In the new Mac osX CataIina I cannot find a way to change the columns viewed in Mail. You used to be able to change the field widths and add columns from the View/Columns menu. How can I accomplish this now?
Also, what does the black background TO next to the email title mean?
Hi, I have had a long conversation with 'Liam' from Apple Support as I had written in to express my dissatisfaction with the removal of Column View in Mail.
He has promised to feedback directly to the developers (no promises on outcome) and to point them to the huge number of posts on this topic. He encouraged everyone who has this concern to voice it DIRECTLY on the Apple Support site as this is more likely to register with the Apple hierarchy.
https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html
This link has been posted throughout this thread and others, but it can't hurt to post it again and remind people to submit their comments there. If everyone does this who knows!
Hi Amy,
Please rest assured that you are amongst friends here. Many of us spent weeks reporting an error, trying to figure out what had happened to our columns in Apple Mail, what we had done something wrong, trying to fix it, until we discovered, late in the day, and indirectly that Apple had intentionally (yes- intentionally) removed this aspect of functionality in Catalina.
A year later and thousands of reports, emails, complaints and deafening silence from Apple we discovered, again by accident, that Apple will be restoring the column function in the next upgrade ‘Big Sur’ which is due for release later this year.
Might still be worth contacting Apple feedback directly!
petemcl wrote:
In the new Mac osX CataIina I cannot find a way to change the columns viewed in Mail. You used to be able to change the field widths and add columns from the View/Columns menu. How can I accomplish this now?
Catalina no longer supports Column View Layout/fields/etc
Apple Feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback
petemcl: You cannot adjust column width under Catalina. Please do two things:
1) Call AppleCare and ask the rep to file a complaint.
2) Fill your own complaint at https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html
Apple only works on algorithms these days, not common sense, and the only algorith that governs the developers is how many complaints they get, not the quality of the complaints.
A big thank you, Glenn Fleishman, for the article titled You’re not imagining things: Apple did remove the column option from macOS Mail, published in Macworld on 25 March 2020. Let's hope that other tech writers address this important matter in their columns and let's also hope that Apple wakes up from its long trance. Like many other participants in this forum, I have been a loyal user of Apple products for decades. It is high time that Apple displayed some loyalty to its users in return for our loyalty.
Hi, I have just had a long conversation with 'Liam' from Apple Support as I had written in to express my dissatisfaction with the removal of Column View in Mail.
He has promised to feedback directly to the developers (no promises on outcome) and to point them to the huge number of posts on this topic. He encouraged everyone who has this concern to voice it DIRECTLY on the Apple Support site as this is more likely to register with the Apple hierarchy.
I have an idea that might get Apple's attention. I hope everyone that has posted about the column view is following this issue!
On a specific day, maybe the end of the week, everyone that is posted about this issue send FEEDBACK to apple at the same time! A mass posting to FEEDBACK might get their attention.
If there is anyone willing to head this up you will be more than welcome to do it. If not and there is enough interest, I will be glade to try to make arrangements.
The ONLY way they're going to do anything is for everyone to:
1) Use all their email addresses and complain to https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html
2) Call AppleCare at 1-800-275-2273 and ask a tech to submit a bug report.
Sadly, Apple—and every other tech company out there—only reactions to Congressional subpeonas and algorithms. You canj affect the algorithm.
Check your menus to see if there are numbers to the left of each item. If so then you have Voice control enabled in the System/Accessability/Voice Control preference pane.
Disable Voice Control and those tags should disappear.
I have just completed my transition from Catalina's Apple Mail to Outlook, on my desktop machine. It wasn't too difficult. The only reason I changed was the loss of a user-customizable column view. The largest effort was in copying my local ("On My Mac") mailboxes over to Outlook.
The first Apple computer I had on my desk at work was the Mac SE, and I've had Apple on my desk ever since. That's more than 30 years. So I suppose I can claim to be a loyal Apple user. But I found problems like having the Attachments column way off to the right -- where I can't see it at a glance and easily identify which messages have attachments and which don't -- to be too much to tolerate.
Aside from the column view issue, there are pros and cons to Outlook vs Apple Mail. But overall they are similar enough that I believe Outlook will be satisfactory. And I'm confident that MS won't degrade the product to any significant degree. I have no such confidence in Apple, especially if their goal is to bring MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS into greater conformity with each other, as some have speculated.
I do plan to continue with Apple Mail on my laptop, which is still running 10.14. But I don't use that machine to organize and manage my email, just to view it. So I can probably tolerate a crippled column view if and when I upgrade it to 10.15.
Jimonga has a good point about using the media to get a response on something we all care about. Use this email address to tell the editors of Mac World about the problem with Mac Mail. If the magazine gets even 1% of the volume of complaints on this site, they will follow up, even as Apple hasn't bothered to respond:
letters@macworld.com
Apple doesn't monitor this forum, so you have to submit your feedback at:
This is an official Apple.com discussion forum and although it is said Apple do not regard it as a vehicle to receive formal feedback it is constantly monitored and the contents must be noted. The Catalina upgrade, which resulted in a much valued aspect of the functionality of Apple Mail being removed, has now become the major post-release Catalina issue.
Whenever you update/upgrade an Operating System there will always be people you'll upset, but months later, twenty-five pages of consistently negative feedback, including much talk of people saying the change is intolerable and looking for alternatives, suggests that this a problem that people will not 'get-used to,' 'stop complaining about' or 'give-up on.'
For many people, it seems this aspect of basic functionality is a crucial deal-breaker for using Apple Mail in their professional life. Apple say that their '100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it'. They are release Big Sur next and we can only hope that they are true to there word, accept that the destruction of Mail was a mistake and will use the opportunity to put it right.
Juriaan Bosman - Apple
020 8278 1440
Apple Media Helpline
020 3284 6333
Public Feedback
Submitted to https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html
Over the years Apple has reduced the functionality of Mail.app on macOS.
Of late in Catalina you have removed the ability so reorder and resize columns in View -> Use Column Layout
Previously you ruined the "On <date> <so-and-so> wrote: header by quoting it in the reply. This is totally wrong because the sender did not write that, it was new in the reply.
Plus, the .signature belongs at the bottom, not above the quoted text.
And finally there is your broken concept of "Conversations" which is no substitute for proper threading, which Microsoft Outlook gets right. At least you know to include In-Reply-To: and References: headers so as not to break real mail applications who know how to thread.
catalina mail column view
