The flag icons in Mail are replaced: each flag in the flags column of any mailbox is just the word for the color of the flag (as in "Orange"). [If the column is narrow it shows instead ellipses ("...")].
Here is an example:
A previous post on this issue had no solution, and was closed due to inactivity (2 years ago) -- so please don't just refer me back to that.
Running High Sierra 10.13.6 on mac mini (mid 2011) with 8GB memory, Mail 11.5
Hi BDAqua,
Thanks for the suggestions.
Of course I had tried Safe mode. Did not help. What did help --partially-- was starting Mail while pressing the shift key. Rather than showing just the flag (or just the word for the color of the flag), now I have flags followed by the word for the color, as in:
I can hide the word by making the column narrow, so I can live with this.
I did not try rebuild the Spotlight index on my Mac, because this has nothing to do with the Flags in Mail. I am not sure why you suggested this, and I know from past experience that re-indexing Spotlight takes a lot of CPU and time, so it slows down the computer for a long time, so I would not do this unless there was a clear rationale for it , which you did not provide.
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?
Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.
How to rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac
If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results, rebuilding the Spotlight index might help.
1. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
2. Click the Privacy tab.
3. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching. Or click the Add (+) button and select the folder or disk to add. To add an item to the Privacy tab, you must have ownership permissions for that item. To learn about permissions, choose Help from the Finder menu bar, then search for “permissions.”
4. From the same list of locations, select the folder or disk that you just added. Then click the Remove (–) button to remove it from the list.
5. Quit System Preferences. Spotlight will reindex the contents of the folder or disk.
Flags aren't part of any eMail, they're Metadata, which is what Spotlight picks up...
Mail flags aren't just a bit of color attached to emails; they're actually a form of smart mailboxes.
https://www.lifewire.com/apply-rename-remove-flags-apple-mail-messages-2260021
Smart Mailboxes won't work if you disable Spotlight.
The words may be the result of accessibility changes. Colorblind people may not be able to detect the color of the flag. I imagine that is much simpler than creating some setting in Accessibility
Flag Icons in Mail replaced by names
