apple mail from column

March 18, 2011 8:40 AM

How can I enable the "From" column in Apple Mail again?

Today I deactivated the "From" column in Apple Mail. When I wanted to activate it again, this was not possible because the function was greyed out. Despite Google I could find not find any solution to this problem. Any suggestions?

posted by jfricke to computers & internet (3 answers total)

If you right click on the top bar, can you activate "sender" (or something related; I have the French version). In my case author is also greyed out but not "sender"(expéditeur). I guess author refers to whoever wrote the email when you have several accounts?
posted by ddaavviidd at 8:45 AM on March 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

As ddaavviidd says, normally, to do this you right click on the bar that lists Subject, To, Date Received, etc. After right-clicking, you'll get a menu of options with check marks next to those that are currently displayed. Choose the ones you would like to add (From, in this case) and it will appear. You can then click and drag these columns to arrange them.

If they're not working, and you feel comfortable in terminal, you can reset them to the defaults by using the command:

defaults delete com.apple.mail TableColumns

Then open Mail and see if From is available again as an option. If that doesn't work, let us know...
posted by jardinier at 9:03 AM on March 18, 2011

I mixed up author and sender. Stupid me and thanks for pointing this out to me.
posted by jfricke at 9:35 AM on March 18, 2011