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?
I called Apple Support today and the first tech who shared my screen could not understand why I can no longer adjust the column width and change the Message List font style in Mail Preferences but can only change the font size (the only one that comes with Mail v. 13.0.
So he handed me over to a Senior Advisor who also shared my screen.
He told me other Mac users have complained about the same issue but no solution was found yet.
Then, after the Senior Advisor directed me thru doing a live Quick Time Screen Recording and having me show the problem on my iMac (it's the same width/font issue for Apple Mail v. 13.0 on my MacBook Pro, so he knew it was a Catalina issue) and having a log file created to send to "Apple's Engineering Dept.," I decided to deselect Column View Layout on the Mail toolbar and found that I could successfully change both the font style and font size in Message List to what I liked.
The Senior Advisor then told me that he researched the issue while I was doing that and he read me an internal report that confirmed Mail in Catalina no longer supports Column View Layout or changing the font style in that mode.
Like most of you, I prefer to use Column View and am not pleased with not having the option to continue to use Column View the way I had it set up in every other version of Mac OS I have used previously, which for me goes back eight years.
Finally, the Senior Advisor provided me with this same website others in this forum referenced to give feedback to Apple to let them know I want to be able to use Column View the way I could before.
He told me if he hears of a way to adjust the column widths and change the font in Column View, he will contact me; however, he did say that because it is not technically a malfunction in Apple Mail but rather a change in the program, he doubts he will have a solution and apologized. He told me he agrees that this was not a positive change in Catalina and Apple should offer the option to use Mail the way I (and now I can say, "We" after reading all the posts in this thread) prefer.
So....I will send my feedback thru this link, below, and "hope" it makes a difference.
I am subscribed to this chain in hopes someone has a useful conversation with Apple and reports it here. Sometimes, we actually learn something new on this forum but lately, this chain has turned into a lot of complaining about the same thing. Senior Level Techs all say to use the feedback site and post complaints there, not here! Yes, Mail has been turned into a crappy program but this site is not the place to get action. If everyone here were to use the following site, we might get somewhere. Or, call Apple tech support and give them an earful. Good luck to us all!
I agree that Apple is being arrogant in forcing "improvements" into our lives. Reminds me of the worst of Facebook. But, complaining on this site has not seemed to have provoked any kind of response from Apple. Neither has posting on Apple's feedback site. So, in the interest of doing all we can, how hard can it be to email something like this to media outlets that just might pick up on our outrage?
To: letters@macworld.com
"Are you aware of the thousands of unanswered complaints about the current version of Mac Mail?
Check out Apple’s forum and see for yourself how Apple has changed column view so that it has become extremely difficult to find emails that have been moved to personal directories.
Not a single Apple response has appeared in this forum to address this “improvement” forced on users by Apple’s engineers. Some attention by Apple to the problem it caused would go a long way to diffuse customer anger - an anger that is growing by the day.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250711797?answerId=253142944022&login=true&page=29
Thank you for looking into this!"
I imagine that many of us have Microsoft Office 365? I do and was looking at Outlook. I don't really see a screen that replicates what we liked about Mail. I used Outlook for years and just tried Apple Mail on a whim. I recall that I just wanted to see if I liked it better and I stuck to it. I have about 5 email accounts so no small deal moving to another mail app.
I was able to use RICKRACK's notes to switch to not using column layout so I could change my fonts but still I really don't like this interface:
It's almost like someone used the upgrade to Catalina to eliminate something they personally didn't use. There was really no reason to touch anything on Mail for Catalina - why would you do that with something that works? What would be the logic of changing something that had already been refined?
It just doesn't make any sense except it being a suggestion for simplification of code from someone who had never met or talked to a user. I can hear the conversation in my head, "The users are going to make a lot of noise when they hear about this. Yeah, but they'll get used to it. Just give them some time while the "crazies" vent their complaints and then they'll forget about it."
I notice it's doesn't show up as a new feature or improvement on the guided tour.
How would you convince a product manager to change something that working? It's like a cat peeing on their borders - "I'm going to change this and make it mine."
my message to apple today:
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i have 16 years mail in local folders where i can search for old docs and conversations. it is very usefull in my job.
in catalina mail i can sort the mails "to" but only see "from" - that makes apple mail useless to me.
can you please tell me if apple intends to make it possible to use "classic view" again in the near future, or should i just use some days to export everything to outlook ?
