20.3. Writing Messages To send an email, click New in the toolbar or press c-N. The New Message form, shown in Figure 20-4, opens. Here's how you go about writing a message: -
In the "To:" field, type the recipient's email address . If somebody is in your Address Book (Section 20.6), type the first couple of letters of the name or email address; Mail automatically completes the address. (If the first guess is wrong, type another letter or two until Mail revises its guess.) POWER USERS' CLINIC
The Mighty Morphing Interface | | You don't have to be content with the factory-installed design of the Mail screen. You can control almost every aspect of its look and layout. For example, you can control the main window's information columns exactly as you would in a Finder list view window ”make a column narrower or wider by dragging the right edge of its column heading, rearrange the columns by dragging their titles, and so on. You can also control which columns appear using the commands in the View Columns menu. Similarly, you can sort your email by clicking these column headings, exactly as in the Finder. Click a second time to reverse the sorting order. The various panes of the main window are also under your control. For example, you can drag the divider bar between the Messages list and the Preview pane up or down to adjust the relative proportions , as shown here. In fact, you can get rid of the Preview pane altogether by double-clicking the divider line, double-clicking just above the vertical scroll bar, or dragging the divider line's handle all the way to the bottom of the screen. Bring it back by dragging the divider line up from the bottom. You can also control the Mailbox column. Drag its thin vertical line (or the fatter ribbed handle at the bottom) inward or outward to make the column wider or narrower, for example; you can even drag it so tightly that you see only the mailboxes' icons. You can make the column disappear or reappear by choosing View Hide Mailboxes (or Show Mailboxes), or by pressing c- Shift-M. And if you're super-tight on screen space, you can make your mailbox icons a quarter of their normal size by choosing View Use Small Mailbox Icons. Finally, you have full control over the toolbar, which works much like the Finder toolbar. You can rearrange or remove icon buttons (by c-dragging them); add interesting new buttons to the toolbar (by choosing View Customize Toolbar); change its display to show just text labels or just icons ”either large or small (by repeatedly c-clicking the white, oval, upper-right toolbar button); or hide the toolbar entirely (by clicking that white button or using the View Hide Toolbar command). And if you're one of those interface purists who can't stand the new all-gray theme for toolbar buttons, download Mail Stamps from www.andrewescobar.com/mailstamps/ to go back to the pre-Tiger toolbar look.  | As in most dialog boxes, you can jump from blank to blank (from the "To:" field to the "Cc:" field, for example) by pressing the Tab key. If you want to send this message to more than one person, separate their addresses with commas: bob@earthlink.net, billg@microsoft.com, steve@apple.com .
Tip: If you send most of your email to addresses within the same organization (like reddeli-cious@apple.com, grannysmith@apple.com , and winesap@apple.com ), Mail can automatically turn all other email addresses red. It's a feature designed to avoid sending confidential messages to outside addresses.To turn this feature on, choose Mail Preferences, click Composing, turn on "Mark addresses not in this domain," and type the "safe" domain (like apple.com ) into the blank.
 | Figure 20-4. A message has two sections: the header, which holds information about the message; and the body, the big empty white area that contains the message itself. In addition, the Mail window has a toolbar, which you can use to access other features for composing and sending messages. The Signature pop-up menu doesn't exist until you create a signature (Section 20.3.1), and the Account pop-up menu lets you pick which email address you'd like to send the message from (if you do, in fact, have more than one email address). | | -
To send a copy to other recipients, enter the address(es) in the "Cc:" field . Cc stands for carbon copy . Getting an email message where your name is in the Cc line implies: "I sent you a copy because I thought you'd want to know about this correspondence, but I'm not expecting you to reply."
Tip: If Mail recognizes the address you type into the "To:" or "Cc:" box (because it's someone in your Address Book, for instance), the name turns into a shaded, round-ended box button. Besides looking cool, these buttons have a small triangle on their right; when you click it, you get a list of useful commands (including Open in Address Book).These buttons are also drag-and-droppable. For example, you can drag one from the "To:" box to the "Cc:" field, or from Address Book to Mail.
