Q: Color coding messages in Mail (Yosemite) does not work.

I have the same problem. I can't colour the background of a new message. I don't have a solution but I do have a workaround:

The only way I could get this to work was to take an old message and reply to it. I deleted the existing content and subject line and then started fresh. The only problem with this is that it will be part of the thread that you "responded" to but this is not a problem for me since I don't organize messages by conversation.

hey guys, so I was trying to apply the colours manually today and it works, but for some reason, I could only see the applied colour once I restarted mail. This seems to be some bug, so I hope apple will fix this, as it is more user friendly and it hits you right into the eye any time you start your mail. Flags are too tiny and very limited.

mrJeyK - How are you applying the color?  I've tried double-clicking (what worked in 10.8) and dragging the small rectangle of color and the large/chosen rectangle onto the message and the color never appears.  Do you close mail immediately after color-coding and then restart mail to get the colors to appear?  Nothing I've tried has worked.

Why do they always have to break at least one thing that people really like when they bring out a new version?  I haven't moved to El Capitan yet because I don't have the strength yet to try to find all the "work-arounds" for the things I assume they screwed up with it...

I know I could use a different mail software but I like Mail; I'm used to it.  And, this is the only thing that I don't like in mail.  (Of course I have to use a plug-in to get the file system to work correctly and to include tabs.  Sigh.)

Anyway, thanks for any help.  I REALLY wish Apple would fix this problem.

hey Angle,

from what I gather, there is actually no need to drag-and-drop the colour. You just select the e-mail in question and click the colour (I've ended up using the colour palettes - namely crayons for higher colour selection). The problem is that the e-mails are not colour marked immediately. I have to switch between inboxes (I have 3) and when I go back to the inbox that I was changing the colour in, the colour is applied. Otherwise I had to quit and restart mail for this change to apply. It is annoying, but hey - it works, so until there is a fix, this is a workaround. Hope that helps! Btw, I'm on El Capitan v10.11.6

My Mail filing system is based on 1) inbox (where I only keep things that require my attention) and 2) folders (to file a way the mails that I have already resolved).

What kind of plugin are you using? Might be worth trying for me.

Please try this method : open system preferences & click on general .

Choose highlight color & click on drop down arrow and change the color as per your choice .

mrJeyK - thank you for responding.  When I try to apply the color, then switch to another mailbox/inbox (of a different e-mail address), the color is not applied.  (I have Yosemite installed on both a MacAir and a MacBook and it won't work on either.)

I don't have any plug-in's for Mail.  That is exactly what I'm looking for - do you know of any that will return the manual color-code option?  I'm surprised that no plug-in/app/extension was built to solve this problem since - based on the number of Google search returns I received - many people seemed unhappy about the removal and unhappy with the non-working solution provided by Apple support.

tygb - Thank you for responding.  I tried changing the system preferences as you suggested.  Unfortunately, that only changed the highlight color of the selected message (changed back to white background when I selected a different message); it didn't color-code the message.  Thanks for trying to help though.