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by Joe Kissell
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Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard
Learn the basics and go under the hood with Mail in Snow Leopard!
Are you using Apple Mail in Snow Leopard effectively? In this book, author Joe Kissell provides comprehensive guidance. Perhaps you just want to fully understand the basics of receiving, composing, and sending email. Or maybe you want to master many advanced options—including account set up, integrating multiple accounts, formatting, rules, and MobileMe syncing. Either way, you'll find helpful advice and detailed steps. You'll also find tips on various third-party add-ons that make Mail smarter and more enjoyable to use.
More Mail ebooks! In Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, also by Joe Kissell, you'll find real-world advice for using the Mail app on a mobile device. And, with Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail, Joe takes you beyond the five pages of anti-spam advice in this ebook to help you squelch severe spam problems.
- More Info
- Contents & Intro
- What’s New
- FAQ
- Blog
This book will teach you to:
Comprehend account options: You'll understand the difference between POP and IMAP, plus learn about special aspects of MobileMe, Exchange, and Gmail accounts. In the case of Exchange and especially Gmail, you'll also learn how to integrate them into your overall Mail setup. Joe also covers Mail's integration with MobileMe syncing.
Read: Okay, we expect you know how to read, but you'll learn efficient ways to quickly open, read, process, and file your messages. You'll also get tips on handling incoming attachments, avoiding spam, and using Mail's built-in RSS feed reader.
Write and send: You'll learn different methods for quickly addressing your email, how to take control of the From, To, Cc, and Bcc lines, and how to create multiple signatures. You'll also find out about how to address a single message to a group of recipients, and how to know if you should use digital signatures or encryption, plus what to do if you want to send a message with a digital signature or encryption.
Find your stuff: You'll get advice on how to organize Mail's sidebar and your various mailboxes so you can easily locate messages using a variety of techniques. Joe covers simple features—such as making a new mailbox or rearranging your mailboxes—as well as advanced techniques—such as creating rules and smart mailboxes.
Use Notes and To Dos: Mail has a Notes feature for leaving yourself reminders and a To-Do feature that integrates with iCal. Learn the strengths and limitations of these options and make them work for you.
Unravel Mail mysteries: Understand the sometimes-present Outbox, sort out the Dock unread count, learn why smart addresses can be stupid, avoid "unsafe" addresses, manage the Previous Recipients list, wrangle attachments, find your notes, and determine why certain mailboxes appear in particular categories on Mail's sidebar.
Avoid and fix problems: Get advice on how to back up your email, and find out how to restore it from a backup. The ebook has 11 pages of hard-won troubleshooting advice.
Book Info
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About the Author
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Book Reviews
Author Interviews
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Joe Kissell has written numerous books about the Macintosh, including many popular Take Control ebooks. He's also Senior Editor of TidBITS, contributes frequently to Macworld, and previously spent ten years in the Mac software industry.
Table of Contents
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Read Me FirstMail, Apple's full-featured email application, is the most popular way for Mac OS X users to send and receive email. This book helps you get more out of Mail by explaining its most important features, providing useful tips, and solving problems. This book was written by Joe Kissell, edited by Tonya Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc. |
Introduction
Back in the days of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, I noticed that a lot of people were having trouble with Mail, Apple’s descriptively named email program. I liked Mail, but I also realized that it had some significant bugs and missing features, and was poorly documented. So I wrote Take Control of Email with Apple Mail to try to help people make the most of Mail. (I also wrote a companion volume, Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail, which dealt solely with junk mail; it’s still available separately.) Later, I wrote new editions of the book to cover the versions of Mail included with Tiger and Leopard, which improved in many ways, but still weren’t exactly intuitive.
Now 10.6 Snow Leopard is available, and along with it, the latest and greatest incarnation of Mail, version 4 (or, to be more precise, 4.2 as of Mac OS X 10.6.3). And guess what? Despite significant improvements in performance and usability, it’s still poorly documented. As before, I’ve had to spend far too many hours figuring out how to do things that Apple didn’t bother to explain in the user interface, in the online help, or on the Web. So I’ve written this book in the hope of saving other people all that time and effort.
This book is a no-nonsense guide to help you take control of a powerful email program without getting lost in extraneous information. In order to keep it reasonably compact and concise, I’ve focused on the most important things that I think you need to know about Mail 4.x—I give little attention to many obvious, self-explanatory features and omit certain advanced topics (such as working with non-Roman alphabets). I do, however, occasionally refer you to articles elsewhere on the Web for more details about things I can only touch on here.
Quick Start to Controlling Apple Mail
You can read this book in any order you wish, though I recommend reading the background information listed under "Manage Mail setup" before proceeding with the rest of the book.
If you are familiar with previous editions of this ebook, you may instead wish to start with the What's New in This Edition section, a few pages earlier.
Manage Mail setup:
- Start on the right foot as you Learn What's New in Snow Leopard Mail and Learn about Email Protocols.
