server might be blocking receipt of the emails sent by the Vonage server. However, the problem does not seem to be related to roadrunner.com, because those email messages actually do reside on the roadrunner server. I can see them all right, but only if I use a browser and check my messages via their Web Mail application. For some mysterious reason, my Apple Mail client is NOT receiving those messages, and I have no clue why that would be so.
Does anybody know what is going on here? Shouldn't Apple Mail be able to retrieve all the messages on the roadruner server? What could prevent Apple Mail from being able to do that? And, is there anything I can do to make those email notifications —with their attached .WAV files—show up in my Inbox in Apple Mail?
Since I thankfully receiving those email notifications at my mac.com and my aol.com accounts, this is not a mission-critical issue for me. It is merely one of one technical curiosity.
bowlerboy

To close out this thread, about all I can say is that the issue does not seem to be related to Apple software or to my Internet Service Provider. It is a Vonage issue that can only be fixed by calling Vonage tech support and getting their programmer/technicians to do whatever it is that they to do on their end to configure their Vonage email notifications to function correctly. If something sneezes, as it did in regards to my account, then Vonage tech support is the first place to call.
I'll consider this issue "answered" now.
bowlerboy_jmb

Qwest & Apple Mail incompatibility

Here in Colorado, my broadband connection is Qwest DSL and my ISP is therefore Qwest.com. I recently switched from a PC to MAC and am now attempting to use Apple Mail to sort and operate my various mailboxes. I am experiencing great difficulty with the outgoing servers sending mail out on my old AOL e-mail address and even my new .mac address. I am told that Qwest and Apple mail are "not compatible." What gives???
TOC

Did Qwest technical support tell you that? My personal experiences have been that the Qwest technical support line personnel are blithering idiots when it comes to anything Mac. Don't pay any attention to 95% of what they say because it is wrong.
I am on Qwest DSL in Denver. These days, I run my own little personal home mail server, but when I used to have qwest.net email boxes, it was port 25 to send (smtp) withOUT SSL and withOUT authentication, and port 110 to receive (pop) withOUT SSL but with password authentication. The mail server had the same name for both inbound POP and outbound SMTP servers: pop.xxxx.qwest.net where xxxx is a four-charcter code for the local mail server in your area, e.g., pop.dnvr.qwest.net.
Now, I don't know if they did so in the past, but they may be doing so now, and that is if you use their smtp email server to relay your outgoing mail, then the domain name in the apparent "from" address may need to match the domain name of the smtp server, i.e., be qwest.net. AOL and AIM do the same thing. Qwest did require you to receive your mail before you could send any; they used your pop login to authenticate your IP address in order to send email through their smtp server. So if they are indifferent as to the apparent "from" address' domain, it could be that you just need to remember to always download your incoming qwest.net mail before trying to send AIM/AOL, .mac/me.com, or qwest.net mail.
If you have an AIM/AOL account, then why not just use the AOL/AIM smtp server if you want to send email apparently from AOL/AIM? If you no longer have an account, then why masquerade with an AOL/AIM address? People that "reply" won't be able to. In any event, as Ali said above, smtp uses SSL and password authentication on port 587 with server smtp.aim.com (or smtp.aol.com -- depending on whether your email address is [email protected] or [email protected]) and to receive, type of account is imap using SSL with password authentication on port 993 with server imap.aim.com (or imap.aol.com depending on same constraint as above)
As far as .mac goes, aren't all mac.com email addresses undergoing a transformation to me.com? Not sure about port configs on .mac, but I thought they were the same as AOL/AIM; password authentication on send and receive with SSL on ports 587 send and 993 receive. Don't know what the server names are, though.

Apple Mail subject column

I just installed the Mac OS upgrade through Software Update, and now I cannot show the Subject column in Mail. I can sort by it; that option appears on the pop-up menu and the messages move around, but there is no choice in the menu to show the Subject column in the Mail window.
Does anyone have a solution or an explanation?

OK, never mind all of you who may have been running your brains on this. I found a useful post from earlier this year. It was a matter of entering (stumbling, actually) on the correct group of search terms.
And the answer was in the form of a Terminal command: defaults delete com.apple.mail TableColumns
I entered this after quitting Mail, then restarted Mail, and my Subject column was back.
And thank you, Ernie, for mentioning that it is a default choice and won't appear as a column option in the View menu. I won't worry that it's not there.

Sort by name apple mail

My Mail is always sorted by date, but before, i could click on a mail, then click sort by name, to find another mail from the same person.
Now when i click on sort by name, the first email dissappeers and i have to scroll threw my 10.000 mails to get to the letter from the persons name..
As before it would stick with the mail i clicked on.

