Mail - how to delay " Mark as Unread "

Question

Level 1

2 points

Mail - how to delay " Mark as Unread "

I have only noted one other instance of this question at
http://forums.macnn.com/82/applications/353811/mail-delay-before-mark-as-read/
but after a significant search I have still found no solution:

I have just moved to Mac, and have set up my aol IMAP account with Mail 3.0 on Leopard. One major gripe is that e-mails are 'marked as read' the second they are selected.

Mozilla Thunderbird has an option to only mark mail as read after 'x' seconds of it being selected, does anyone know of a way to replicate this functionality in Mail? The main cause is when an e-mail is deleted and the next e-mail is instantly selected, marking it as read (even though I want to keep it as 'unread' to read later).

Am I the only one who would find this functinality useful? Hmm..

Many Thanks

Message was edited by: asquires13

iMac 24" Core2Duo Extreme 4GB ram, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 14, 2007 9:02 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 14, 2007 9:05 PM in response to asquires13

While there is no option that I know of to delay the marking there is a way to easily remark it yourself. If you right-click on the message in question you can choose "Mark">"As Unread". This function is also available in the iPhone by the way.

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Answer 2

asquires13 Author

Level 1

2 points

Nov 15, 2007 3:11 AM in response to asquires13

Yes, manually going back and changing it, I suppose.
Would it be possible to (learn to) write an apple script / pluggin to solve this?
I have some limited linux admin type scripting experience...
I scouered http://hawkwings.net/plugins.htm but nothing :S find this hard to believe

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Answer 3

levil

Level 1

0 points

Nov 17, 2007 10:09 AM in response to asquires13

If you ever figure this out I'd love to know. I am looking forward to getting an iPhone when I can so with Leopard installed I figured I should socialize my self off of Thunderbird and on to Mail.

I am realizing the reasons I did not go with the built in program in the first place. This issue was one of them. (No aliasing was the other, though I found it since. It is not perfect as I cannot change the name for the aliases, but I can live with this flaw.)

But I keep the messages I still need to deal with unread. This way if I click it even accidently, someone will never get a response. I am already afraid of the ones I already hit accidentally. Either that or I need to develop a new system. I have a few ideas.

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Answer 4

Ashka

Level 4

3,885 points

Nov 17, 2007 10:59 AM in response to asquires13

Close the preview pane by dragging it down to the bottom the window.
Double click to open the mail you want to read, the rest will stay unread.
Have a good day.

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Answer 5

asquires13 Author

Level 1

2 points

Nov 17, 2007 7:40 PM in response to Ashka

Thank you. You're a legend. I am very greatful indeed, the annoyance is no more!
Dragging the list pane so that it is fully expanded stops "previews" of the e-mail loading 🙂

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Answer 6

Dec 11, 2007 8:03 PM in response to asquires13

Yes, it solves the problem somewhat, although I would still like to use the preview pane.

I sure would like to see this feature in Mail. It's one of the reasons I moved to Thunderbird.

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Answer 7

musk

Level 1

4 points

Jan 11, 2008 7:10 AM in response to Thats.Funny

I agree it is only a partial solution. It requires me to decide which is least painful - do without preview, or deal with the mark as read issue.

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Answer 8

llee

Level 1

113 points

Jan 31, 2008 8:56 AM in response to musk

No, I don't consider that a solution. I think a different way to phrase the question would be, "How can I preview a message in Apple Mail so that it will be allowed to retain its "unread" status?" So maybe I'll post that question to a new thread.

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