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keep Mail messages unread when previewed!
Apple Mail.app (default mail application on leopard) does not have an option to keep messages as unread when viewed in the preview pane. this is unacceptable and available in every other email application found almost anywhere.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Mail.app is designed to be a single-window application and does not have a preview pane. I believe that you may be confusing it with the standard message pane, which is below the list of emails and displays the entire email. Since this pane's purpose is to display the entire email, it is therefore marked as "read" by the application. You can resize the pane by dragging the horizontal divider between the message pane and email list to display as much the email as you'd like.
You can see some screenshots demonstrating Mail.app in action as designed here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/...1 Comment
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apologies if my terminology was imprecise but that doesn't change the fact that most other email clients (outlook, etc) that i have used have a simple preference switch to 'not mark mail as read automatically' or some variant thereof. my description may have been imprecise but the problem remains and you will find that many people continue to complain about this on apple's discussions and many other places for years now. -
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tried that but didn't like it. actually i might check it out since its been a while and could have improved. there's a large extension development community on thunderbird that could be useful too.
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Inappropriate?If you drag the divider down to zero the preview pane the mail is not marked automatically. Of course, you then lose the preview.
And, James, the preview pane is a preview pane. Just because it doesn't work sensibly or you label it a standard message pane doesn't change reality.
It is ironic you force this unfair-to-short-screens behaviour on users considering Apple are one of the pioneers of moving to widescreen screens (and thus entirely unsuited to such a windowing setup.)
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Sorry, Yeovil, I don't work for Apple, so I can't be accused of "forcing" anything on anyone here.
I don't consider it to be a "preview pane" because I use it to read emails, not preview them, and I don't know anyone else who uses it for preview purposes.
However, I do agree with Pendolino that an "automatically mark mail as read" setting would solve everything. -
the problem with hiding the 'reading' pane is that you have no idea at all what's in the message and if you find out that its something you dont want to read now you have to manually mark it as unread. and there isn't a proper 'preview' feature where you can get it to show you the first couple of lines of a message in the list view as with outlook and some other mail clients that would at least be a workable middle ground.
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Inappropriate?No, Leopard Has "Unread" option. Here's your answer from Mail.app Help:
"[Marking messages as read or unread]
After you’ve read a message, you may want to reset its status to “unread” to remind yourself to review it again. Or, if there are some messages that you want to keep but not read, you can mark them as already having been read.
To mark messages:
Select the messages and then choose Message > Mark > As Unread or As Read.
A blue dot next to a message in the message list indicates an unread message. When you read the message, the dot disappears."
I’m just being me.
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Sure, but imagine you have 5 unread messages all ligned up. I want to read the first 3. You select the first, and you delete it. The same for the following two. Upon deleting the third, Mail will automatically select the fourth message and mark it as read and this is not because you selected that message but because Mail will always select the next message to preview upon deletion. I think that is the bug = automatic selection of messages you don't want to read.
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Inappropriate?I strongly agree. I completely expected to find such a setting and was disappointed to not to find it. I will adjust my mail usage habits and lower the "preview" pane so that it will not mark messages as read automatically. I'll double click to view messages. We'll see how it goes. Leaving messages unread is an important part of my mail management productivity system. -
Inappropriate?
Closest solution I've seen is Mail Act-On 2. It has a feature that allows you to adjust the timing of the read status on mail. It will basically delay it up to 10 seconds, kinda like Outlook does. It doesn't however have a "keep as unread" option. Not bad though... Developer said he is going to improve upon this feature. Maybe Snow Leopard will beat him to the chase. Either way, I hope this gets resolved.
I’m waiting
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Inappropriate?I agree with those who don't like this lack of a feature.....not only because of the read/unread status, which is a pain, but because of the way Mail works it's very easy to "open" onscreen an e-mail with information you had rather not reveal to others in the room....off color text or pictures, etc. You can say, well, you shouldn't be receiving those kinds of e-mails, but people send all sort of things through e-mail and MANY times you can't tell about the content from the title!
I just moved to Mac from PC yesterday and I've been trying to find a way to turn off this feature since I got into Mail. I can drag it down to the bottom of the screen, but the next time I open Mail, it's right back up there!
I’m sad
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Inappropriate?There is a Plug-In that allows a 30-second delay while previewing.
it is free an called TruePreview
http://sourceforge.net/projects/truep...
I’m confident
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any idea why the limit is 30 seconds though? looks like its working.
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Inappropriate?
The latest release of Mail Act-On 2 for Snow Leopard is a complete solution for this issue. Though I have to say, TruePreview looks to be a good option for those that don't need the rest of Mail Act-On's features.
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?thanks to ergolad's comment above, we have a solution!
here's the link to truepreview -> http://christianserving.org/project/t...
i just tried it and its quite impressive on first use. most importantly, it works!
i have not tried mail act-on but i dont think i need the functionality at the moment plus truepreview is more versatile with the unread marking specifically.
I’m excited
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I'm gonna have to give TruePreview a spin at some point. Concerned though about conflicts with Mail Act-On, which I still like to use as part of my GTD/Inbox Zero system. For what it's worth, TruePreview was all Pete. I'd never heard of it before.
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Inappropriate?best program is something called TruePreview helps you manage this exact issue! http://christianserving.org/project/t...
