Panther mail issue

L

lnoelstorr

Registered
Hi, I like to have my emails sorted so that the most recent is at the bottom of the list.

In previous versions of OSX this worked fine, and when I switched between mail folders the lists of mail would stay in the right place (ie, towards the bottom), however, with Panther, they keep resetting to the top of the lists so I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to read my new emails.

This is begging to really annoy me, and is particually annoying in folders where I have lots of mail.


Is there any way around this problem? (other than sorting my mail in reverse order which I really don't want to do).


Cheers in advance for any help.
 
Clicking on "date received" to highlight it to sort by date does not work? (make sure the arrow is pointing down to have the most recent date on top)
Works for me... It will stay this way if you select "date received", you can do it for every folder.
 
I don't want the most recent at the top. I want the most recent at the bottom. However, when I do this, the focus on the lists does not stay at the bottom when I switch between folders, it just resets to the top, so I have to scroll down to see new emails.

In previous versions it didn't do this, when you switched between mail folders the focus would be where it was last time you were in the folder.
 
lnoelstorr said:
I want the most recent at the bottom.
Click to expand...

By clicking 'date received' twice, to make the small arrow (on the right end of 'date received' bar) point upwards, right? See, I did that, and the focus stayed exactly the way I selected it. Restarted the application, still everything is the way I set it up.
 
Well, it doesn't with me.

When I switch between folders the list will be right at the top again, and I need to scroll down to read my new mail. This is really starting to annoy me. I may have to resort to the illogical ordering of having new emails at the top of the list.
 
Well, I'm just going to bump this back up.

It turned out that 10.3.1 did not fix this problem, and it has still been driving me mad for ages; however, so far it seems 10.3.5 has finally fixed this bug, and my fingers are crossed that this is not another false alarm.
 
lnoelstorr said:
Well, it doesn't with me.

When I switch between folders the list will be right at the top again, and I need to scroll down to read my new mail. This is really starting to annoy me. I may have to resort to the illogical ordering of having new emails at the top of the list.
Click to expand...

Each folder has it's own setting. Keep switching each folder by clicking on 'date received' and they should eventually all be changed over. If they revert back by themselves then try repairing your permissions.
 
People still don't understand the problem I'm having (had) *sigh*

The problem is/was not that they are not being sorted in the correct order.

The problem is/was that when selecting a folder the window would not automatically scroll to the bottom (to show the most recent emails), instead it just stayed at the top (showing the oldest emails).

The mail was sorted as I liked, I just had to scroll down every time to see my new emails.

It seems (fingers crossed) that 10.3.5 has fixed this (at last) and it now scrolls down automatically for me. Yay!!


(maybe the difficulty in explaing this problem is what took Apple so long to fix it)
 
I don't really understand what this 'repair permissions' thing is all about, or what it does, or how permissions get broken, so I've never done it. It just seems to be offered up as a magical solution to everything - which I'm a little suspicious of.

Also, I think I have to boot from the install CD or something, don't I?, which would mean having to find it.
 
Repair permissions works from the Disk First Aid app in your utilities folder. No CD required. What it does is makes sure that your files all have the correct read/write capabilities. If some file that was associated with mail didn't have the correct permissions, it could cause settings (like you want) to not be remembered. It's safe and easy.
 
only, the settings were remembered. Oh never-mind.

Still, I don't understand how these permissions get broken. Or why, if fixing them is so simple and doesn't have any potential side effects, it isn't just done automatically when a file is accessed.

I'd really like to understand more about what these 'repair disk' and 'repair premissions' things did before I actually ran them.
 
That doesn't seem to explain anything I didn't understand. It basically just says the same old "fixing permissions is good" thing that everyone else says, and tells me how to do it.

I've done it anyway though (even though the bug seemed to have been fixed by the 10.3.5 upgrade, and I very much doubt it was to do with permissions), but I still don't really understand the whole thing.

I guess it's coming from a Computer Science background that makes me want to know more about what is going on; other people just seem happy enough to click on the button.
 
You come from a computer science background, but you do not understand
how permissions work?
 
ha ha.

I understand the basics of how permissions work, but I guess I must have missed the advanced permission course - probably through doing some more worthwhile course on programming or something.

I don't really understand how they become 'broken' in OSX though, or how, or why, fixing them is such a magical thing that solves everything. I also don't really understand why, if it is so easy for the OS to tell if they are broken, and if there are no negative side effects of fixing them, that it isn't done automatically as a background task when accessing files.

I was also worried, because I had changed my uid and groupid to match those on my linux box, and because nowhere or no-one can seem to explain the details of what and how 'repair permissions' does, that it may screw some things up.

I also didn't understand how it would fix (the seemingly already fixed in the OS upgrade) bug in mail that I was encountering - but then I guess this was because nobody actually seemed to be able to understand what the problem was that I was experiencing.


Amusingly though, when I did run repair permissions, the only ones that seemed to be broken were those that had the word 'microsoft' somewhere in their path.
 
It is a good idea to periodically repair your disk permissions, since forced restarts, power failures, etc. can cause file corruption - you should also make sure to repair permissions before and after any software install or upgrade, due to the fact that the installer program will sometimes corrupt file permissions.
 
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