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Type the topic of the message in the Subject field . It's courteous to put some thought into the Subject line. (Use "Change in plans for next week," for instance, instead of "Yo.") And leaving it blank only annoys your recipient. On the other hand, don't put the entire message into the Subject line, either. -
Specify an email format . There are two kinds of email: plain text and formatted (which Apple calls Rich Text). Plain text messages are faster to send and open, are universally compatible with the world's email programs, and are greatly preferred by many veteran computer fans. And even though the message itself is plain, you can still attach pictures and other files. Resourceful geeks have even learned how to fake some formatting in plain messages: They use capitals or asterisks instead of bold formatting ( *man* is he a GEEK !), "smileys" like this ” :-) ”instead of pictures, and pseudo-underlines for emphasis ( I _love_ Swiss cheese! ). By contrast, formatted messages sometimes open slowly, and in some email programs the formatting doesn't come through at all. To control which kind of mail you send on a message-by-message basis, choose, from the Format menu, either Make Plain Text or Make Rich Text. To change the factory setting for new outgoing messages, choose Mail Preferences; click the Composing icon; and choose from the Message Format pop-up menu.
Tip: If you plan to send formatted mail, remember that your recipients won't see the fonts you use unless their machines have the same ones installed. Bottom line: For email to Mac and Windows fans alike, stick to universal choices like Arial, Times, and Courier.
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Type your message in the message box . You can use all standard editing techniques, including copy and paste, drag-and-drop, and so on. If you selected the Rich Text style of email, you can use word processor “like formatting (Figure 20-5). As you type, Mail checks your spelling, using a dotted underline to mark question-able words (also shown in Figure 20-5). To check for alternative spellings for a suspect word, Control-click it. From the list of suggestions in the shortcut menu, click the word you really intended, or choose Learn Spelling to add the word to the Mac OS X dictionary.
Tip: Adding a word to the dictionary in Mail also adds it to the dictionaries of all other programs that use the global Mac OS X spelling checker, and vice versa. In other words, you don't have to teach "speciation" to Mail, Safari, and TextEdit ”only to one of them.
(To turn off automatic spell check, choose Edit Spelling Check Spelling Never. Or, if you'd just rather Mail wait until you're done composing your messages before spell checking, choose Edit Spelling Check Spelling When You Click Send.)  | Figure 20-5. If you really want to use formatting, click the Fonts icon on the toolbar to open the Font panel described on Section 5.9, or the Colors icon to open the Color Picker described on Section 5.11. The Format menu (in the menu bar) contains even more controls ”paragraph alignment (left, right, or justify), and even Copy and Paste Style commands that let you transfer formatting from one block of text to another. | | If you're composing a long email message, or if it's one you don't want to send until later, click the Save as Draft button, press c-S, or choose File Save As Draft. You've just saved the message in your Drafts folder. It will still be there the next time you open Mail. To reopen a saved draft later, click the Drafts icon in the Mailboxes column and then double-click the message that you want to work on. -
Click Send (or press Shift-c-D) . If you use a dial-up modem and you're not already online, your modem dials, squeals, connects to the Internet, and sends the message.
Tip: To resend a message you already sent, Option-double-click the message in your Sent mailbox. Mail dutifully opens up a brand-new duplicate, ready for you to edit, readdress if you like, and then send again.(The prescribed Apple route is to highlight the message and then choose Message Send Again, but that's not nearly as much fun.)
