Mac Mail Sorting OSX 10.7

Hi,

Ok, so I have 11 email accounts (work etc). When I'm creating a new message, the "from:" field is a dropdown list of my email accounts I wish to send the email from. Problem is they are in the order of how I setup my accounts initially, frustrating in hindsight, having not known how I create my accounts (what order) would be a convenience issue down the road.

So, does anyone know how to modify the sort order of mail mail accounts?

The only stuff I've found online is for changing the order on IOS devices, not Mac Mail itself.

[C.Puffs]

First of all, quit Mail.app if it's still running.

Open up a Terminal and use the following commands to change your Mail.app preferences file to an XML format – the default format is binary, and you can't edit this.

cd ~/Library/Preferences

plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.mail.plist

Then, open this file com.apple.mail.plist with a text editor of your choice, preferably one that highlights XML syntax, but you can also use TextEdit:

open -a "TextEdit" com.apple.mail.plist

Now, look for the key called MailAccounts. It's value is an array, with dict children. Here, you'll find all your mail accounts in the order they were created in.

You can now manually move these dict children around. Save the XML file and reopen Mail. Now, your Mail account order will be changed.

To prove that this works, here's a screenshot before:


And this is after editing the file:

[NaOH]

There's no reason to risk editing the Mail plist file since there's a built-in method for re-ordering how the accounts appear in the pop-up menu.

1. In Mail, use the Mail menu to select Preferences.
2. In the window that opens, select Accounts along the top.
3. You can drag the accounts listed on the left to re-order how they will appear in the new message pop-up menu (this also effects the order in which your mail accounts check for new email).
4. Close the Preferences window, then quit and re-launch Mail for the change to appear.