Use Internet E-Mail

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Mac OS X includes a powerful e-mail application named Mail that allows you to send and receive e-mail.

Establish an E-Mail Account

To send and receive e-mail, you must establish an e-mail account with an Internet service provider (ISP) and configure that account in Mail. To set up your e-mail account, you need to know the following information, which your ISP will provide:

  • Your e-mail address (for example, csmith6446@example.com)

  • Your account name with the e-mail provider (for example, csmith)

  • Your password

  • The incoming mail server’s name (for example, pop3.example.com) and its type (POP3, IMAP, or HTTP)

  • The outgoing mail server’s name (for example, smtp.example.com)

With an Internet connection established and with this information, you can set up an account in Mail:

  1. Click the Mail icon on the Dock. The first time you start Mail it will display several messages, and then it will display the Welcome To Mail dialog box (see Figure 4-8)—unless you have already set up an e-mail account, as you may have when installing Mac OS X.

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    Figure 4-8: Enter the details of your e-mail account in the Welcome To Mail dialog box.

    Note

    If your Dock doesn’t include a Mail icon, click the desktop, choose Go | Applications to open a Finder window showing your Applications folder, and then double-click the Mail icon. Alternatively, drag the Mail icon to the Dock to add it, and then click the icon you just added.

  2. Enter the account details in the text boxes and click OK. Mail will quickly check the information to see if it can access the account. If all is well, Mail will display this Import Mailboxes dialog box:

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  3. If you need to import mailboxes from another e-mail application, click Yes and follow through the resulting series of Import windows. Otherwise, click No. Mail will open, displaying the Inbox (see Figure 4-9).

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    Figure 4-9: Mail is a straightforward but powerful e-mail application.

Create and Send E-Mail

To create and send an e-mail message:

  1. Open or activate Mail and click New on the toolbar. The New Message window will open (see Figure 4-10).

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    Figure 4-10: Sending e-mail messages is a fast and easy way to communicate

  2. Start to type a name in the To text box. If Mail recognizes the name as one you’ve previously sent a message to, or as an entry in your address book (see the “Using Address Book” QuickSteps, later in this chapter), it suggests the match or matches.

    • To select the single match offered (after typing, for example, “chr” as shown on the left here), press return. Mail creates a button for the address (as shown on the right here).

    • To select one of multiple matches, either continue typing to narrow down the list or click the correct match in the list. Mail creates a button for the address.

      click to expand

    • If Mail has no suggestions, finish typing the address.

  3. To send the message to more than one addressee, type a comma after the first address, and then type the second address. If Mail has created an address button for the first addressee, you needn’t type the comma.

  4. If you want to differentiate the addressees to whom the message is principally being sent from those for whom it is being copied for information, press tab (or click in the Cc text box) and enter the other addressees’ addresses there.

  5. Press tab (or click in the Subject text box) and type the subject of the message.

  6. Press tab again (or click in the large text box) and type your message.

  7. When you have completed your message, click Send in the upper-left corner. Mail will contact your outgoing mail server and send the message, complete with sound effects.

  8. If you’re ready to close Mail, choose Mail | Quit Mail.

Caution

E-mail often appears to be an informal means of communication, an impression enhanced by the speed with which you can dash off a message and send it in moments to one or more people. But it’s worth remembering that e-mail, like other written forms of communication, can easily be kept and stored by the recipient, and can come back to haunt the sender many years later. Worse, unlike other written forms of communications, an e-mail can also be forwarded instantly to people you never intended should read it. So before you send a “quick” e-mail message, read it through again to check that you won’t regret sending it.

Receive E-Mail

Depending on how Mail is configured, it may automatically receive any e-mail destined for you when your Mac is connected to your ISP. If not, or if you need to dial to connect to your ISP, click Get Mail on the toolbar. In either case, the mail you receive will go into your Inbox. To open and read your mail:

Note

When Mail is running, its Dock icon displays a red circle showing the number of messages you’ve received but haven’t read. (If you’ve read all the messages you’ve received, the red circle doesn’t appear.)

  1. Open Mail. Mail displays the Inbox.

  2. Click a message in the Inbox to read it in the Preview pane at the bottom of the window, or double-click a message to open the message in its own window (see Figure 4-11).

    click to expand
    Figure 4-11: To see as much as possible of a message you’ve received, open it in its own window rather than reading it in the Inbox’s Preview pane.

  3. Choose what action (if any) to take with the message:

    • Respond to it as described in the next section.

    • Print it by clicking Print in a message window or by choosing File | Print in the Inbox.

    • Drag it to a mail folder.

    • Delete it by clicking Delete in either a message window or the Inbox.

  4. If you’re ready to close Mail, choose Mail | Quit Mail.

Tip

To make Mail check for new messages when Mail is running but not displayed, control+click or right-click the Mail icon on the Dock and choose Get New Mail. From this shortcut menu, you can also start a new message or access any of the Mail windows that are open.

