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Mail can show the contents of more than one mailbox at a time.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
Little secrets of OS X: Uncovering the hidden features of Apple Mail


Sept. 22, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   The e-mail software Apple builds into OS X is full of little surprises. This week, as part of my occasional series of columns on personalizing your OS X Macintosh, I'll tell you how to bring out a few of the hidden features of the application with the simple name, "Mail."
   A quick explanation first. If you're not running the current version of OS X, called Panther (OS X 10.3.5 as if the time I'm writing this), some of the features I'm telling you about might not work.
   Let's start with a feature you might know about already. Mail is able to show your messages, in any mailbox, grouped together by common subjects. This is called "threaded" sorting.
   You can turn threaded sorting on and off in the "View" menu. You'll also see two other options, "Expand All Threads" and "Collapse All Threads."
   But did you know that you can color threaded messages so they stand out better? Open the Mail Preferences and click "Viewing." You'll see a color selector under "Message threading." Choose a light yellow or pale blue if you're not sure which color to use; darker hues usually don't work well.
   Another feature I enjoy is the way Mail can show the contents of more than one mailbox at a time in the main part of the window. Most OS X users seem to be unaware of this little trick.
   To add the contents of another mailbox to the main window, simply hold down Cmd and click on the other mailbox in the left-hand pane. (If you don't have a list of mailboxes at the left, click "Show Mailboxes" in the "View" menu.)
   You can do this for all the mailboxes. If you have nested mailboxes like I do, you'll notice that Cmd-clicking the top-level mailbox won't add the contents of nested folders; you have to Cmd-click each one.
   What do you gain by opening many mailboxes at once? You can sort that mail by subject or sender all at once to organize it better. Or you can search all of it easily; that's what I like to do.
   (A quick side note: You can create your own folders in the mailbox list by Ctrl-clicking on a blank area of the mailbox pane and following the menu prompts. Apple adds a neat touch: Click on any mailbox folder to open it, then Ctrl-Click on that mailbox to create a new mailbox folder nested inside it. You can do that many levels deep. I tried 13 levels successfully.)
   Finally, Mail gives you a simple way of opening replies to messages. Any time you see a curly arrow next to a message, Mail is telling you it stored a reply you sent. To open the reply, double click on that curly arrow.