Mac 101: Mail

Setting Up Email Accounts

It's easy to add email accounts to Mail, which walks you through the process step-by-step.

1. Open Mail from the Dock or in the Applications folder.
2. From the Mail menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click the Accounts button to display the pane.
4. To create a new account, click the plus sign (+) button in the bottom-left corner of the window.
5. In the resulting dialog, enter your full name, email address, and password in the corresponding fields. Click Continue.

   Tip: If you have a .Mac account, Mail checks your account, then displays an account summary; click Continue, then click Done to finish. If you have a different type of account, keep reading.

6. Choose the type of account you have (POP, IMAP, or Exchange) from the Account Type pop-up menu. If you're not sure about what type of account you have, consult your Internet Service Provider.
7. Enter a name for your account (such as "My Office Account" or "Home Account") in the Description field.
8. Type your ISP or email provider's incoming mail server address in the Incoming Mail Server field (it may look something like "mail.domain_name.com").
9. Type your account name in the User Name field (the name that appears before the at sign (@) in your email address).
10. Type your password in the Password field, then click Continue.
11. Follow the directions from your ISP to select the proper authentication preferences. Click Continue.
12. Type the outgoing server address for your account in the Outgoing Mail Server field (it may look something like "smtp.domain_name.com").
13. Mail checks to verify your information, then displays an account summary. If Mail generates an error message stating it could not contact your mail server(s) you should verify your information is correct before proceeding. Click Continue and then click Done to finish.

Viewing Your Mail

Mail displays your Inbox, Drafts, and Sent mail in a column on the left side of the window; the Message Viewer pane is on its right. To view mail in your Inbox, select Inbox to display a list of all your messages. If you have more than one email account set up, you can also click the Inbox disclosure triangle to display each account and select one to view only its messages.

To read a message, either double-click an entry to view the message in its own window, or drag the small dot at the bottom center of the window upwards to reveal a message pane and select a message to view it in the pane.

Junk Mail

If you're getting a lot of junk mail, also called "spam," use the Junk Mail features in Mail. Junk mail filtering is on by default, but you can change how Mail deals with your unwanted email after it goes through a little training period.

Once Mail has been trained, you can make it send all junk mail to its own Junk mailbox automatically.

1. When you first start using Mail, the junk mail feature goes through a training period. Messages that Mail thinks is junk appear in brown text in your Inbox. If Mail marks something as "junk" that isn't, click the Not Junk button to help train Mail.
2. If a message isn't marked as "junk" but should be, click the Junk button to help train Mail.
3. If you'd like to make some changes to the junk mail filter, choose Preferences from the Mail menu.
4. Click the Junk Mail button to display its settings.
5. To make certain types of messages exempt from junk mail filtering, select the item checkboxes below the line, "The following types of messages are exempt from junk mail filtering."
6. After a couple of weeks of training, evaluate how well Mail is flagging your junk mail. If it's fairly accurate, select the "Move it to the Junk mailbox (Automatic)" radio button in the Junk Mail pane of Mail preferences. This creates a Junk mailbox in the left column. Mail will now automatically move junk mail to this mailbox. Make it a point to check your Junk mailbox periodically to make sure that you aren't missing anything important. You can click "Not Junk" on the messages that are mistakenly considered spam to avoid the situation in the future.
7. If you want to turn off junk mail filtering, deselect the "Enable junk mail filtering" checkbox.

Sending Email

You can simply type messages and send an email, or attach a file,
like photos, by dragging it to the message window.

1. To send someone an email, click the New button to open a New Message Window.
2. Type your recipient's email address in the To field. If you have this person in your Address Book or if you've sent or received email from this person before, Mail will autocomplete the address as you type it. To address the message to more than one person, separate the email addresses with a comma.
3. If you want to send a copy of your message to others, type their email addresses in the CC field.
4. Type a subject for your message in the Subject field.
5. Type your message in the text box.
6. If you'd like to send an attachment with your message, like a photo or other files, click the Attach button, navigate to and select the file in the resulting dialog, and click Choose File. You can also drag the file to the message window's text box.
7. Click Send to send your message.

Use Stationary to jazz up your messages.

Mail features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings, stationery templates feature coordinated layouts, fonts, colors, and drag-and-drop photo placement from your iPhoto library — everything to help you get your point across. You can even create personalized templates. Messages created with stationery in Mail use standard HTML that can be read by popular webmail services and email programs on both Mac computers and PCs.

Searching Mail

Need to find a certain email message or a string of them? You can search for specific text in any message in any mailbox using the Search field in Mail, which is powered by Spotlight technology, to find what you need fast.

1. Type the text that you want to search for, like "Grandma" or "New York itinerary", in the Search field in the upper-right corner of the Mail window.
2. Mail displays a list of its search results. Click the All Mailboxes button to display results from all mailboxes, or click Inbox to display results from your Inbox only.

Creating Smart Mailboxes

For better organization, you can create a Smart Mailbox that automatically updates its contents whenever you use Mail. You can use it to, say, keep all messages about a specific project in its own folder, or separate your love letters from your other messages.

Create a Smart Mailbox to better track and organize your messages.

1. From the Mailbox menu, choose New Smart Mailbox.
2. Type a name for your mailbox in the Smart Mailbox Name field.
3. Use the pop-up menus and fields to set criteria that match the content of your desired messages. For example, to assign the mailbox to a certain person, choose From from the first pop-up menu, choose Is equal to from the second pop-up menu, and type his or her email address in the field. To add more criteria lines, click the plus sign (+) button.
4. When finished, click OK to create the Smart Mailbox. Mail will automatically update this mailbox whenever it detects a message that matches your set criteria.

Taking Notes and To-do Lists

Ever email yourself a reminder that gets lost in your inbox? Mail lets you write handy notes you can access from anywhere.Mail Notes Brainstorm ideas, jot down meeting notes, scribble a phone number — notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that group them for you. Since your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC using an IMAP mail service like .Mac or AOL.

Forget manually adding a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. Mail Tasks Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message. Include a due date, set an alarm, or assign priorities. Every to-do includes a link to the original email or note, and to-dos automatically appear in iCal, complete with any changes you make. And since to-dos are stored with your email (when using an IMAP mail service), you can access them from Mail on any Mac.