World3d

Q: Yosemite has no sort by name in Mail App

Yosemite has what I would say is a bug- it is certainly at least a dropped feature.

I'm sure that most people view mail sorted by date as do I.  But sometimes I want to view all mail from a particular sender.  All previous versions of mail allowed you to simply click on any mail in the inbox and then simply click the "sort by name" tab at the top to see all letters sorted by name, beginning with the selected email.  Now in Yosemite, instead of beginning with the selected email, it instead starts at "A" or "Z" ignoring the selected email.  I would suggest that this is helpful to exactly nobody.  I'm hoping this is just a bug/oversight that will be quickly fixed.  "Sort by name" is king of important to those of who are heavy users.

And yes, I understand that I can do a search.  But this brings up every email that even mentions the sender and searching and then sorting is super cumbersome compared to the one click method that has seemingly been abandoned.  Hoping there's a fix in sight!

Posted on Oct 28, 2014 2:24 PM

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Q: Yosemite has no sort by name in Mail App

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  • by stopmusic,

    stopmusic stopmusic Nov 2, 2014 6:17 PM in response to dirtychai
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    Nov 2, 2014 6:17 PM in response to dirtychai

    select the message as usual and click your sort option, whether it be from, subject, etc.  as discussed, your message goes out of view.  now press and hold the command button, then click the up or down arrow.  your sort location should be restored.  let me know if that works. 

  • by dirtychai,

    dirtychai dirtychai Nov 2, 2014 6:49 PM in response to stopmusic
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    Nov 2, 2014 6:49 PM in response to stopmusic

    Yes, I get it now, thank you! It does work. It takes me to the email directly above the one I'm sorting. Thank you!

  • by LATrapp,

    LATrapp LATrapp Nov 2, 2014 7:52 PM in response to dirtychai
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 2, 2014 7:52 PM in response to dirtychai

    Great tip, glad it helps although with an extra step or two. Hope everyone is still emailing Apple to replace the feature.

  • by World3d,

    World3d World3d Nov 3, 2014 1:07 PM in response to LATrapp
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    Nov 3, 2014 1:07 PM in response to LATrapp

    What I would really appreciate would be for Apple to either confirm this is a bug or tell us they've removed it intentionally (for what reason I can't imagine).  If it's a confirmed bug, I'll assume they intend to fix it.  If it's as designed, I may look for an alternative to Mac Mail.  I've sent a silly amount of time on the phone with them about this and I've reached the stage where Apple nearly always stumbles, "we'll check with engineering and get back to you in 3-5 days".  That's a black hole at Apple customer service.  As per usual, I never heard from them again.  If anybody else can get confirmation, I'd sure appreciate it.  Meanwhile, hopefully this thread gets some attention.

  • by carsonharte,

    carsonharte carsonharte Nov 7, 2014 9:10 PM in response to World3d
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    Nov 7, 2014 9:10 PM in response to World3d

    A highly annoying oversight...FIX IT APPLE .  Also missing is the very useful "Control click" information feature on attachments.  I like to use the "open with " feature for odd files, but it's gone.

  • by harvestnz,

    harvestnz harvestnz Nov 8, 2014 12:22 PM in response to World3d
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    Nov 8, 2014 12:22 PM in response to World3d

    There is a simple workaround. Highlight an email, click on the name column then after the list has sorted press the up or down arrow and the sorted list jumps to the email you highlighted

  • by carsonharte,

    carsonharte carsonharte Nov 8, 2014 8:51 PM in response to harvestnz
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    Nov 8, 2014 8:51 PM in response to harvestnz

    works nicely, thanks guys. 

  • by harvestnz,

    harvestnz harvestnz Nov 8, 2014 10:47 PM in response to carsonharte
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    Nov 8, 2014 10:47 PM in response to carsonharte

    After 30 mins of unhelpful comments on Apples support chat I was put onto a guy called Jesse who is  a "Senior Advisor" who understood right away and offered the work around above.He also said he would check with Engineering to find out if they regard this as a bug and if so when they intend to release a fix. He promised to email the reply in a few days so if I get something useful I will post it here.