If you'd rather have Mail place each message you write in the Outbox folder instead of connecting to the Net when you click Send, choose Mailbox Go Offline. While you're offline, Mail will refrain from trying to connect, which is a great feature when you're working on a laptop at 39,000 feet. (Choose Mailbox Go Online to reverse the procedure.) 20.3.1. Attaching Files to Messages Sending little text messages is fine, but it's not much help when you want to send somebody a photograph, a sound, or a Word document. To attach a file to a message you've written, use one of these methods : -
Drag the icons you want to attach directly off the desktop (or out of a folder) into the New Message window. There your attachments appear with their own hyperlinked icons (Figure 20-5), meaning that your recipient can simply click to open them. UP TO SPEED
Bcc, reply-to , and Priority | | A blind carbon copy is a secret copy. This feature lets you send a copy of a message to somebody secretly , without any of the other recipients knowing that you did so. To view this field when composing a message, choose View Bcc Address Field. You can use the "Bcc:" field to quietly signal a third party that a message has been sent. For example, if you send your co-worker a message that says, "Chris, it bothers me that you've been cheating the customers," you could Bcc your supervisor to clue her in without getting into trouble with Chris. The Bcc box is useful in other ways, too. Many people send email messages (corny jokes, for example) to a long list of recipients. You, the recipient, have to scroll through a very long list of names the sender placed in the "To:" or "Cc:" field. But if the sender used the "Bcc:" field to hold all the recipients' email addresses, you, the recipient, won't see any names but your own at the top of the email. (Spammers have also learned this trick, which is why it usually looks like you're the only recipient of junk messages when there are actually millions of other people who received the same message.) Another hidden field you can add to your messages is Reply-to (choose View reply-to Address Field). That field has one simple purpose: to let the recipient of your message know that she should reply to a different email address than the one you sent the message from. For example, if your business email address isn't working but you absolutely have to send a field report to your boss, you can send the message from your personal email account but put your business address in the Reply-to field. That way, when your boss emails you back to congratulate you, the email will go to your business account. Finally, if you click the three-line pop-up button on the left side of an email message and choose Customize, you can enable one more hidden header option: Priority (it's the pop-up menu with an exclamation mark in it). If you turn on the check box next to that pop-up menu and click OK, all your email messages will let you set how important they are on a three-tiered scale. The good part about this system is that it lets your recipient see that an email you've sent is, for example, urgent. The bad part is that not every email program displays the priority of email ”and even if your recipient's email program does display your message's priority, there's no guarantee that it'll make him respond any faster. |
Tip: Expos (Section 5.3) was born for this moment. Hit the F11 key to make all open windows flee to the edges of the screen, revealing the desktop. Root around until you find the file you want to send. Begin dragging it; without releasing the mouse, press F11 again to bring your message window back into view. Complete your drag into the message window.
Mail makes it look as though you can park the attached file's icon(or the full image of a graphics file) inside the text of the message, mingled with your typing. Don't be fooled, however; on the receiving end, all of the attachments will be clumped together at the end of the message (unless your recipient also uses Mail). -
Drag the icons you want to attach from the desktop onto Mail's Dock icon. Mail dutifully creates a new, outgoing message, with the files already attached. -
Click the Attach icon on the New Message toolbar, choose File Attach File, or press Shift-c-A. The standard Open File sheet now appears, so that you can navigate to and select the files you want to include. (You can choose multiple files simultaneously in this dialog box. Just c-click or Shift-click the individual files you want as though you were selecting them in a Finder window.) POWER USERS' CLINIC
