View your Mail using the Column Layout

In this video, we’re going to take a closer look at our column layout view we have available to us in the Mail app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Let’s open up my Mail app. Now, when we’re looking at our mail, by default, we have three different columns. I have all of my mail boxes on the left side. Next to that, we have all of our different messages. This is going to show the messages from any mailbox that I have selected in our first column. And then I also have the detail of a specific message. Any message that I have selected in our second column. So we have our three different columns here.

Well, we have another layout – Column Layout. What this will do is this will put all of the details of our specific messages into columns. In other words, I’m going to have a column for when the message was received. A column for the subject. A column for which mailbox it’s in. I can even have a column for if the message was flagged.

To view your messages in this column layout, all you have to do is just go up under View in the menu bar. And then you go to Use Column Layout. When I select this, it changes our view. Now we still have all of our mailboxes over to the left, but now what you’re going to see, when we look at our individual messages here, we have different columns. Here’s a column for who the message was received from. Here’s my column for the subject of the mail message. I have a column for when it was received, when the mail message was received.

I can sort by these columns. So if I want to sort by who my mail message was from, I click on From, and now it sorts them. Let’s go back over to Date Received. I’m going to sort it by date received. I click and it sorts it.

We can edit these columns or change which columns are shown. I want to see a column for flagged messages. Well, all you have to do is just go up to the top here. And when I control-click on it, you’re going to see we have a new menu, and from here I can select what columns I want to see. So I want to see flags. I select it, and now we have a column for flags. So I can easily see which messages here are flagged.

I want to see a column for which mailbox a message is from. I just go back up to the top here I control-click. And then you’re going to see Mailbox. Select, and now we have Mailbox.

I can move these different columns around. I just click on the title here, click and hold, and now I can move them around.

Now, once you select a message, the detail for that message is going to show below here. I do not have a message selected, so let’s go and select a message. I just go up to the top here. We’ll select this message here, and now I can see all the detail for that message.

Now what you may want to do is move this detail, this preview, over to the right. This is what I prefer when I’m using column layout. To do that, you just go up under View in the menu bar, and then you select Show Side Preview. Now what it is going to do is put my preview over to the right here and then all of my columns here to the left.

Now to view all of the columns, I do have to swipe back and forth here. So you may not like this view, but what you can also do is resize these columns here. So I can make this larger. I can make the smaller, let’s go and make the subject smaller. I just go over to the right, my cursor changes, and I drag this over to the left. So now I can see a little more information in there. So, if you have a lot of columns, you may want to have the preview at the bottom. If you’re just using a few columns, what you may want to do is move your preview over to the right. And this is all done under View in the menu bar.

So that’s our column layout in the Mail app on the Mac. With the column layout, what we’re able to do is view all the details of our different messages in columns. This could be our mailbox, who it’s from, if the message was flagged, when the message was received. To view this column layout, you just go up under View in the menu bar, and then select Use Column Layout. From there you can move the different columns around, and if you want to change what columns are shown, you just control click on any one of the column titles and select which columns you want to show. If you do not have a lot of columns, what you may want to do is also put the preview to the right. This is all done under View in the menu bar.

So that’s our column layout in the Mail app on the Mac.