Changing the default folder for Apple Mail...

I can confirm that this works for Mail and Address Book on Lion.

On Snow Leopard, and now on Lion, I keep the directories for both Mail and Address Book in an encrypted sparsebundle image, with symbolic links from their standard locations, i.e. from

~/Library/Mail

~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook

Both Mail and Address Book work without any problems. As yet I haven't tried this for iCal on Lion,( but expect it to work).

Be VERY sure you are looking in your Home Directory NOT in the Mac HD Directory.

NB. You can access the Home Directory Library by hitting Go in the Top Menu, selecting Go to Folder and typing Library into the drop down window lastly hitting the Go button. Alternatively use the Key Combo ⇧⌘G.

Regardless of the status of Mail the Mail Folder can be seen in the Home Directory.

Take great care or you may make problems for yourself.

In Lion, a quick way of accessing the hidden Library in the home folder is to open the Go menu and then press the Option key - the item Library will be added to the list. Selecting it will open the Library folder in the home folder.

Accessing 'Library' is a little like 'killing a cat' in that there are many ways to achieve a result.

It should be noted the expression is colloquial, I do not go around "killing' anything.

Those who need frequent access to the Library may consider accessing the Library and having done so drag the Folder to Finder's Side Bar.

In future they are then one click away from direct access to their Library.

Apple seem to be insensitive to the results of their confusing naming, especially when access may be infrequent?

Calling one of the Libraries e.g., LibraryX may be sufficient to indicate to most users that it is somewhere they should not be venturing?

Setting a up a 'second' [in name at least] App Store frankly beggars belief.

It may well be the policy to be working toward a device wide OS with everything ultimately available from iTunes? In the interim it would be useful to differentiate between Mac Applications and iOS Apps without folk having to add their own expression in the interests of clarity.

Sorry to wander off topic but, IMO, this is another example of flawed thinking.

Looks like you are home and dry 🙂

jjphvn wrote:

Does that mean Finder actually opens all these folders on the externa disk, but shows them as if they were in the Home folder?

Yes.

You can verify that easily, a couple of ways.

• With one of the folders open, hold down the Command key and click on the folder's name in its titlebar. A dropmenu will open, listing the path to that folder in reverse hierarchical form. Note - items in that list are clickable.

• Go to the View menu and click "Show Path Bar". This will add a narrow strip to the bottom of any open folder's window. In that new area will be shown the full path to the folder. Note - each item in that display of the path is clickable.

Froggy Grodkin wrote:

IMO, this is another example of flawed thinking.

Yes, one of many. I have compiled a long list of them, for my own reference purposes as a reminder of the bad experiences I had with Lion and which I am NOT having now that I'm back to Snow Leopard.

Another annoying Mail glitch:

In Apple Mail, when I send a message with an attachment, there is no paper clip icon in the "attachments" column in the "sent" folder. So I have no idea whether the attachment was actually sent, or not.

It beats me how this got screwed up, because it works fine in Snow Leopard. What on earth did they do?