You can apply a similar rule to important senders. That makes those messages stand out in the inbox. You will notice that Apple has cheekily set up a default rule that highlights messages sent from various Apple addresses by changing the background colour of the message to blue. Open Mail, click Mail in the menu bar at the top of the screen, then Preferences and select the Rules tab. It’s possible you’d still miss a message from a very important person. The VIP list is great, but it doesn’t exactly scream out loud. It’s worth noting that anyone you make a VIP on Mac will be afforded the same status in Mail on your iPhone/iPad.

To assign someone as a VIP, open a message from them, right-click on their name at the top of the message window and select Add to VIPs, as shown below: If you click on that VIPs label, the messages are broken down by sender, allowing you to quickly access unread and past messages from those people individually. This means you can see how many unread messages you have waiting from these important folk. A little gold star appears against their name in the Mailboxes view, and if you look down the list of Favourites on the left-hand side, you’ll see VIPs listed separately. Messages from VIPs are more clearly flagged in your Apple Mail inbox.

Apple lets you put up to 100 senders in this category, although if you’re assigning that status to more than a handful of people, you’re rather missing the point. The first thing you can do is assign certain senders as VIPs. Make important senders a VIPs in Apple Mail If you’re using Apple Mail on a Mac, there are a couple of neat tricks you can deploy to make sure those vital messages don’t go unnoticed. If there are certain emails that you really can’t afford to miss – messages from the boss, an important client or your partner, for example – you’ll be keen to make sure they don’t get buried in the avalanche of emails that arrive in your inbox.

Out of office message on mac mail