56. Send a Message  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 54 Configure a New Mail Account 55 Find and Read Messages and Attachments
 SEE ALSO 95 Add a Person to Your Address Book
Naturally, email isn't just for receiving messages; you'll also want to send messages of your own. You can send email to anybody whose email address you know, whether they're in your Address Book or not. Note, however, that the more people you add to your Address Book, the easier it is to communicate with the important people in your life. To reply to a message that someone else has sent to you, simply click the Reply or Reply All button while viewing the message; you can then type whatever you want to say in response.  Internet etiquette ("netiquette") dictates that you should always quote the message you're replying tothat is, you should include the other person's text in your message, so that she knows what she said that you're talking about. The Mail application automatically quotes the entire message for you when you click Reply . You can add your own reply at the top of the quoted text, at the bottom of the quoted text, or interspersed between the paragraphs in question. 56. Send a Message 
 NOTE If you don't want Mail to quote the other person's message for you, you can turn off this feature by deselecting the Quote the text of the original message check box in the Composing pane of the Mail Preferences . It's probably best to leave this option enabled, however!
The Mail application's default behavior is that if you have selected a portion of the other person's message when you click Reply , only the selected text is quoted. You can turn this feature off as well in the Composing pane of the Mail Preferences .  | Rather than writing a new message or replying to a message that was sent to you, you have a couple of further options. You can forward a message to another recipientjust click the Forward button, and then specify the new recipient's email address in the composition window that appears. Add some message text of your own, if you like, above or below the quoted body of the message. Then click Send . |
Similarly, you can use the Redirect command (found in the Message menu) to resend the message to a different email address without quoting the body or changing any of the headers; this is useful if you mistakenly receive a piece of misdirected mail and want to pass it on to the proper recipient. Finally, the Bounce command (in the Message menu) sends a simulated error message back to the sender, making it appear that your email address no longer works (useful if you're trying to shake off a secret admirer or get off a mailing list). To compose a new message of your own, without replying to or forwarding an existing message that someone sent you, follow these instructions. TIP Mail comes with a default set of control buttons in its toolbar, but like the Finder, it allows you to choose a different set of controls that you might find more to your liking. Choose View, Customize Toolbar to see a sheet containing all possible toolbar icons, some of which are grouped into conceptual clusters; drag an icon to the toolbar to add it as a permanent control. Drag an icon off the toolbar to remove it. Click Done to save your toolbar configuration.
| 1. | Compose a New Message
Click the New button in the toolbar of the main Mail window to begin a new email message.
| | 2. | Specify the Recipient(s) In the To field of the new email message, enter the name or email address of the person to whom you want to send the message. If the recipient is someone you've emailed before, or if the person is in your Address Book, the Mail application will automatically complete the name or address as you type it; press Tab or Return to accept the first name that matches, or use the arrow keys or the mouse to scroll through the drop-down menu to select from all the names that match. TIP Mail automatically matches a name no matter which part of it you type: the first name, the last name, or the email address. When you finish specifying a recipient's name and address, the address changes to a colored oval showing the person's full name, which you can then drag from one place to anotherfrom the To field to the Cc field, for instance, or to any other application that accepts text. When dragged into another application, the recipient's name and address is copied in the form John Doe < johndoe12341@mac.com > . Specify more than one recipient by typing a new name as soon as the first one is accepted, or by separating the addresses with commas. TIPS If you don't want Mail to hide the email addresses in recipients that you specify, select Show Name and Address (rather than Use Smart Addresses ) in the Addresses submenu of the View menu. Select the Mark addresses not in this domain option in the Composing pane of the Mail Preferences window, and specify your company's Internet domain, to have Mail use a red colored oval instead of a blue one on recipients who are not within that domain. This is intended to help you distinguish between intra-office correspondence and mail that travels outside the company. The To field can accept more than one address, if you want to send the message to multiple people. However, it can often be useful to use the Cc (Carbon Copy) field to specify other recipients, instead of listing them all in the To field. Typically, Cc recipients are included for informational purposes only; if it's a business correspondence, only the recipients in the To line are expected to respond. This, however, is all just netiquette, and nothing really compels people to behave according to these rules. Everybody who receives the message can see all the other recipients in the To and Cc fields. If you want to send a private copy of the message to another recipient, so that the primary recipients don't know you've sent this person a copy, you can use the Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy) field. This field is normally not shown in a Compose window; choose View, Bcc Address Field to create a Bcc field. If you use the Bcc: header or other special headers a lot, choose Customize from the Action menu (labeled with a gear icon) above the message input area to add those header fields permanently to all your future message composition windows . | | 3. | Specify a Subject Type a descriptive subject for the message. Keep the subject brief and informative; when coming up with a subject, imagine what it would be like to receive a message with the subject you specify. Nobody likes receiving messages with empty or cryptic subject linesor subject lines that are as long as the message itself! NOTE If you're replying to a message instead of composing a new one, the text in the Subject field begins with Re: to indicate that this reply is "regarding" the original message. A long string of email exchanges can generally take