Tiger Mail: how to get Outbox to always show up?

[jiclark]

Subject says it all. In Mail 2.0.1, the Outbox only shows up when something happens that requires an outgoing message to sit in the Outbox for a time. On the next start of Mail, it's gone again. Does anyone know of a way to force it to show up all the time?

TIA,
John-o

[inbox99]

I've been looking for an answer to this question as well.

[jiclark]

Hey inbox,

I guess we're still stuck with the only fix I've found:

After launching Mail, open a new message. Type xxx (anything, but don't put an @ symbol in there) in the To: field and hit Send. You'll get a dialog saying it won't work, but choose Send Anyway. You'll then get another error (usually) saying it couldn't be sent and that it will stay in the Outbox until later. At that point, switch to your now-visible Outbox and either hit Cmd-x or Delete to discard your bogus message. The Outbox will remain visible until you quit Mail (or it "unexpectedly quits" on its own!).

I wish there were some sort of "defaults write..." command we could use to make it show up all the time, but I've yet to stumble onto one. Anyone else have any suggestions???

Later,
John

[chabig]

This question is answered directly in Mail Help. Just type "Where's my Outbox". The answer is that the Outbox only appears when there is something in it. If it's empty, it doesn't appear. Why would you want to see the empty Outbox?

Chris

[jiclark]

Chris,

Thanks for the post, but I understand how Mail now wants to treat the Outbox. Problem is, I don't want it to behave that way because I have iKey macros that allow me to use keyboard shortcuts to open one of my many custom mailboxes, and they don't work if the mailbox column is always shifting it's contents up and down based on whether the Outbox is showing or not! If it's always showing, my macros always behave as I want them to!

Make sense?

I suppose that one thing that Mail could do that would make the Outbox behavior irrelevant would be for it to allow keyboard shortcuts for custom mailboxes...

Got any solutions up your sleeve?

[chabig]

I see your problem, and I may have a solution.

Would you be satisfied if the Outbox never showed up? It seems you can do that by editing the mail plist.

Find this section in com.apple.mail.plist:

<string>~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Outbox.mbox</string>
	<key>OutboxViewerAttributes</key>
	<dict>
		<key>DisplayInThreadedMode</key>
		<string>yes</string>
		<key>SortOrder</key>
		<string>subject</string>
		<key>SortedDescending</key>
		<string>YES</string>
	</dict>

Change "DisplayInThreadedMode" to "no" like this:

<string>~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Outbox.mbox</string>
	<key>OutboxViewerAttributes</key>
	<dict>
		<key>DisplayInThreadedMode</key>
		<string>no</string>
		<key>SortOrder</key>
		<string>subject</string>
		<key>SortedDescending</key>
		<string>YES</string>
	</dict>

Then save the file and relaunch Mail. The Outbox never shows up then and your macros should always work.

Chris

[jiclark]

Chris,

Thanks again for the reply. I, too, took a look around the .plist file, and saw the section you reference. While I suppose that could work for me, I'd really rather have the Outbox always visible, mostly because there are those rare times when a message doesn't get sent for some reason and you'd want to be able to see that it's sitting there in the Outbox.

Though I do appreciate your efforts, very much, I'm gonna keep looking for another solution. In fact, our exchange yesterday got me thinking about my macro strategy, and how it would be better if there were a way to choose the given mailbox via something other than a click-location on the screen… That would really give me ultimate flexibility, while working within the parameters of Mail's default behavior.

Later,
John

[styrafome]

If only Mail would let you open any mailbox via the menus, like Eudora does...

[inbox99]

Thanks for the reply, John. Here is another hack workaround I've found to force the Outbox to showup each session:

1. Mailbox > Go Offline
2. Send a message
3. The Outbox shows up for the remainder of the session, even after going back online and sending the message.

Chris, there are many possible reasons why the Outbox should always be visible. Here are four:

1. There are often times when mail is in the Outbox, but the folder doesn't appear. That's bad. Really bad. How can I get at the message? Where is it living? I need to delete it, damn it! but can't find it.
2. Every other major email program works that way (including previous versions of Apple Mail) - standards in this area are good.
3. For scripting/macro programming as John pointed out.
4. To prevent the 1000s of hours wasted by geeks around the planet trying to figure out how to put the Outbox back where it belongs!!

[jiclark]

Thank you inbox (or maybe you should change your handle to 'missing outbox'!),

I'll give your technique a try, but it's essentially the same as mine with a minor twist. I'm just glad we've found *something* that works, however temporarily...

Later,
John