Senders' Names Now Reversed in Mail Inbox (iOS 14.2)

iOS 14.2 reversed the names of senders in my Inbox of Apple's Mail app

I have the same problem with the new 14.2 on my phone and ipadpro. More frustrating on the iPhone now that I constantly have to rotate phone to see the “From” company’s complete or first name. It has made the titles of emails start withe end of the subject line appear as the first words on the line. Using the SE iPhone makes it more aggravating with a smaller screen. All I see are the last 2 words in a subject that has 4 or more words.

Anyone find a workable solution?

That corrected the problem for email senders for new and existing emails but, not surprisingly, changed the way my contacts appear. I would like a solution that allows email senders to be First, Last and contacts to be displayed Last, First, as names are typically displayed in directories.

The first setting decides whether to sort the database by the first name or last name and that is what is shown in bold.

The second setting changes how Contacts app displays them but the sort field chosen in the first setting will still be bold.

Got it. Thanks. The issue is that without any settings being changed, emails are still coming in reversed order after the update, regardless of the contacts changing. The majority of senders are not in my contact list.

Can you not see the image posted in my last post!

They are in Settings, Contacts in ios14

They only affect new emails received as I said in the early posts .

Play with both and send yourself an email or two

You don't understand the issue. Flipping the "display order" switch to "first, last" also changes the view for contacts, inserting first names ahead of last names, even though they're in order by the bolded last name. There is no separate email display switch. The issue began with the update.

The change of contacts display does impact how my email senders are named. I had the goofy issue with 14.2. Many other threads on this issue, several noting the problem only in inbox and not other folders so clearly a bug not intended. I don’t know why contact display order impacts mail senders, including many not in my contacts (likely the case fir the vast majority of iPhone users), but it clearly does. However, if I change sort order in contacts, as with others, I also have the first, last display in contact as well as mail. So mail senders read normally like they used to but contacts is harder to read because first name is displayed first which, to me, is visually confusing and makes it harder to find what I’m looking for.

I will note that after changing the display order to first, last and seeing the mailbox senders fixed, I tried changing sort order in contacts back to last, first and found that, while contacts reverted to my long-standing and preferred display of last, first, the mail sender display did NOT change back to the weird last, first order that took over with 14.2. This is good. I quit the mail app and relaunched and found it has retained the corrected sort order. I have changed it back and forth several times in preferences and, since changing it back the very first time, changing contact display preference has ceased to effect how mail senders are displayed. No matter what I set display order to, only contacts change (as one would expect), but not mail sender display, which stays “normal”, for lack of a better term.

Don’t know how long it will last (hopefully permanent), but for the moment I have the display order I want in mail and the one I want in contacts and the preference to change sort order is now only changing the display in contacts with mail unchanged since the first change to correct it. Clearly and unequivocally a bug.

I just lowered off and then back on my iPhone 12 pro and was pleased to see that the “fix” that seemed to occur after changing display order from last, first to first, last (mail senders display correctly and do NOT change with contact display preferences, but contacts display preferences do change) remains intact.

At this point, I have changed the display order and back again, which fixed the aberrant mail display issue. I the quit the mail app several time and turned the device off and back on again. The corrected display order in mail remains.

Do your contacts also display "first, last"? I'm attempting to get emails to read "first, last" (e.g.: The Home Depot and not Depot The Home) while keeping the contacts as "last, first". It was that way prior to the update and that is the dilemma that some of us are having. Thanks!

I just saw that it worked until I received new mail. I know it was caused by 14.2 which is frustrating but it also seems that in the Settings, Contacts and under the Accounts group, there is another association with your email account. Under it is the connection for Contacts with email. It’s may be that I may just need to disconnect Contacts from email. I any event, back to the drawing board... Soorry.

Kayo8 Is correct. Kayo would like his email subject line to appear as it used to before the upgrade, without having to change the way his contacts are viewed. As was noted, your “solution” creates another problem. I’m sure the issue will be corrected in the next update

Sorry to everyone fussing with the order of contact NAMES, but the unsolved problem also raised in this three is the Yoda-speech-like reversal of the wording in emails subject lines. That showed up in thus recent update and is disconcerting as there is no specifically targeted control to revert back to normal English sentence structure in the subject lines. Hero status to whomever delivers the cure.

Suggest reading other posts. The issue of display in mail is reason people are posting. Everyone knows how to alter Contact views. The issue is that somehow mail sender name display has become tied to Contact display settings in iOS 14.2 when it has not been tied to this previously. Fixing the mail sender name display causes Contacts to display with first name, then last name. Most on this thread have indicated they don't like that trade off.

You are welcome to paste in links to the other posts . Search function in this forum is useless.

Contacts will always display first name in column 1 and last name in column 2.

The sort order by First or by Last name is affected by the Sort setting. Sort field shown in Bold.

I can’t replicate the Subject re-ordering problem. Maybe a redacted screen shot might help.

That doesn’t help me either. Company emails not showing in my contacts are still jumbled, Shoes Mountford when it should read Mountford Shoes. I can’t find a way to alter this either. This is very disconcerting. Why Apple do you alter things just for the sake of altering? You are starting to mess up your product.