[This is a C&P from Leopard days but the problem has started for me in Yosemite]
Not sure if it is me or this is just the way Apple Mail works.
Logic would assume that if you select a message in Apple Mail and that message is highlighted, not opened, and you click the From column so you can sort by that column Apple Mail would make sure that, when it is sorted, the highlighted message would still be in your view. I can get this to work sometimes and other times it does not, so it is starting to bother me.
Is there something that I am missing...some step...or is this just the way it works, sometimes?
Thanks.

Sorting apple mail by size

Is there a way to sort apple mail files by size from the mail browser?

ok here is what worked for me on OS X 10.6.4
You'll have to edit the com.apple.finder.plist file found in ~/Library/Preferences, using the Property List Editor app (included with Xcode) or PlistEdit Pro.
Open the Root node, then navigate down into SearchViewSettings » ListViewSettings » columns. Then choose the column you want to activate in the column list (ie. Size), and set the visible key to yes. Save the .plist and relaunch the Finder (Option-Control-click on the Finder icon in the Dock).
Note: you must have done at least one search, and selected one of the additional columns in the View Options panel for the search results (Date Created, for example), or else your .plist file may not contain the SearchViewSettings node.
Warning: Apple probably disabled these columns for a good reason, as there may be some bugs that could cause problems on your system. I didn't have any problems with the size column, but be warned.
I found this info here: http://goo.gl/nPFw

I uploaded that new IOS 8.0 and now I cannot open my mail, Safari, or the new "TIPS" app. Does Apple have some sort of help, other than going to a store that is over 40 miles away?

I uploaded that new IOS 8.0 and now I cannot open my mail, Safari, or the new "TIPS" app. Does Apple have some sort of help, other than going to a store that is over 40 miles away?

Purplehiddledog wrote:
I do backup with iCloud. I can't wait until the new iMac is available so that I can once again have my files in more than 1 location without needing to rely solely on the cloud.
I also rely on iTunes and my MacBook and Time Machine as well as backing up to iCloud. I know many users know have gone totally PC free, but I chose to use iCloud merely as my third backup.
I assume that the restore would result in my ability to open Pages and Numbers and fix the problem with deleting apps, but this would also mean that if my Numbers documents still exist solely within the app and are just not on iCloud for some reason that they would be gone forever. Is that right?
In a word, yes. In a little more detail.... When you restore from an iCloud backup, you must erase the device and start all over again. There is no other way to access the backup in iCloud without erasing the device. Consequently, you are starting all over again. Therefore, it would also be my assumption that Pages and Numbers will work again and that the deleting apps issues would be fixed as well.
If the documents are not in the backup, and you do not have a backup elsewhere, the documents could be gone forever.

Apple Mail - Email Send Field Showing Different Data, Unable To Sort Correctly

Hi All,
I'm having a very annoying issue in Apple Mail, running 10.6. Some of the incoming mail messages are showing the sender's email address in the "From" field, rather than the person's "Name". There are also cases where this is happening, but this time the email address in the From field has angle brackets ( < and > ) around it. This makes sorting of emails by sender incorrect and broken apart.
So the three different ways it's displaying in the Mail window are:
From
Subject
John Smith
Lunch Today
[email protected]
Lunch Today
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Lunch Today
Here's what else I know:
- The error is NOT limited to a specific person, email address or mail domain. In other words, it has occurred differently with the same sender.
- The errors seem to occur in periods of time. In other words, it will display "correct" for a period of time (weeks or even months), then display "wrong" for a period of time. So it's not like every other message is different.
We contacted our ISP to see if they knew anything. They scratched their heads like we did, and they think that the issue is coming from the sender, rather than the mail server having a hiccup.
This is VERY frustrating, as I get lots of email in a day's time that can be time-sensitive.
Thanks in advance,
Mike

Hi All,
I'm having a very annoying issue in Apple Mail, running 10.6. Some of the incoming mail messages are showing the sender's email address in the "From" field, rather than the person's "Name". There are also cases where this is happening, but this time the email address in the From field has angle brackets ( < and > ) around it. This makes sorting of emails by sender incorrect and broken apart.
So the three different ways it's displaying in the Mail window are:
From
Subject
John Smith
Lunch Today
[email protected]
Lunch Today
<[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Lunch Today
Here's what else I know:
- The error is NOT limited to a specific person, email address or mail domain. In other words, it has occurred differently with the same sender.
- The errors seem to occur in periods of time. In other words, it will display "correct" for a period of time (weeks or even months), then display "wrong" for a period of time. So it's not like every other message is different.
We contacted our ISP to see if they knew anything. They scratched their heads like we did, and they think that the issue is coming from the sender, rather than the mail server having a hiccup.
This is VERY frustrating, as I get lots of email in a day's time that can be time-sensitive.
Thanks in advance,
Mike

How prevent shared folders to be added as attachment in apple mail?

