20.2. Checking Your Mail You get new mail and send mail you've already written using the Get Mail command. You can trigger it in any of several ways: -
Click Get Mail on the toolbar. -
Choose Mailbox Get All New Mail (or press Shift-c-N).
Note: If you have multiple email accounts, you can also use the Mailbox Get New Mail submenu to pick just one account to check for new mail.
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Control-click (or right-click) Mail's Dock icon, and choose Get New Mail from the shortcut menu. (You can use this method from any program, as long as Mail is already open .) -
Wait. Mail comes set to check your email automatically every few minutes. To adjust its timing or turn this feature off completely, choose Mail Preferences, click General, and choose a time interval from the "Check for new mail" pop-up menu. Now Mail contacts the mail servers listed in the Accounts pane of Mail's preferences, retrieving new messages and downloading any files attached to those messages. It also sends any outgoing messages that couldn't be sent when you wrote them.
Tip: The Activity window gives you a Stop button, progress bars, and other useful information. Summon it by choosing Window Activity Viewer, or by pressing c-0.Also, if you're having trouble connecting to some (or all) of your email accounts, choose Window Connection Doctor. There, you can see detailed information about which of your accounts aren't responding. If your computer's Internet connection is at fault, you can click Assist Me to try to get back online.
20.2.1. The Mailboxes Column If you've used an older version of Mail, the first thing that you'll notice in Tiger is that the Mailbox drawer ”that panel that slid out from the side of your Mail window ”is gone. Instead, you get a light-blue column on the left side (Figure 20-3) that serves the same purpose: to list all your email accounts' folders (and subfolders, and sub- subfolders ) for easy access. Mail, in other words, has now been iTunes-ized (or iPhoto-ized, or Sidebar-ized). In the Mailboxes column, sometimes hidden by flippy triangles , you may find these folders: -
Inbox holds mail you've received. If you have more than one email account, you can expand their triangles to see separate folders for your individual ac-counts. You'll see this pattern repeated with the Sent, Junk, and other mailboxes, too ”separate accounts have separate headings under the main one.
Tip: If Mail has something to tell you about your Inbox (like, for instance, that Mail can't connect to it), a tiny warning triangle appears on the right side of the Mailboxes column. Click it to see what Mail is griping about.If you see a lightning-bolt icon, that's Mail's way of announcing that you're offline. Click the icon to try to connect to the Internet.
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Outbox holds mail you've written but haven't yet sent (because you were on an airplane when you wrote it, for example). If you have no mail waiting to be sent, the Outbox itself disappears. -
Drafts holds messages you've started but haven't yet finished, and don't want to send just yet. -
Sent , unsurprisingly, holds copies of messages you've sent. -
Junk appears automatically when you use Mail's spam filter, as described later in this chapter. -
Trash works a lot like the Trash on your desktop, in that messages you put there don't actually disappear. They remain in the Trash folder until you permanently delete them or move them somewhere else ”or until Mail's automatic trash-cleaning service deletes them for you (Section 20.4.11.1). -
Anything else is a folder that's stored on your Mac for your mail-filing convenience. You can set these folders up yourself, as explained on Section 20.4.10.2.  | Figure 20-3. The many panes of Mail. Click an icon in the Mailboxes column to see its contents in the Messages list. When you click the name of a message in the Messages list (or press the up and down arrow keys to highlight successive message names in that list), you see the message itself, along with any attachments, in the Preview pane. | |
To see what's in one of these folders, click it once. The list of its messages appears in the top half of the right side of the window (the Messages list). When you click a message name, the message itself appears in the bottom half of the main window (the Preview pane). |
