Mail - change subject line of received email

@baron875: Yes, it can be insanity! I tried changing to "Long Headers" to see more info, but I can't find the option anywhere. (My version is 6.2.) I did try the method you cited before about editing the subject line, and it seemed to work this time. Was I doing something wrong before?...who the **** knows. Insane.

Here's another insanity: Why do they make it so difficult to deal with attachments?? Again, coming from Outlook, it was easy! If I wanted to put an image in the body of the text OR just make it an attachment...I could do that! In Mail, it's all screwy. As hard as I try, I have no idea what it will look like on the receiving end.

@baron875: I just tried it again and it worked for me as it did for you, so I am going with best 2 out of 3 wins. I think this method is ok as a workaround but is sure is a pain in the butt they don't deploy some imagination after all these years of suffering with this deficiency in Mail.

@ericfromwi: In Lion they changed the terminology slightly. Try this - select the email message, then click:

View | Message | All Headers if you want to go back to the default it is View | Message | Default Headers

I did try the same message twice and perhaps that's why I might have seen the time stamp change after the second change. I can't remember exactly what I did but your method seems to work as a bandaid. Thanks for sharing it.

@iBlick: As long we're all geeking out here... here's a good laugh. I did what you said about finding a message's "Default Headers." Thanks, because the info is indeed in there. But check this out... here is the info that shows on one of my emails when "Default Headers" is revealed. Totally ridiculous (the info I was actually looking for is bold):

Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 6.2 \(1499\))

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

X-Apple-Encoding-Hint: 513

X-Universally-Unique-Identifier: 62e52c95-8938-4562-aad9-98da557dfc0b

X-Apple-Base-Url: x-msg://522/

X-Apple-Mail-Remote-Attachments: YES

Resent-Message-Id: <BLU174-W225E5E7F2A6722B4FE88AAD4300@phx.gbl>

X-Apple-Windows-Friendly: 1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Resent-Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:11:52 -0600

Message-Id: <77263601-1B8C-4BCD-8668-17AE09B5EACA@wi.rr.com>

X-Uniform-Type-Identifier: com.apple.mail-draft

I know some of my rabid Mac friends who make fun of Windows messages, saying that they say are, "useless" and/or "meaningless." Ha! Really??

You can select what gets displayed in the "Default headers" mode by going to "preferences>viewing>show header detail>custom". From there you can add or delete items in the Default header to make it look exactly like you want it to.

I use "Attachment Tamer 3.1.8" to address similar issues. It might be able to do what you want.

<http://lokiware.info/Attachment-Tamer>

and

<http://lokiware.info/Attachment-Tamer/help/Pages/overview.html>

Fully functional free trial and only $15 if you decide it does what you need it to.

iBlick's methind of dragging the email message to your Drafts folder, editing the subject line, then dragging the message back to the InBox sort of works. However it is imperfect because the time stamp is changed to now, and the sender becomes ME. So, not all that useful, really, since I would want to preserve the envelope info, such as who sent the message.

For simple things like this, I still miss ClarisEmailer!

Dave Nathanson

Mac Medix

This site tells you how to edit the subject of a message. I just tested using OS X 10.8.5 and it worked, without altering the time & date stamp, or the original sender info.

http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips/qt/et_edit_receive.htm

Steps copied below:

• Drag and drop the desired message out of Mac OS X Mail onto the Desktop.
• Ctrl-click on the message copy on the Desktop.
• Select Open With | TextEdit from the menu.
• Make the desired changes to the message source.

  To change a message's subject, look for "Subject:" at the beginning of a line starting from the top. (hint, you can use 'Command-F' to bring up a search window to help you find the "Subject").

• Close TextEdit saving the document.
• Ctrl-click on the message on the Desktop again.
• Select Open With | Mail from the menu this time.
• Now select Message | Copy To followed by the message's original folder from the menu in Mac OS X Mail.
• Close the message window.
• Delete the message copy from your Desktop.
• Optionally, delete the original message in Mac OS X Mail. (when I tested this, the original message was no longer there. Not sure what happened to it, but the changes worked without editing the time, date, or original sender information.)

Dave,

Use "Redirect' instead of dragging.

Highlight the message and hit "Redirect". Edit the subject line and close the message saving as a draft. Open the "Draft" folder and move the message into the original mailbox. Open the original mailbox and the new edited message appears. You can then delete the original message because nothing has changed in the redirected message except for the edited subject line. It keeps the sender's name and the date you first received the message.

Hi Baron875,

I tried the redirect method too, and it works too. However:

- the 'new' corrected message has field when you expand the Details that shows it was re-sent by you. This also shows up in the 'normal' header when you forward or reply to the message.

- the message body gets reformated with an extra level of indentation.

If the above doesn't matter, the redirect method is a relatively quick and easy way to fix the subject. The Text Edit method is a bit more involved, but does not have the above problems.

For some reason mine doesn't indent. I'm using 10.6.8 and 4.6. I've only changed the subject line. Was anything changed in the message body?

Never forwarded or replied with a message whose subject I've changed. Thanks for investigating this method deeper. On which line did it appear in "normal" headers?

Nothing changes in the message body, except the entire message is indented slightly. It's really only noticeable when you compare it to the original message.

The headers look as below (email addresses removed), with the extra field 'Resent From' having my email...

Resent-From:

From: Apple Support Communities Updates <discussions-updates@apple.com>

Subject: test

Date: 21 September, 2013 12:35:27 PM PDT

To: rjpod

Reply-To: discussions-replies <discussions-replies@apple.com>

Thanks for researching that for me. Also, message 14 and 20 on this forum has additional info from me about headers and "re-sent".

iBlick-

Thanks for this tip.

I don't really care about the timestamp as long as the email becomes more searchable- which this certainly does.

Thanks again.

Thanks, that works well. Pity it's not quicker, and yes, I wish it can be done as simply as going to the menu and hitting Message / Edit content (or something).

And to answer your pseudo-question of what happens to the original — it ends up in Trash automagically, which is where it should be.