All,
The thing just happend. One of the network users wrote a new mail (in apple's mail app) and instead of attaching one file, the user by accident double clicked the shared folder, and mail started attaching the 8.1 Gb folder. This never happend before and I like to prevent this. Should I go to server admin>afp>sharepoints? And unshare the folder? But are they still able accessing the files?
Help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Harry

Your current approach will not likely work, as there is no means to selectively set permissions for an application in the fashion that would be required here.
You'd need not only need indication of and the involvement of the active mail client, you'd also need some way to deal with either the specific type of data involved or the specific quantity involved, and I don't know of any means of communicating that across the mail client and the security system. (Blocking all access to Shared files is easy. Blocking just mail attachments? Not so easy.
I can't think of a way that would work here with a typical access control list (ACL) implementation scheme (Mac OS X has decent ACL support), short of a whole lot of kernel customizations or something like a programmable sending-related trigger scheme within mail, and AFAIK, there are no "outbound" rules within Apple mail client.
And is this case hunting fleas with anvils? (read: Something that's possible, but a whole lot of work.) How often does this particular case arise? If it's happening frequently and is not being addressed by some targeted training, then you probably don't really have a technical problem, you probably have a personnel and/or managerial problem here, and those don't lend themselves to technical fixes.
To pursue the maximum message size within the Microsoft Exchange product, then you have an Exchange qustion and not a Mac OS X (Server or client) question.
I don't run Microsoft Exchange servers, so I have no particular familiarity with the settings and options of that product. Based on some quick Googling, have a read of Microsoft's [Understanding Message Size Limits|http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124345.aspx] as a start, or Google around for the details of whatever version of Exchange is in use here.

I have two new problems that started today- I can't delete drafts and I can't move emails from my inboxes to folders in mailboxesleft column ( I work on a MacBook 10.7.5- I have 2 active email accts in Apple Mail

I have two new problems that started today- I can't delete drafts and I can't move emails from my inboxes to folders in mailboxes in the far left column. I work on a MacBook 10.7.5- I have 2 active email accts in Apple Mail. Any suggestions for steps I can take short of going to genius bar?

However after part of the Itune update completed a message came up on the screen
saying "The feature you are trying to use is on a net work resource that is unavailable.
Which particular .msi file does the message go on to say cannot be found? (Several different .msi files might be mentioned in this context: itunes.msi, bonjour.msi, AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi, etc.)

Trying to get different column headings for folders in Apple Mail - Help!

Hi there
I really hope someone can help here.
I have a few different email accounts coming into my Apple Mail program. For each account I am using a 'Saved' folder (for the incoming email i have read) and a 'Sent' folder (for the emails I have sent).
In my 'Saved' folder, I want my column headings to be:
a. Who the email is from
b. The subject line
c. The date and time received
In my 'Sent' folder, I want my column headings to be:
a. The address I have sent to
b. The subject line
c. The date and time received
The problem is that when I changed the column headings for one folder, it changes them for all of them. So I can display who my incoming emails are from, but in the sent folder, it only tells me who my sent emails are from....me!! This is no use at all. Is there anyway to apply different column headings to different folders? In Entourage this is easy, but Im at a loss of what to do in mail.
Please help if you can
Many thanks
Dan

as i said, Sent mailbox is special and can have custom columns separate from other mailboxes. ALL other mailboxes have the same columns and you can only customize them simultaneously. if you want to change that leave Apple feedback on the issue
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Apple Mail, won't sort message on server

Apple Mail 7 on Mavericks, when I display my account's email messages still stored on the ISP server (account information), it is no longer possible to sort them by categories (dimension, date, sender, etc.).
Previously it was possible: is it a bug or has been removed as a feature (very useful to delete old message from the server !!).

I'm not talking about the email messages stored locally on my computer.
It's not the main Mail window I'm talking about.
Let's see if I can make me clear.
The step to reproduce the problems are:
1- click on your account's INBOX incoming mail contextual menu
2- select "account informations"
3- this will open the "account informations" window, showing all your email messages still archived on your ISP server (not only your local mail).
4- In this window it is no loger possible to order the mail messages by date, sender, dimenstion etc
See short movie here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8222823/Mail_account_info.mp4
BTW, you'll see in the movie that Mail messages are ordered (why?) by dimension.
What if I'd like to select and delete all the old message from 3 days ago?

Preventing Apple Mail column sorting

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