Why cant I edit a received email?

Question

I just switched from a PC using Outlook. My Outlook has always been much more than a bunch of sent and received emails. I have lots of folders and file things away for reference, and I frequently edit emails to make them easier to find via a search or to add additional useful info.
I cant see how there could be any technical difficulties in allowing users to edit emails, so I can only assume that they are unaware of the usefulness.
Why would you want to edit an email examples:
1. Quotes from vendors. Add keywords, our part numbers or additional info....maybe after a phone conversation. Sometimes the vendors call a part something different than what we call it, or they use horrible abbreviations in the product name.
2. eFax faxes that arrive via email. They all have a useless subject with the senders fax number only, AND the content isnt indexed by search since they are essentially pictures. So....without the ability to edit the subject, I loose the nice paperless fax filing system in my email bec I cant search and find them any more!
3. Receipts from web purchases. Add keywords to make finding them easier. Edit subject to include the name of the product/s that were purchased.
4. Notes or emails I create myself in these folders for reference. Outlook has a neat feature "Post in this folder" that lets you create a text document in the folder and type whatever you want. This is handy for keeping info in a folder that was not received as an email. you could email yourself, but that is a multi-step process that isnt nearly as clean and simple.
I think the Apple Mail creators don't realize that an email app can be much more useful than something to store exact copies of sent and received emails. If I cant find a solution for this, I will have to use another program, which is a huge bummer, bec aside from this one simple missing feature, I like Apple Mail, but this is a deal breaker for me.
Please just turn on this ability!

Answer 1

Mulder wrote:
You've misunderstood what Mail is: a mail client only, not a personal notebook or information manager. Outlook is more like the latter, but poor at that task, too. Apple can't "turn on" an ability that isn't there to begin with, and it's doubtful they are going to bloat Mail by trying to make it into an Outlook clone.
Maybe you've misunderstood what it CAN be. I'm not asking for an outlook clone. Just the ability to add useful notes to an email.
One very big reason you shouldn't be able to edit received messages is if you have to produce them for evidence of anything. The ability to edit an email means you could alter the contents to be different than what the sender actually sent.
This can be alleviated by recording the "Last modified date"
e-Faxes are still images, and Outlook doesn't let you edit an image, either. There's nothing stopping you from opening the fax in Preview, adding notes and then exporting it as a PDF file.
I dont want to edit an image, just change the subject of the email it came in.
As for creating notes, you can do that, but it looks as though you haven't read the Help documentation for Mail yet.
As far as I can tell, you can create a note but you cant put it in whatever folder you want. They live in separate notes folders, so it doesn't do what I was asking.
If you want to add keywords or tags to email, you need to use something like MailTags.
Mailtags looks like it will address all the issues I have. It allows you to add notes to an email in a separate text box that is searchable. Thanks for the tip. i would really prefer not to have to rely on a third party add-on, but will probably do it anyway. i really dont want to have to switch to Entourage...which WILL let you do this by the way as does Eudora, MS Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Regarding MailTags, the fact that this popular add-on exists indicates to me that I'm far from alone in finding some useful functionality missing. At a bare minimum I think they should allow you to edit the subject line.
Message was edited by: shrock