Apple Mail changed with the introduction of OSX 10.7 Lion, taking on a more “iPad like” appearance.
It works well on iMac and Macbook Pro’s wide screen… but some people hate it. They want things back the way they used to be 🙁
The good news is… it can be done. And pretty easily too
How to Travel Back in Time
- Open Mail
- Click on Mail in the Menu Bar and select Preferences…
- Choose the Viewing tab.
- Check the box Classic Layout.
- In the section below check the box Display unread messages with bold font.
- Close Mail Preferences,
The Preview Pane
Once the classic view is chosen, you may still need to adjust the position of the Preview bar to change the size of the message preview pane.
Simply hover the mouse over the Preview bar until the cursor turns into a line with an arrow facing up, or a line with an arrow facing up and down.
Now, drag the Preview bar up or down to change the preview pane to the size you like.
If you don’t want a message preview, drag the preview pane to the bottom of the screen.
Columns
After you’ve changed Mail back to classic view, you can decide which columns you want to see.
- Click on View in the Menu Bar.
- Select Columns and choose from Attachments, Author, Date Received, Date Sent, Flags, From, Mailbox, Number, Size and To.
Clicking the top of any column sorts mail alpha-numericaly according to the contents of that column in either ascending or descending order. The the name of the sorting column is shown in blue.
You can also drag and drop columns back and forth until they’re in the order you want.
That’s It. You may now proceed forward as you cling to the past 🙂
Have a good week 🙂
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Find more great tips on our Mac setup page.
Oh, thank you for showing how to “go back in time” with Mail! I deal with “change” quite well, and new formats can be detested at first, but then the old is forgotten with time and familiarity. This is good news though. I do wish your time machine would allow me to sit down with iTunes of the past.
Thanks Juliana. Check out this link – When Things Disappear… Check The View Menu It may help with iTunes 🙂
I have followed your instructions above on how to go back to the classic view preview pane. At the moment I can see no preview but the horizontal line with the dot is at the bottom of the window. When I put my cursor over it turns into a horizontal line with an arrow pointing upward but when I pull up it just makes the whole window shorter – it does not show me a preview pane.
One bit of information on my post, above, was wrong. When I put my cursor over the dot along the line at the bottom of the window, i get the horizontal line with the arrow pointing upward however – when i pull it up the window does not become shorter. The cursor moves up put no preview pane is revealed.
I am also unable to get a preview pane when ‘classic view’ is unticked in Preferences.
Hi Jane – In Classic view the preview pane will only show content when an email is selected. When Classic view is unticked, Apple Mail reverts to its current ‘look’ which contains 3 columns – Mailboxes, Mail, Preview Pane. Hope this helps. – John