place with a single subject line, with every message after the very first one starting with the Re: prefix. Most email applications, including Mail, don't add another Re: prefix if there's one there already. The Mail application can view messages in threads , or groupings of related messages. Mail can also group relevant messages into threads even if the subject line is different, based on other identifiers in the headers. To view your messages in threads, choose Organize by Thread from the View menu. When viewing messages in threads, click a collapsed thread to see a list of all the messages in the thread. Click one of the listed messages in the message pane to view that message (and expand the thread). KEY TERM Thread A single string of correspondence, between any number of people, in which all the messages share the same subject line (barring the Re: prefix in all subsequent messages to the first one). | | 4. | Select the Account to Send From If you have configured more than one email account, there will be an Account drop-down menu above the message input area. Use this menu to select which identity you want to send the message as. Always check this menu to make sure that you're using the right address! TIP The Mail application will automatically use the account associated with the mailbox you're currently viewing. To make sure that you always send using the correct identity, it can be a good idea to be in the habit of selecting the In mailbox for the account you want to use before composing a new message. Doing so ensures that you use the right account even if you don't check what's shown in the Account menu. | | 5. | Type Your Message Compose your message. You can use whatever style you likeyou can make your message massively long, or just a few words; you can style your text with bold and italics and special fonts, or you can make it plain text; you can even add pictures by dragging image files into the message window from the Finder. Select Plain Text from the Format menu in the Composing pane of the Mail Preferences window if you want to compose your messages using plain, unstyled text. A Plain Text message cannot be formatted with text styles, but if you have selected the Use fixed-width font for plain text messages check box in the Fonts & Colors tab, the text you type will be laid out using a monospaced font. Using a fixed-width font can be helpful if you want to create a message that contains tabular information, such as a column of numbers . Any picture or other file that you drag into the message window becomes an attachment; the recipient can view the attachment along with the message, or (if he is using a sufficiently capable email application) he can view the picture inline, right where you placed it in the message. As you compose your message, use the Image Size menu at the bottom of the window to adjust how large your included pictures will appear to the recipient, and use the Message Size readout to gauge the overall message's size in bytes, which corresponds to how long it will take the recipient to download it. For example, if you include several photos that make the message add up to more than one megabyte (1024KB, or kilobytes), try setting the Image Size selection to Small , to reduce the message's overall size. NOTE Be aware that many email servers place a limit on the size of messages that they will accept; this limit is often 2 or 4 megabytes. If your message's total sizeincluding the total size of all attachments, which you should multiply by 1.3 to account for encoding overheadexceeds about 2 megabytes, consider sending several messages with smaller attachments instead of one big message, to make sure it will get through. Otherwise the mail server may return the message to you as an error. | | 6. | Add a Signature The Mail application allows you to define signatures , or predetermined bits of text that it can insert at the end of a message with a quick command. You can define as many signatures as you like; when you compose a new message, you can select the signature you want or allow Mail to automatically insert a certain signature into every message (useful if, for instance, you have to include your business contact information at the end of every message you send). Mail can even choose a signature for you at random from the ones you've defined. TIP If you use Mail from more than one Mac, you can synchronize your signatures using .Mac, ensuring that your defined signatures are always available no matter which computer you use. See 100 Synchronize Your Information Using .Mac for more. Define your signatures in the Signatures pane of the Mail Preferences window. First select Signatures in the first column to create a global signature, or select one of your account names to create a signature that applies only to that account. Next click the + button to create a new signature; type a description (which is what will appear in the Signature menu in the Compose window) into the middle column and the signature text into the right column. Repeat to create as many different signatures as you need. The signatures are saved when you close the Preferences window or switch to another pane. Back in the message composition window, select Customize from the Action menu above the message input area; select the check box next to the Signature menu, and then click OK . Now, for this message and any messages you compose in the future, you can select a signature from the Signature menu above the message input area. | | 7. | Send the Message
Double-check your message and proofread it if you want. When you're satisfied with how it looks, click the Send button in the toolbar at the top of the Compose window to deliver it to the mail server, and from there to the recipient.
While you are composing your message, it is saved in the Drafts mailbox. This arrangement allows you to quit the Mail application and come back to it right where you left off. Also, if you are using a server-based email account and have configured your account to keep the Drafts mailbox on the server, you can come back to your half- composed messages and finish them using a different computer.
When you click Send , Mail copies the message to your Out mailbox while it tries to deliver it. If the delivery attempt is successful, the message moves to your Sent mailbox. If delivery fails, however, the message remains in your Out mailbox while Mail keeps trying to send it. Mail will prompt you for a different mail server to try. You can select any properly configured SMTP server from the list Mail gives you, or you can elect to try again later (or edit the message if you made an error in addressing).
| TIP If you want to cancel sending a message, select Try Again Later from the sheet that Mail presents , and then go to the Out mailbox and delete the pending message.
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