How to edit messages I've received

Anthony Sergi wrote:
On occasion, I need to edit an email I've received so that it has all relevant info needed to be saved. For example, I just purchased a software download. The email that contains the necessary downloading info has a very generic subject line. I want to change it to something more meaningful, like "Download info for XXXXXXX software." I also might want to add some body copy like "originally downloaded on Aug 8, 2000"

I used to do this all the time on my work's Lotus Notes email system. Is there any way to do this in Mail?

No, no way to do that at all in Mail. probably the best you can do is to try forwarding those emails to yourself and edit them in the new message composition window.

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Anthony Sergi wrote:
Wow, that was a quick response! Actually, your suggestion is what I do now. The problem is that all these emails have me as the sender. This makes it difficult to search by sender when I need to find in the future.

yes, I know but that's the best you can do with Mail if you actually want to change the message itself.

Sergi,
You are right, I find it extremely frustrating that I cannot even edit the E-Mail header.
And of course, as a result of many years working with Outlook, I am in the habit of stripping all the junk from important messages.

This is the worst omission in the current version of Apple Mail.

How do we get this message to Apple Mail applicartion developers, in the hope they can fix it in the next release...

You've never been able to edit an email in Mac OS X and that's for a good legal reason, so it's not going to change. Just because you don't agree with it or like it doesn't mean that it's something that needs to be fixed.

I don't know about legal reasons. certainly, if you are determined to edit a received email you can easily do it by editing the .emlx file of that email in a text editor. you just can't do it in Mail. but I agree, i don't see a feature like that ever being added to Mail.

Well, if you REDIRECT the message, rather than forward it, the message list will retain the original sender and I think the original sending date, too. It does add a couple of lines to the front end of the message about "Resent from:" and original "To:" and other related stuff.

Either go to mail's menubar's "view" item and choose "Customize Toolbar..." and add the "redirect" icon to both the main viewer's toolbar, and to any message that you have clicked on the forward/reply/replyAll buttons. Or, if you don't want the icon in the toolbars, with the message that you want to redirect the active focus, from Mail's menubar's "Message" item, choose "Redirect"

JV,
Thanks, "Redirection" works just fine,
a) you can edit the Subject, and Body text...
b) send date remains unchanged, I have been able "fix" some old messages to test...
c) no additional words are added to the Body text

d) keep the Sent "Redirected" message, delete the Original and the newly Received Redirected message.
the Sent "Redirected" retains the original receive date,
the newly Received Redirected message is tagged with todays date and time, as expected...

Thanks, the work around is just fine...
I still believe you should be able to delete the junk from the original, and have suggested it to Apple.

Robert

Greetings,

You cannot edit received email. You can use a third-party Mail Bundle to add notes that you could search on. MailTags has a free demo available, and it's $29.95 to buy.

apple.com/feedback and choose the OS X icon