  • by OregonDrJ,

    OregonDrJ OregonDrJ Nov 11, 2014 10:01 AM in response to World3d
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    Nov 11, 2014 10:01 AM in response to World3d

    I agree Apple needs to fix this.  But in the meantime, just press and hold command when you sort.  The highlighted e-mail will stay in view. 

  • by World3d,

    World3d World3d Nov 11, 2014 10:07 AM in response to OregonDrJ
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    Nov 11, 2014 10:07 AM in response to OregonDrJ

    I agree that the work-around works and while it is helpful (and appreciated), a work-around requiring an extra step should not be necessary.  Especially true when the change brings about no apparent benefit.  My biggest beef with Apple is their lack of willingness or ability to respond to this simple issue with an answer on if it is as intended or will eventually be fixed.

  • by westerbeke30,

    westerbeke30 westerbeke30 Nov 11, 2014 12:23 PM in response to harvestnz
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 11, 2014 12:23 PM in response to harvestnz

    Thanks for finding this.  It was driving me crazy before.  Maybe I need to pare down my 20,000 emails, but sometimes software updates make no sense to me.

  • by ADub128,

    ADub128 ADub128 Nov 11, 2014 12:43 PM in response to westerbeke30
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    Nov 11, 2014 12:43 PM in response to westerbeke30

    Yes, every new OS release adds some broken feature to Mail. With Mavericks, I had "Reply All" issues where my reply would come from a different email address that I use (for example, I would respond from my personal email, not business). With Yosemite, we have this "bug". Hopefully it gets fixed with an update.

     

    Thanks for the tip HarvestNZ. But, I hate the extra keystrokes! What a PITA!

  • by harvestnz,

    harvestnz harvestnz Nov 13, 2014 9:13 AM in response to ADub128
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 13, 2014 9:13 AM in response to ADub128

    I had a reply from the senior Advisor I spoke to. Here is the content of the email he sent me today.

     

    Peter,

     

    Thanks for contacting Apple.

     

    Last week, we spoke a bit about a particular change in Mail- when changing the sort order of the message list, Mail no longer follows your selected message and instead jumps to the top of the list.

     

    We did find a workaround in the form of tapping either of the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard- that brought the “viewport” of Mail back to the selected message you wanted to see.

     

    At this point, I have heard back from Engineering about the escalation we filed; it looks like this is a deliberate change in Yosemite and is now how the application is supposed to work.

     

    I know that’s a bit frustrating to hear, since it’s been the other way for quite some time; I’d suggest you file feedback at apple.com/feedback. We do want to provide our customers with an experience that works from them, and filing feedback on that site helps our senior management hear what that means to you.

     

    If there’s anything else I can do for you, don’t hesitate to reach out.

    Jesse Shapiro

    AppleCare Senior Advisor

  • by World3d,

    World3d World3d Nov 13, 2014 10:39 AM in response to harvestnz
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    Nov 13, 2014 10:39 AM in response to harvestnz

    This seems to me to be another example of the arrogance of Apple Engineering.  Apple as a whole has great customer service but when issue reach the level on engineering, this is the typical response.  They are basically saying "yes, we intended to remove that long standing important functionality.  No, there is no apparent reason or benefit.  No follow up questions please".

    So now all we can do is send feedback.  Apple loves to talk about how that "really does work!"  With probably 100 million people using Apple products and each one having the opportunity to provide feedback, I don't see how the signal could possibly cut through the noise, even if they want to listen.

     

    But If you are reading this forum, please do send feedback.  I don't have much hope that it will help given Apple's poor attitude towards addressing issues above customer service level.  But at this point, it's the only hope.

  • by harvestnz,

    harvestnz harvestnz Nov 13, 2014 10:45 AM in response to World3d
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    Nov 13, 2014 10:45 AM in response to World3d

    I have asked Jesse (who kindly sent me his direct email) to see if engineering would consider adding a preference option to revert to sorting the old way so that they can keep their new (broken to us) way but still give us grumpy users an option to have it the way we prefer.

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