{"id":34703,"date":"2016-01-15T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=34703"},"modified":"2020-09-08T18:19:51","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T23:19:51","slug":"friday-five-customizing-and-controlling-the-os-x-mail-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/34703-friday-five-customizing-and-controlling-the-os-x-mail-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Five: Customizing and Controlling the OS X Mail App"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mailicon\"It\u2019s the end of the week, but that doesn\u2019t mean an end to learning more about your favorite devices. Each week, the\u00a0Friday Five<\/a>\u00a0takes a quick look at a Mac OS X or iOS\u00a0app or tech subject to point out five things you may have overlooked before.<\/i><\/p>\n

Like it or hate it, most of us who use Macs spend a lot of time in the Mail app. Whether you\u2019re new to the Mac or have used every version of OS X since Cheetah (version 10.0!), there are ways to customize and use the Mail app to make it better fit your style and knowledge. Let\u2019s take a look at five easy and useful customizations and tools in Mail:<\/p>\n

1.) Add text labels to the buttons in the Mail toolbar<\/strong>
\nNewbies to the Mac platform might not be familiar with those buttons in the Mail toolbar. Fortunately, there\u2019s a way to add text labels to them to make it easier to figure out exactly what each button does.<\/p>\n

To turn on the labels, select View > Customize Toolbar from the menu bar. What you can see is that there are not only a ton of different tools you can add to the toolbar simply by dragging and dropping them, but there\u2019s a handy drop-down menu at the bottom of the customization dialog (see screenshot below):<\/p>\n

\"Customizing<\/a><\/p>\n

That drop-down is set by default at \u201cIcon Only\u201d, meaning that Mail displays only the button icon. You can change it with a click to \u201cText Only\u201d \u2014 which does away with all of the buttons and replaces them with text links \u2014 or to \u201cIcon and Text\u201d.<\/p>\n

The latter displays the buttons as well as a text label showing exactly what each button icon means. It\u2019s a handy setting for beginning Mac users that can later be turned off using Customize Toolbar.<\/p>\n

2.) Hide Mailboxes<\/strong>
\nAnother thing that can be confusing to new Mac users is the variety of mailboxes that will appear in Mail\u2019s left sidebar, especially if they have more than one email account. Mail generates a number of mailboxes \u2014 inboxes, flagged, drafts, sent, junk, trash, and archive \u2014 for each email account, and even more can be listed if the user creates his or her own email folders.<\/p>\n

For those who may only have one email account and don\u2019t want to be confused by the plethora of mailboxes, hiding the mailboxes might be a good idea. It\u2019s simple to do: just click on the Mailboxes button to toggle back and forth between seeing (left, below) and hiding (right, below)\u00a0the mailboxes.<\/p>\n

\"Hiding<\/a><\/p>\n

3.) Add or Delete Cc, Bcc, Reply-To or Priority Fields to Mail Address Box<\/strong>
\nBy default, the Mail app is set up with the following fields to use when addressing an email \u2014 To, Cc, Subject, and From. \u201cTo\u201d is easy; that\u2019s where you put the address of the person you\u2019re sending an email to. \u201cCc\u201d stands for \u201ccarbon copy\u201d, meaning that you\u2019re sending another person a copy of your email for their review. \u201cSubject\u201d is, of course, what your email is all about, while \u201cFrom\u201d is one of your email addresses.<\/p>\n

Mail has more fields that you can use when addressing an email to someone. To add them or delete them, simply click on the button that\u2019s next to the \u201cSend\u201d (paper airplane) button in a blank email.\u00a0You can add three different fields to each address box; blind carbon copy (Bcc) Address Field, Reply-To Address Field, and Priority Field (see image below).<\/p>\n

\"Adding<\/a><\/p>\n

Blind carbon copy is when you\u2019d like to send a third party a copy of an email you\u2019re sending, but you don\u2019t want the primary recipient to know that the third party is getting a copy. Reply-To is used when you want replies to your email to go to a different email address from the one the original message was sent from, and the Priority Field is used to set a priority (low, normal or high) for your email.<\/p>\n

The latter field sets an \u201cX-Priority\u201d for each email from 1 (highest priority) to 5 (lowest priority) in the message header. Some email servers can read and react to the priority of a message, passing along the most important emails faster than others. This doesn\u2019t seem to make too much of a difference nowadays, but if you\u2019re one of the few who still uses a slow dialup connection to the Internet, setting a higher priority can insure that important email is sent before run of the mill messages.<\/p>\n

4.) Add invitations and contacts to your Mac Calendar and Contacts apps from Mail<\/strong>
\nWhile this isn\u2019t a customization, it\u2019s a cool thing to know about. The OS X Mail app has some amazing capabilities, among those being the ability to \u201csee\u201d contact information and invitations in incoming mail messages. With a click, it\u2019s possible to add those contacts and invitations to the appropriate apps.<\/p>\n

For example, Mail looked at this message and saw that I was inviting myself to lunch next Wednesday at 12:30 PM. It added a line in the email just under the header that says \u201c1 event found in this email\u2026\u201d along with the date and time. At the far right is a link to add that invitation to my Calendar.<\/p>\n

With a click on the \u201cadd\u201d link, Mail opens a small calendar view showing what other appointments I may have around that time (see image below). I can add an event name and details like location prior to adding it to my calendar with a click.<\/p>\n

\"Invitation3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Likewise, let\u2019s say that I get an email from an existing contact with new street address or other contact info in it. Opening that email, there\u2019s a small note telling me that \u201cNew contact info found in this email\u201d (see image below). With a click on the \u201cadd\u201d link, I can see what new information is available for my contact and add it to her contact card.<\/p>\n

\"Adding<\/a><\/p>\n

5.) Using complex searches in OS X El Capitan Mail<\/strong>
\nThe last of our Friday Five tips is surprisingly useful! Most people I know only search for emails by the name of a sender, but OS X El Capitan makes searching through thousands of emails much easier by allowing complex search criteria.<\/p>\n

An example of this would be \u201cemails received yesterday with attachments\u201d, which not only looks for emails that were received the previous day, but checks to make sure that there\u2019s an attachment in the email.<\/p>\n

As the search is typed into the Search field in Mail, suggestions appear just below that make it possible to filter the search. Selecting one of those suggestions adds it to the search field (see screenshot below). The more filters that are added, the more finely focused the search becomes. Some of the items you can search for include:<\/p>\n