Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Writing Messages

To send an email, click in the toolbar or press ⌘-N. The New Message form, shown in Figure 11-4, 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 Contacts, type the first couple of letters of the name or email address; Mail automatically completes the address. (If the first guess is wrong, then type another letter or two until Mail revises its guess.)

   Tip

   If 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 To to Cc, for example) by pressing Tab. To send this message to more than one person, separate the addresses with commas: [e-mail], [e-mail], and so on.

   Tip

   If you send most of your email to addresses within the same organization (like [e-mail], [e-mail], and [e-mail]), Mail can automatically turn all other email addresses red. It’s a feature designed to avoid sending confidential messages to outside addresses.

   To turn this feature on, choose Mail→Preferences, click Composing, turn on “Mark addresses not ending with,” and then type the “safe” domain (like apple.com) into the blank.

2. To send a ...