A good second step before we undertake to streamline Apple Mail is: what are the known pain points? What are the areas you don’t quite get? When solving any problem, especially ones with a lot of moving parts, it’s helpful to make two lists: one for what you already know you hate and one for what you already know you don’t know. The second list is more important than you might think: the mystery spots out there in the landscape might just be shadows…or they might be quicksand. It pays to put a flag beside them.
My starting list of known pain-points in Apple Mail
- Spam has made my email a living hell
- It can be very slow to move and delete files
- It’s confusing that there is an “Accounts” submenu and a “Preferences/Accounts” submenu
- My existing use of folders is more painful than helpful, more clutter than clarity
- Rules (automated filing and deleting of email, mainly) sometimes don’t seem to work
- Presently I have no easy way to mark an email for urgent attention
- Important emails are always getting lost in the shuffle
- Tedious to set up spam-fighting rules
- Tedious to set up rules, period
- Having some of my mail in iCloud seems to complicate and slow things down considerably
- The app seems to randomly choose which account to use for outgoing mails
- Setting up a new account is always a pain: the instructions provided by ISPs never line up with the screens and field names I see on my own screen
- Sometimes searching works fast, sometimes slow, sometimes not at all
- No progress indicator when emptying the trash
- Deleting email takes too many steps
My starting list of unknowns in Apple Mail
- The difference between POP and IMAP is vague, and good explanatins are hard to find
- The difference between Junk and Trash is not clear
- The difference between deleting and erasing is not clear
- Should I have “Spam”, “Drafts”, “Sent” etc. folders for each account, or one set of these folders shared by all acccounts?
- What are the pros and cons of IMAP? Of POP?
- Is it tricky/dangerous to revert from IMAP to POP?
- What the pros and cons of storing my mail on iCloud Drive?
- What are the gotchas of IMAP?
- What are the gotchas of POP?
- What are the gotchas of storing email on iCloud Drive?
- Should I use smart mailboxes, regular mailboxes, or a combination of both?
- Why is my Mail folder on the hard drive sooooo large?
- Is there a good way to export a lot of email for viewing in a separate app?
- What is the “Archive folder all about?
- If I delete an “account,” is it the same as deleting a mailbox for that account?
- What does it mean to “disable” an account? Does mail get disposed of on the server if I don’t donwload it frequently?
- Does Apple Mail have an option to only store IMAP mail on the server?
- Exactly what does “On My Mac” mean in relation to IMAP? In relation to POP?