Attachment Tricks | | Nowadays, what's attached to an email message is often more important than the message itself. You might send a PowerPoint file to a coworker or send your aunt a picture of your new dog, for example, without bothering to write anything more than "See attached" in the body of the message. That's why it's such a pain when email attachments don't go through properly ”or when they're too big to send at all. Luckily, Mac OS X now provides three tools for making attachments smaller and more compatible with Windows, so you'll never get another angry "I can't see attached!" reply again. If you're sending images along with your message, you can shrink them down right in Mail. Use the Image Size pop-up menu in the lower-right corner of the window to pick a smaller size for the images (like Medium or Small). You can keep tabs on the total size of your attachments in the lower-left corner of the window, too. Ideally, you should keep the total under 2 MB, so dial-up users don't get annoyed ”and so your message doesn't get rejected by your recipient's ISP for being too big. Use the Finder to compress big files before you send them. As described on Section 2.8, the Finder creates zip-compressed files, which generally take up much less space than the originals . You can pick from two different formats for your attachments: normal or Windows-friendly. Normal attachments open correctly on both Macs and PCs. Trouble is, a normal attachment may show up on a PC accompanied by a useless, second attachment whose name starts with "._". (Your recipients should just ignore it.) Windows-friendly attachments, on the other hand, always work correctly on PCs ”but may not open at all on Macs. Unless you work in an all-Windows company, then, stick with the normal setting. To use the Windows-friendly setting for an open message, choose Edit Attachments Send Windows Friendly Attachments. (If no message is open, the command says " Always Send Windows Friendly Attachments" instead). You can also adjust the setting on a per-email basis using the Send Windows Friendly Attachments checkbox at the bottom of the attachment dialog box. |
Once you've selected them, click Choose File (or press Enter). You return to the New Message window, where the attachments' icons appear, ready to ride along when you send the message. To remove an attachment, drag across its icon to highlight it, and then press the Delete key. (You can also drag an attachment icon clear out of the window into your Dock's Trash, or choose Message Remove Attachments.) If you have a high-speed connection like a cable modem, by the way, have pity on your recipient. A big picture or movie file might take you only seconds to send, but tie up your correspondent's modem for hours. 20.3.2. Signatures Signatures are bits of text that get stamped at the bottom of your outgoing email messages. A signature might contain a name, postal address, a pithy quote, or even a scan of your real signature, as shown in Figure 20-6. You can customize your signatures by choosing Mail Preferences, and then clicking the Signatures icon. In Tiger, this Signatures pane has been redesigned. It's now a lot more powerful but a lot more confusing. Here's what you should know: -
To build up a library of signatures that you can use in any of your accounts: Select All Signatures in the leftmost pane, and then click the + button to add each new signature (Figure 20-6, top). Give each new signature a name in the middle pane, and then customize the signatures' text in the rightmost pane (Figure 20-6, bottom).
Tip: If you ever get tired of a signature, you can delete it forever by selecting All Signatures [your signature's name], clicking the minus sign, and then clicking OK.
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To make a signature available in one of your email accounts: Drag the signature's name from the middle pane onto the name of the account in the leftmost pane. In other words, you can make certain signatures available to only your personal account, so you never accidentally end up appending your secret FBI contact signature to the bottom of a birthday invitation you send out. -
To assign a particular signature to one account : In the left pane, click an ac-count; choose from the Choose Signature pop-up menu. Each time you compose a message from that account, Mail will insert the signature you selected.
Tip: To make things more interesting for your recipients, pick At Random; Mail will select a different signature each time you send a message. Or, if you're not that much of a risk-taker, choose In Sequential Order; Mail will pick the next signature in order for each new message you write.
Remember, too, that can always change your signature on a message-by-message basis, using the Signature pop-up menu in any new email message. -
To use the signature feature as a prefix in replies : Turn on "Place signature above quoted text." If you turn on this setting, your signature will get inserted above any of the text that you're replying to, rather than below. You'd use this setting if your "signature" said something like, "Hi there! You wrote this to me ”".  | Figure 20-6. Top: Your library of signatures. Click the plus sign to add a new signature.
Bottom: After giving your signature a name in the middle pane and typing your signature's text on the right, don't miss the Format menu, which you can use to dress up your signature with colors and other formatting. You can even paste a picture into the signature box. Click OK when you're finished. (You'll be able to use formatted signatures only if you're sending Rich Text messages, of course.) | |
Tip: If you're into consistent typographical styling, also turn on "Always match my default font." That setting makes sure any messages you send contain the signature in the same font as the rest of the message, lending an air of professionalism to your message.
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