Change unread message color in Mail

I'm trying to mimic a particularly useful feature in Entourage, the show messages using these colors for read and unread messages. In Entourage you can simply set a preference to show unread messages as one color and read messages as another. Mail doesn't have this capability at all. You can set either the text color or the background color, but you cannot change this color depending on the status of the message (read or unread). The only thing I can do is either set the text or background color of all messages using rules, or set the text on unread messages to bold using preferences.

I found an Applescript that sort of does what I want:

tell application "Mail"
set background color of (messages of inbox whose read status is false) to red--unread
set background color of (messages of inbox whose read status is true) to none--default read
end tell

However, this script will not work if you change "background color" to "text color". It also changes the text color of the read messages in the preview pane to black when it runs the second part and I can't figure out a way to make the text a different color. I have a rule set up to set the color of text to a specific account, but the script overrides the rule.

Any suggestions on how this can be done?

Posted on Oct 29, 2010 10:23 AM

Reply
7 replies

Oct 29, 2010 11:48 AM in response to Kappy

Hopefully someone else can be a little more helpful...

I appreciate your responses, Kappy, but you're not really addressing my question. I've already listed an Applescript that almost does exactly what I want and am asking if anyone knows how to make the requested behavior work better than what I have been able to get it to do so far.

If I wanted to use another email program, I wouldn't be asking the question in the first place - I already know (and said so) that Entourage can do this.

Oct 29, 2010 10:56 AM in response to Kappy

I mentioned that preference in my post. That is not what I want. I don't want the difference to be bold or not bold. I want it to be orange for unread and purple for read messages (or whatever colors I choose). It seems like a simple request, but it isn't possible to do using Mail. The Applescript does change background colors of read/unread messages, but not text color.

This capability is one of the few things I really liked about Entourage and I simply want to be able to do the exact same thing in Mail.

Oct 29, 2010 11:16 AM in response to Michael Johnson6

Create a rule that either moves incoming messages to a new folder and changes the color or a rule that changes just the color of an incoming message. Unfortunately, rules only operate on incoming message automatically. Rules can also run AppleScripts, so you could try writing an AppleScript to run against your Inbox.

Alternatively look for a different email application that provides the feature such as the one that is included in MS Office for the Mac, ThunderBird, etc. Perhaps one or more other mail programs provide the feature.

Oct 29, 2010 12:42 PM in response to Kappy

I'm sorry you find my responses to be rude. I simply stated that you are not answering my question. I also said that I appreciate your attempts.

I'm not trying to argue with you, but you come across as if you didn't even take the time to read my original post. Your replies all mention things I already covered in that post, such as the Mail option to display unread messages in bold, or using an Applescript or even trying another program.

I was hoping that someone might be able to either tweak the Applescript I submitted or provide another option I hadn't considered, rather than simply suggest trying things I already said I've tried.

Sorry that this offends you. That was never my intention.

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Change unread message color in Mail

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