OS X Mountain Lion For Dummies

Sending and Receiving E-Mail with Mail

Mail is a program for sending, receiving, and organizing your e-mail. Mail is fast and easy to use, too. Click the Mail icon in the Dock or Launchpad or double-click the Mail icon in the Applications folder to launch Mail. The Mail icon looks like a canceled postage stamp, as shown in the margin.

You can use other applications to read e-mail. Mozilla (Thunderbird) and AOL, for example, have their own mail readers, as does Microsoft Office (Entourage or Outlook). But for Macs, the easiest and best mail reader around (meaning the best one on your hard drive by default) is almost certainly Mail. And of course, you can’t beat the price; it’s free!

The following sections, in some cases, offer you starting points. Even so, you should find everything perfectly straightforward. If you run into a question that the following sections don’t answer, remember that you can always call upon the assistance of Help (Help⇒Mail Help).

Setting up Mail

If this is your first time launching Mail, you need to set up your e-mail account(s) before you can proceed. A set of New Account screens appears automatically. Just fill in the blanks on each screen and click the Continue button until you’re finished.

If you don’t know what to type in one or more of these fields, ...