Mail - Classic view in Catalina

I agree. I don't do iPads (the rest of the family does), I do big spanking desktops, but for years now the software that drew to me the Mac ecosystem is getting dumber and dumber.

The changes to how we sort and view our mail make no sense to me. It's a deliberate dumbing down on the options we have.

Classic view is the only way I use mail, never ever liked the replacement viewing mode.

I struggle with having icons for attachments on the far right and not be able to adjust column width. This must a be an error. I just can't believe Apple made this move. I fear the worst, its will stay ;-(

In Catalina mail, on the view menu, uncheck "Show Side Preview" and it will put the preview back on the bottom. Do check "Use Column Layout".

Usually when Apple release a new OS there is a ripple of feedback, which dies-away, once people get used to the changes and things settle down. This time --- with Apple Mail --- things are different. For many, the ability to size and order columns in Mail appears to have been a really crucial aspect of its functionality. For me, it just doesn't look right, I want my dates on the left, that to me seems logical, intuitive and the way I like it.

Like many of us, I simply cannot see what the problem was? This was not a complicated aspect of the programme and its replacement with one column / one size / one order /no option feels like a retrograde step in app development. We know that the guys at Apple read these discussion forums, so its a surprise that there have been a couple of upgrades which have ignore the criticism and the honest feedback from their customers.

We want customisable columns in Apple Mail back. For many it is a deal breaker ! Give feedback directly to Apple, on their facebook / twitter sites as well as directly >

https://www.apple.com/feedback/mail.html

If we want customisable columns back let's keep asking for it!!

Apple doesn't look in the discussion board for feature requests. You need to request it elsewhere - e.g. hhttps://www.apple.com/feedback/.

That's what I'll be doing! Everyone posting here should do so as well, and maybe it will have an impact.

I just called AppleCare and had a long discussion about this. The expert was unable to duplicate the behavior on his Mac, but he agreed with what I was seeing on my Mac.

After trying _many_ times to move the divider back up so that message content is displayed, we concluded that on my Mac it is sometimes reliable but sometimes unreliable, and it's hard to see a pattern in the (mis)behavior. Using the command key doesn't seem to correlate with whether dragging the divider up works or not. Holding the bar for awhile before dragging also doesn't seem to correlate.

We also identified a second bug: After successfully dragging the bar back up so that message content is displayed, often the content pane says that no message is selected, even if a message in the list pane is already selected. Selecting a different message and then going back to the message in question seems to rectify this.

He suggested reinstalling the OS to see whether that makes a difference. Whatever we learn, it is worth reporting on the Apple Product Feedback website https://www.apple.com/feedback/.

It is well known that the Apple developers don't pay attention to these discussion boards! To bring a problem to their attention one _must_ post it as Product Feedback, at the above URL. If you see something, say something.

1. Turn off "Show Side Preview" from the View menu.
2. Drag the horizontal divider separating the preview area that is now below the email listed down to the bottom of the window.
3. Previews will not show anymore.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need any clarifications.

Um . Yeah. So I guess I can live with these changes (not being able to resize or reorder columns WHY?!?!) BUT Since there is no classic view now, there is no way to turn off the incredibly annoying and useless TOP HITS in mail search. Please can this be got rid of ?

no you can't. You can have something that looks like classic view, but it's missing the features that i just listed above. And the TOP hits in the search which is just terrible and can no longer be disabled. That is what classic view does. Catalina does not have these features.

You can sort by message size but it doesn't show you how big each message is. Also why would you want to sort by who the message is sent to 'To' if it didn't actually show you who the message was sent to! Thats not a functionality issue that's a bug.

you can see the message size column under View Show message size. but no way to move the columns. So I've got message size, then date/time. Why can't i move the size right to the end (as i've done in all my mail client for literally the last 25 years), it's taking up valuable space. right in the middle in between Subject and Date .... it's just weird. Has nobody at Apple looked at this and said WTF?

And the bit on information that I do need to see often is 'attachments' the little paper clip. It SHOULD be at the left within the first couplf of columns, i.e. read/unread, importance, paperclip NOT all the way to the right hand side at the end likly to be hidden by the window width. It's bonkers. Mail.app used to be very nice. Now it's infuriatingly weird and backwards.

Thanks did not see the show message size. My other points still apply though. Why sort on who the message is to but not be able to see who the message is to - where would you scroll to to find what you are looking for? Doesn't make any sense.

I initially thought (two months ago when I got my new MacBook) that I might get used to this change in Mail. But I find myself wanting to see those column headers nearly every time I use Mail (not just to trigger a sort). It is basic functionality. Imagine speadsheets without the column header showing. For that matter, ANY table without column headers. A table is basically defective without them.