Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Chapter 19. Mail and Address Book

Email is a fast, cheap, convenient communication medium; these days, anyone who doesn’t have an email address is considered some kind of weirdo. If you do have one, though, you’ll be happy to discover that Mac OS X includes Mail, a program that lets you get and send email messages—without having to wade through a lot of spam (junk mail). Mail is a surprisingly complete, refreshingly attractive program, much improved in Mac OS X 10.3, that’s filled with shortcuts and surprises. And it’s free.

Setting Up Mail

What you see the first time you open Mail (by clicking its icon on the Dock, for example) may vary. If you’ve signed up for a Mac.com account (and typed its name into System Preferences as described in Section 8.2), you’re all ready to go.

If you’re using a regular Internet service provider (ISP) account instead, you’ll confront the dialog box shown in Figure 19-1, where you’re supposed to input the various settings to specify your email account. (Some of this information may require the help of your ISP’s phone representative.) Here’s the rundown:

• Full Name will appear in the “From:” field of the email you send. Type it just way you’d like it to appear.

• Email Address. This is the address you were assigned when you signed up Internet services, such as [e-mail].

• Account Type, Incoming Mail Server, Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP). Enter the information your ISP gave you about its mail servers: the type of server, the name of the incoming mail ...