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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay Apps
I've been using Mail.app for almost a year, since I got my first Mac. I've always complained that Mail.app, with my tons of folders (each with at least 6,000 messages) each terribly was slow when opening folders: in fact, I noticed a flickering of the messages for two or three seconds. I could not believe it -- click on a folder, wait for messages to sort, and then, after many seconds, read. I hated that. Eudora didn't do this.

Yesterday, the surprise: by accident, I sorted one huge folder by date from newest to oldest (that is, the opposite direction that Mail.app defaults to), and Mail.app suddenly started opening these folders in a blink of an eye!

[robg adds: I don't have any mail folders with that many messages; I do have a few with 2,000+ messages, and I haven't noticed any delays in opening the folders. I suspect the issue here might be resolved by rebuilding the indexes for the mailboxes in question -- but since this was an anonymous submission without contact info (please help me out by including an email address even if you're contributing anonymously!), I can't discuss it with the author. But if anyone out there is running Mail with similarly large collections of messages, please confirm or rebut this hint...]
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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay | 6 comments | Create New Account
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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay
Authored by: Spiken on Dec 23, '04 10:13:42AM

It works for me, it's much faster in the bigger folders on a iBook 800 MHz with 768 MB random access memory.



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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay
Authored by: cclifton on Dec 23, '04 11:14:44AM

This might be a perception issue. Here's what I observe on a folder with 2000+ messages on my dual-1GHz G4:

If the mailbox is sorted oldest to newest, upon opening the folder Mail.app scrolls to the last page in the message list view. This means that the message list view keeps changing until the full message list is populated. On the other hand, if the mailbox is sorted newest to oldest, upon opening the folder Mail.app stays at the top of the message list view. Thus, there are no display updates while the message list is populated (except for some quick messages in the status bar).

---
Curt



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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay
Authored by: wkoffel on Dec 26, '04 11:39:19AM

I think cclifton nailed it on this one.

When you change to a folder, especially in my case when using an IMAP server, Mail needs to sync your local mail cache with the remote server, and then build indexes of the mail (indexing happens even on non-remote accounts, I assume). The slower the machine, the longer all this will take.

There is a status bar above the message pane showing the progress, at least for downloading messages and caching attachments. During this process, the message list will "shift" around as Mail fills in items. If you sort earliest to latest, the shifting will happen out of view, giving the illusion that everything is snappier.

I make it a habit to click through all my stored folders maybe once a week when I'm just surfing the web to help Mail cache the messages that I've moved into those folders, so when I really need to dive into the folders to find mail, the process is more responsive.



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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay
Authored by: quentinsf on Dec 24, '04 02:54:14PM

An option I'd really like is, when doing a search, to have the results sorted chronologically by default. Usually, when I'm searching in Mail, the ranking is of little use.

Don't think there's a way to do that, though....?



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Change Mail's sort order to remove folder opening delay
Authored by: jporten on Dec 26, '04 06:32:52PM

Clicking on the date title will resort the results of a search.



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I've been using newest to oldest and still have same problem
Authored by: September on Dec 27, '04 05:28:39AM

I've also noticed serious lagging that has bugged the heck out of me for the past 2 months. It started when I joined some groups and started receiving up to 700 messages a day with image or font attachements. I have rules set that sort the mail into 5 folders. But even when the messages are already off the server, when I click on one of those folders it is still slooooooooow. So slow that I now open Mail when I start my computer and leave it open all day! I abhor leaving my mail open all day, it's like keeping the internet open all day, just begging for trouble, Mac or not. I already had my mailboxes set to sort from newest to oldest, because I wanted to immediately see the subject lines on the new messages. That hasn't seemed to help much. It is also having problems updating itself and closing applets while it is opening mailboxes. Many times now I have had to completely Quit mail because it has stalled. I have 10.3, but I didn't notice any changes in the Mail program from the upgrade until I started receiving and keeping the large number of emails and attachments. Man, I hope someone finds a cure for it soon!!! I use a Mac.com account, could this problem be their servers and Mail interaction, and not the mail program itself?



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