Edit Eudora’s Labels
Eudora Tip #130/24-Apr-2002

Labels are incredibly handy for marking messages so they stand out or for grouping messages into categories.

I have to keep count of all emails I send and receive on behalf of one of my web maintenance clients. All messages for that client are filtered into one mailbox for my attention and messages from my contact are marked with one colour. Messages from various members of the public and site visitors are marked with another colour. Unfortunately that address receives large amounts of spam and many viruses so I mark those messages by hand with a different (sickly green) colour so I can easily count them.

At the end of the month I can use the Option key to gather like messages based on label and enter the count in my spreadsheet. (Interestingly out of 154 messages I handled in March 2002 for that client one third were spam or viruses!)

In Tip 31 I mentioned using a filter to set a label colour and in Tip 57 I wrote about how to apply a label to a message. This Tip explains how to change the colour and text for a particular label.

Eudora gives you 15 different labels you can use.

The first seven are controlled by the System and affect your whole computer (if you’ve labeled any folders or files). Go to the Finder and choose Edit – Preferences – Labels. You can easily change the name attached to any label. You can also change the colour by clicking on the colour square itself. This brings up the Mac Colour Picker and you can simply select a new colour.

See MacTips 12 and 13 and their associated movies for more information and help. <http://mactips.info/>

The other eight labels affect only Eudora. Go to Special – Settings – Eudora Labels. Click on a colour square to bring up the Colour Picker, or just change the name if you prefer.

Now you can happily label messages with any of your 15 customised colours or text labels. How about making the Eudora Tips red?