catalina mail column view

When complaining about lack of resizable/moveable columns please complain about the lack of message threading. "Conversations" is a pathetic excuse for real message threading. You could mention, "Even Outlook gets this right."

And then there is putting the .signature ABOVE quoted text. Signature belongs at the bottom, always. New text in reply also belongs AFTER the words that have already been spoken. Or interspersed between. Is a conversation, or simulation thereof. Words that are spoken first appear at the top. English has always been written this way.

Quoting the attribution no matter it was not said by the person being quoted is also wrong. This is text added in the reply, effectively said by my reply not by the person I am replying to.

What Mail.app gets right is the synchronization of Rules between Macs and use of the synchronized Contacts database. But lately hard to think of anything else it gets right. Mail on iOS hangs a couple times per day and has to be brute force killed and restarted to receive messages.

In addition to everything else it is getting wrong is that Rules do not work on iOS. Back to the desktop one has to select all messages in the inbox and "Apply Rules" to put read messages where they belong.

David Kelly1 wrote:

When complaining about lack of resizable/moveable columns please complain about the lack of message threading. "Conversations" is a pathetic excuse for real message threading. You could mention, "Even Outlook gets this right."

I'm not complaining about anything. Why are you telling me this? If you want Apple to know, use the feedback page:

Product Feedback - Apple

David Kelly1 wrote:

You keep posting the feedback link so I added items to provide feedback about.

I'm not posting any feedback for you. If you want it posted, you'll need to do it yourself. Or, reply to the people who want Apple to hear things. They're the ones who might be posting feedback.

You are supposed to trim the reply of unnecessary cruft. By sending text you are asking the recipient to read all of it. You are saying "all of this is necessary for what I have to say." If properly trim then the last thing in the reply will be your words followed by your .signature.

If one is not expected to read below your .signature then there is no point in sending the prior text again.

The .signature should start with one line containing nothing but "--", two hyphens. Real email clients will recognize that as end of text for quoting purposes and delete the signature from reply.

petemcl wrote:

Again I disagree David Kelly!. I like to see the entire previous email. Sometimes people have written me mutiple emails and often the subject is not enough. Besides it is faster. I did not say that you should not read below the signature. It is there for a reference if needed.

Never did I say the subject is enough, I have repeatedly said exactly the opposite in stating Apple Mail's "Conversations" is a very sad excuse for threading. "Conversations" does nothing more than group emails by subject. Even when the emails are a thread Apple's implementation loses the relationship as to which email is a reply to what. Replies from around the world are not written in sequential order.

I often receive emails with 6-10 previous quoted emails from people too lazy to trim who didn't so much as bother to look below the top few lines. People I could help but won't get free assistance from me.

I thought that Apple Mail used to have an option for that, either before or after quoted text. Outlook has an option to turn off signatures on replys.

Mail.app allows one to disable signature. Signatures are totally optional and can be toggled while editing. One can edit the signature which was automatically posted in the email (I have to in order to send a properly formatted email with .signature at bottom.) That is not the issue, the issue is that one never signed a letter at the top before Apple moved the .signature in Mail.app. That this total misunderstanding of how email operates is symptomatic of Apple Knows Best doing other stupid stuff such as deleting movable and resizable columns. Said columns have always been part of the magic of Macintosh and the conquering of dumb terminal text. Even worse that the code for movable and resizable columns is already written and debugged in class libraries used in other places within Mail.app. It wasn't effort to keep it in, it was effort to take it out.

About 10 years ago Outlook enforced top-posting. The quoted text was uneditable, untrimable. Subject to much ridicule later versions allowed trimming and insert-commenting to allow a conversational you-said I-said back and forth dialog which has been internet email tradition from the days when emails were composed in vi. Apple still allows quote editing and trimming, just makes it harder than it should be.

Was the transition difficult ?

I have a rather complex and hefty email folder system on my MacBook Pro - how do I go about transferring all to the Outlook platform ? Is it intuitive ?

Did you have to purchase and ongoing subscription or is it possible to buy the software outright for a one off installation ?

thanks

for transition i used Mail Extractor Pro from USL software (50$ i think)

transferred a more than hefty mailfolder in minuts, more than 10.000 mails in 50 local folders. smooth and easy, nothing missed.

i use outlook in a 365 license i already had. if you want to go cheaper, thunderbird might be the answer (paired with exquilla or owl if you use an exchange account - thunderbird does not understand exchange native)

I would guess the thing to do is copy all folders to an IMAP host such as iCloud. Then when one signs on with a new email client the first thing it will do is make a local cache of the contents of the IMAP server. The good news is that one can continue to use old and new, the folders will sync.

This will not migrate your email rules.

well david. you would guess.

that's fine.

i did it with the USL software and it worked as i described.

before that i used some hours guessing and realized that my hours was much more worth than just buying a working solution.

if you are unemployed or just have too much time and energy, i guess its ok just guessing. it's not the way for me.

try-arc wrote:

well david. you would guess.

that's fine.

I was being polite. Have “migrated” this way many times. Machine to machine. Between applications on same machine. Your rudeness is not welcome.

Am guessing one might use IMAP, I do. Having an Apple-ID one has access to iCloud’s IMAP facilities if no other is available.

Am guessing one might not have folders on an IMAP host. I do. Keeps email in sync on multiple machines automatically.

But if one is already using Microsoft Exchange Server then simply quit Mail.app and login with Outlook. No need to throw money at the problem.

Can we try and stay focused on this discussion thread - This is not for a discussion of alternative Mail programmes or the ease of otherwise of transferring, but a sounding-off space for those of us deeply unhappy with the Catalina update of Apple Mail. The functionality of this programme has reduced to such an extent as to be now very difficult to use helpfully. Two updates have, so far, failed to revert this error.

Apple - reads these discussion boards (as evidenced by their monitoring & deleting posts that they believe breach their moderation rules). So Apple - read this - There are now thousands of us - possibly hundreds of thousands of us - unhappy with the Catalina upgrade of Apple Mail, as evidence here, particularly in the discussion about alternative non-Apple products.

Essentially, the columns (date/person/etc) that were movable allowed much more efficient management of mail and were highly valued as an integral component of the programme. Please bring it back. There is no "obvious" justification for the removal of this aspect of basic functionality.

Please respond before more corporate damage is done - I have used apple products from the 1980s so have invested in you and do not believe I should be treated this way and ignored when i reach-out to you.

I dislike the changes Apple made to Mail as much as anyone, but I was just wading through all the junk in my mailbox and it occurred to me that maybe Apple want's non apple mail gone. When Spectrum bought out TWC in my area, my junk-mail volume went through the roof. I'm certain they are selling my email address to anyone with change in their pocket.

Why do I keep all that junk in the same program that I keep my important business in. Saving Apple mail for those and using Outlook, Thunderbird, or whatever for the daily grind my be advantageous.

Just a thought..

OBTW, Apple, If thats what you are doing please explain it and make Apple Mail useful again.

Quite a few posts in this forum ask why might Apple have made this change. On Nov 8, I wrote:

My guess is that this (very bad) change is related to project Catalyst, with the intention of harmonising code bases and UI experiences between iOS devices and Macs. So if you can't do X (for some X) on an iOS device but can do X on a Mac, the anomaly is "remedied" by removing feature X from the Mac.