Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Snow Leopard Edition

Chapter 6. Transferring Email & Contacts

If you use your PC for email—hey, it could happen—there’s good news: Switching to a Mac doesn’t mean you have to lose your stash of messages, reconfigure your email accounts from scratch, or manually retype everything in your address book. This chapter covers the secrets of moving your entire email life over to the Mac—messages, addresses, settings, everything—with as little hassle as possible.

As you read this chapter, it’s important to keep straight the two leading Windows email programs, which many people don’t realize are actually two entirely different beasts:

• Microsoft Outlook. This program is part of Microsoft Office for Windows. It’s a sprawling, network-based email, contact, and calendar program that’s ubiquitous in corporate offices and many schools. You, or somebody who employs you, paid good money for this software.

• Outlook Express. This Windows program is a free, scaled-down version of Outlook. It came with Microsoft Windows versions up through Windows Me, and is therefore sitting on practically every PC sold until 2007. It doesn’t have a calendar, a To Do list, or other bells and whistles of Outlook—but it’s free.

  In Windows Vista, Microsoft renamed this program, calling it Windows Mail. In Windows 7, it’s still called Windows Mail, but it doesn’t come with Windows; you have to download it from a special Microsoft Web site (don’t ask).

  In any case, most people moving to the Mac these days are doing so to avoid migrating to Vista ...