Since I installed Yosemite, Mail flags are no more flags but letters, like R for red, O for orange.. How can I get my colored flags back..? :-/

Still happening. Almost a year later. Amazing. OS 10.10.5 and Mail 8.2

Just started happening to me . . . reverts to normal by quitting and restarting Mail, but a few minutes later it is back to "Red" again

Just happened to me but instead of "R" I get the word "Red" in lieu of the flag. As others have noted, I restarted Mail and now I get the red flag AND the word "Red" next to it.

Only advantage of that is now I can search for red flags. When I type in "Red" in the search window, it displays the flag and the word red. Not sure I will ever need that, but could be the reason for now including the word.

It happened to me this week: flags were replaced by words. Following a restart of Mail, I now also have flags AND the text next to it, or an ellipsis (…) if the column is too narrow to show all the text. The nice thing is that you can make the column even narrower, so that only the flag is showing. That could be the solution when both flags and words are there, just hide the word away from sight.

I am wondering whether the words have been there all along next to the flags, and that they only came in sight when the flags disappeared. Only showing the words could be an alternative to flags for colour-blind people, but what is shown (flag, word or both) should be an option in Preferences.

Just started happening to me in about the past week or so… I'd love the simple letters like R, O… But I get the whole words, so on my screen I get… I forget now as I quit Mail and reopened it so I've got my lovely flags back for a bit, but it's truncated with an ellipse otherwise… And I only had the words, no flag anywhere in there no matter how wide you make the column.

What's so weird is the seemingly randomness it starts with people. Some were having the issue last year. Mine… I think I did the update recently actually, so it could have started with that. But it certainly hasn't been for very long.

Dec 31, 2016.... STILL happening, but has recently gotten much worse.

I've got this problem all the way up to macOS Sierra 10.12.3. So annoying. Apple ?