How to sort all mailboxes in Apple Mail?

Don't think there is a faster way...

Even if you mark several boxes/folders and choose "sort by", it still remembers the individual mailbox's settings...

 

Yeppers, you have to go through and open the folder, then sort it by what you want and then Mail should remember those settings, but to my recollections there is no mass-edit method to sorting all your folders in a manner like that. I had to do it to around 20 folders....sounds like you are in more of a pickle than I, best of luck and do it starting with a lot of patience because it won't exactly go fast

 

I have sent in several requests to Apple regarding the lack of this feature. I have 215 folders for work that I have had to individually touch and click the "Date" column to switch the sort order. I am VERY disappointed that they have not made any attempts to make this process less painful.

 

My biggest gripe is the general sorting. I have just moved my email hosting over to gmail, in my inbox on Apple Mail, I click the sort by date so the newest is first (I don't know anyone who works back to front), this is fine for as long as Apple Mail is open, however, when I close it and reopen, its reverted to the back to front sorting...most annoying.

I think gmail may have a good product, but they don't seem to be interested too much on fixing the issues that customers raise.

I am contemplating moving my email hosting again to one that does what I want, oh and doesn't have an All Mail folder - but thats a different thread

 

Solution Found

I found a solution to this problem on the Apple Support Website.

Quit out of Mail. Then go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.plist. Under "InboxViewerAttributes," change the key "SortedDescending" to "Yes," and save changes.

--jm

 

Use Property List Editor in the Apple Xcode tools to edit ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist as described above.

 

Tried But To No Avail...

AS a 2013 update to those looking through this thread...

The file com.apple.mail.plist already has its "SortedDescending" value set to "Yes" in Mail 6.3.

No other solution found yet.