Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Writing Messages

To send an email, click New in the toolbar or press ⌘-N. The New Message form, shown in Figure 19-6, 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 (Address Book), 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.)

   Tip

   If you find Mail constantly tries to autofill in the address of someone you don't really communicate with, you can zap that address from its memory by choosing Window→Previous Recipients. Click the undesired address, and then click Remove From List.

   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.

   GEM IN THE ROUGH: 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 ...