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you might all have done that, but since a change did not show up in 10.15.3 i think its too late to hope for change...
now it's been a week with outlook mail and calendar. not 100% seamless but seems to do what i want it to do. almost.
i am still using osx and a lot of fruit apps - like finder, terminal and disk tools (and boot camp! which is a very good app they still make, but please do not tell anybody near apple that!!!) - but for the daily work tools, nothing left from apple.
mac mail was the last app to leave, and it did it with bravour !
( that is; the above goes for the profesional life. for entertainment i still use itunes where i have all my records stored and organized. - ...wtf?? that is gone too and now turned into "music" ??? they sure know how to fix things that definitely aint broken )
nfmc you are correct, this change to Mac Mail is the same type of product degradation that we have been experiencing fo years. The move from iPhoto to Photos was very confusing. They have fixed many things but it still has bugs when syncing with iCloud. For me it is not as robust as iPhoto.
The first disaster was the move from iMovie 9.0.9 to iMovie 10.0. It remained a mess for a long time, so much so that everybody continued using 9.0.9 until OS X changed so you could not use it. Still I kept 9.0.9 on an older Mac that I had not done the OS X upgrade. It has taken them years to make it semi-usable. It also has bugs like when you try to export a project (they call it "Share") to my hard drive you have trouble getting the focus on the entire project and not just a clip. And changing the name of the project from the "MyProject" default cannot be done as it is in most software by clicking on the name.
Very frustrating that this software is:
I have posted these problems to the developers page to no avail. I have even written to Apple's head of software development and copied the CEO. All I hear are crickets.
I just checked Outlook 365 for Mac and it does have the features (column sizing, column move and attachment icon) that have been omitted in the Catalina version of Mail. I hate to switch but if Apple middle managers don't fix this soon I will make the change. Actually this version of Outlook looks pretty good.
Outlook 365
Mac Mail Catalina version:
My Bookmarks For Quick and Efficient Web-based Solutions:
Google : search, translate, flights, gmail, maps, browser, keep, ads,
Amazon: shopping, warehouse, zappos, abebooks, other
Yahoo: stocks, news
Ebay, Walmart.com, others: shopping
Apple: - ?? ?? - your software is second rate, so there's nothing there. Search is adequate, translate (don't bother), flights (don't bother), mail (moving more toward MS Office 1.0 with non-intuitive, non-GUI based restrictions), maps (horrible, still! ... try to search on a slightly misspelled name or unique name of a restaurant near you and see what pops up, or try to scroll through directions a couple steps ahead of where you are), browser (it's okay, but I use Chrome). That doesn't include Google Photos vs. Apple Pictures. It's not even close. Apple provides confusing directions and forces you to create albums that aren't quite intuitive or easy to share, Google makes it simple, easy, and fast. Oh, Apple you win on privacy.
All this on top of the recent "improvements" to Mail and it makes me hate Apple. I still love their hardware and phones, but just very frustrated. The company that made it easy has made it difficult.
The world is in a much worse state than our issues with Apple/Catalina/Mail and wish all out there to be safe and healthy....
....
Sad, that Apple will NOT admit to or fix this problem. Been a discussion list subscriber for 15+ years and have never seen so many posts (17,000+) about this problem.
I don't use Apple Music very often, but noticed this column sort feature while doing some recent listening. Maybe there's hope for the new App-based Apple software after all? Let's hope it transitions (back) to Mail.
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.
Don't forget, several months ago I had the opportunity to contact a very senior Apple executive via email and he told me this column management change wasn't an oversight, was not a mistake, and was not unplanned. I was stupefied, mystified, and disappointed, but that's what he said.
Does anyone else find it strange that Apple's Mail is now more DOS-like than Microsoft's Outlook? If it wasn't so **** frustrating, I'd find it funny.
GUESS WHAT ... in Apple Music, you can sort and move columns at will (see below). Maybe we need the Music team to run Mail?
After over 25,000 posts on this stupid mistake/omission. Looking forward to someone posting that this HUGE error is finally fixed. "Worst thing about a mistake is when you do not admit it and fix it."
catalina mail column view
