Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

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:

1. 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 ...