Respond to E-Mail

You can respond to messages you receive in three ways. First, click the message in your Inbox (or open it in its own window), and then:

  • Click Reply to return a message to only the person who sent the original message.

    –Or–

  • Click Reply All to return a message to all the people who were addressees (both To and Cc) in the original message.

    –Or–

  • Click Forward to send on a message to people not shown as addressees on the original message.

When you take any of these actions, Mail opens a window very similar to the New Message window and allows you to add or change addressees and the subject, and add a message. Click Send to send the message.

Tip

Normally, Mail sorts the contents of your Inbox by date, with the oldest message at the top and the most recent message at the bottom. You can sort your messages by any of the columns by clicking the column heading. The first time you click, Mail sorts in ascending order (A to Z, 1 to 9, older to more recent dates). Click again to change the sort to descending order if you prefer to have the more recent dates first. Mail displays an upward-pointing triangle in the sort column to indicate ascending order and a downward-pointing triangle to indicate descending order.

Apply Formatting to an E-Mail Message

The simplest e-mail messages are sent in plain text without any formatting. These messages take the least bandwidth and are the quickest and easiest to receive. If you wish, you can send messages with formatting using HTML, the Internet’s Hypertext Markup Language with which many web sites have been created. You can do this for an individual message or for all messages.

Tip

If you see an address in an e-mail message that you want to add to your address book, control+click or right-click the address and click Add To Address Book. Mail causes Address Book to create a new entry for that address. Switch to Address Book, select the new entry, and click Edit to enter further information you have for that person.

Choose Whether to Apply Formatting to All Messages

  1. Choose Mail | Preferences. The Preferences window will open.

  2. Click Composing to display the Composing sheet.

  3. In the Format drop-down list box, choose Rich Text if you want to apply formatting. Choose Plain Text to send plain text messages.

  4. Click the Close button (the red button) to close the window.

Caution

Not all e-mail applications can properly receive formatted e-mail messages, resulting in messages that are not very readable. However, most e-mail applications released in the last five years can handle formatted e-mail properly.

Choose Whether to Apply Formatting to an Individual Message

You can override your default setting (specified in the previous section) for applying formatting:

  1. From the main Mail window, click the New button on the toolbar to open a new message window.

  2. Open Format and click Make Plain Text or Make Rich Text as appropriate.

  3. Address, compose, and send the message as usual.

Attach Files to E-Mail Messages

You can attach and send files, such as documents or images, with e-mail messages:

  1. In Mail, click the New button on the toolbar. A New Message window will be displayed.

  2. Click Attach on the toolbar. In the resulting dialog box, navigate to and select the file you want to send.

  3. If you’re sending the file to someone using a Windows computer, select the Send Windows Friendly Attachments check box.

  4. Click Choose File. Mail will close the dialog box and add details of the file to the message.

  5. Address, type, and send the message as you normally would.

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Quicksteps: Using Address Book

Mac OS X’s Address Book, shown in Figure 4-12, enables you to collect addresses and other information about your contacts.

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Figure 4-12: Address Book provides a place to store information about the people you correspond with.

Open Address Book

To open Address Book, click the Address Book icon on the Dock.

Add a New Address

To add a new address to Address Book:

  1. Open File and click New Card. Address Book will add a card with the provisional name, No Name, will open the card for editing in the right column, and will select the First field.

  2. Enter as much of the information as you have or want. Use tab or the mouse to move from field to field. For e-mail, you need a name and an e-mail address. You can have multiple e-mail addresses for each contact. To add another e-mail address, click the green + button next to the existing addresses, and choose the type of address in the pop-up menu to the left of the e-mail address box.

  3. When you’ve finished entering address information, click Edit.

Add a Group of Addresses

To add a group of addresses that you want to be able to send a single message to:

  1. Open File and click New Group. Address Book will add an entry to the Group column and will display an edit box around the default name, Group Name.

  2. Type the name for the group and press return. Address Book will apply the name and will leave the new group selected.

  3. Click the All group entry or another group’s entries that contains contacts you want to add to the new group. Drag an entry from the Name column and drop it on the new group to add that contact to the group.

    After you have created a group like this, you can address a new message to the group by starting to type the group’s name in the To box in the New Message window. When you complete the name, or accept Mail’s suggestion for completing it automatically, Mail inserts the names of the group members in the To box.

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Receive Files Attached to E-Mail Messages

When someone sends you a message with a file attached, Mail displays information about the attachment in the Preview pane and in the message window:

Click Save All, use the resulting dialog box to choose the folder in which to save the file, and click Save.



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Mac OS X Panther QuickSteps
Mac OS X Panther QuickSteps
ISBN: 0072255056
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 68

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