- Get Mail up and running in Set Up Your Accounts.
Read email:
- Get mail into your Inbox; then sort it, read it, and work with it. See Read Incoming Messages.
- View RSS posts in Mail. See Read RSS Feeds.
Create email:
- Make sure your messages reach the right destinations by reading Address Addressing.
- Get your message across with style (or even with plain text!). Read Compose and Send Messages.
- Send private information safely. Read Sign and Encrypt Messages.
Get organized:
- Get a grip on the organizational tools Mail provides. See Manage Your Mailboxes.
- Track your tasks. See Keep Track of Notes and To-Do Items.
- Find any message in a jiffy. See Find Your Messages.
- Keep your email consistent across Macs. See Synchronize Mail Data Using MobileMe.
- Let Mail do tedious filing and sorting for you! See Automate Mail with Rules.
Make Mail work better:
- Having problems sending, receiving, or searching email? Find a solution in Fix Mail Problems.
- Make sure you don't lose your valuable email. Learn how to Back Up and Restore Your Email.
What's New in Apple Mail 4
The version of Mail included with Snow Leopard (4.x) looks superficially much like the version that shipped with Leopard, but it has many changes. Among them are:
- Better Exchange support: Mail now uses Microsoft's Exchange Web Services to communicate with Exchange servers, providing a number of benefits. See Exchange.
- Improved Data Detectors: Among other things, Data Detectors can now find and use flight data. See Use Data Detectors.
- Keyboard shortcuts for filing messages: You can now assign keyboard shortcuts to commands on the Message > Move To and Copy To submenus. See File and Organize Messages.
- New text handling features: Mail makes use of the new Substitutions and Transformations features in Snow Leopard. See Snow Leopard's New Text Tricks.
- Reorderable mailboxes: You can now arrange your mailboxes in any order—not just alphabetically. See Arrange Your Mailboxes.
What's New in This Edition
In this edition, I cover new features found in the Snow Leopard version of Mail, Mail 4. You can see a list of those features in Learn What's New in Snow Leopard Mail. In addition to Snow Leopard-specific features, I added quite a bit of new material that the previous edition, Take Control of Apple Mail in Leopard, doesn't have, including:
- Gmail and IMAP: I've dramatically expanded the instructions for using Mail with a Gmail account via IMAP. See Use IMAP with Gmail.
- Dock unread count: I've added a sidebar about modifying the badge on Mail's Dock icon that indicates unread messages. See Changing the Dock Unread Count.
- Navigation: I now discuss techniques for moving between messages more efficiently, especially when using the keyboard. See Navigating between Messages.
- Message highlighting: The section Follow Message Threads now includes information on how Mail highlights messages in the same thread, even when Organize By Thread turned off.
- Filing messages: Remedying a shocking omission from all former versions of this book, I now explicitly discuss the mechanics of filing messages into user-created mailboxes—manually or automatically. See File and Organize Messages.
- Smart addresses: A new Smart Addresses sidebar explains why smart addresses aren't very smart, and what to do about it.
- Safe addresses: I explain how Mail can call attention to potentially misaddressed messages before you send them in Highlighting "Unsafe" Addresses.
- Previous recipients: The section Handle Previous Recipients has more information about the Previous Recipients list and how to make it behave.
- Add-ons: I go into more detail about some of my favorite third-party Mail add-ons. See Take Control of Your Attachments, Follow up on a Message You Sent, Rocketbox, and Running Rules on Command.
- Digital signatures and encryption: I've added an entirely new, and rather lengthy, section about signing and encrypting messages using Mail. See Sign and Encrypt Messages.
- The outbox: I explain this important but seldom-seen mailbox in Mail. See About Out.
Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch?
There are lots of great ways to read PDFs on these devices. For more details, please read our latest Device Advice.
Ask a Question
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Send Us Your Comments!
How could we not publish such kind words? If you'd like to send us your comments (good or bad, though we hope they're all good), just click the Feedback link on the cover of your copy of the ebook. Be sure to let us know if we can publish your comment. Thanks!
Update Plans
May 2010 - We'll likely update this ebook in the future, but right now we have no particular update plans.
—Tonya Engst
What to Do If A New Email Message Is Completely Black
July 1, 2010 --
Apple has posted a Knowledge Base article detailing a problem with generating Mail messages after installing Safari 5 on a system running the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard. When you start an email message in Mail using some other program to get the ball rolling, the new message may have black text on a black background, rendering it unreadable.
Apple may issue a software fix. Meanwhile, two workarounds are available:
- Click in the message's body, and then choose Format > Make Plain Text.
- But, if your message contains any links, try this: Click in the message's body, and then choose Edit > Select All. Choose Edit > Cut. Press the Delete key to clear any remaining characters. Finally, choose Edit > Paste and Match Style.
For full information see Apple's description of the problem and its fix.
—Doug McLean
New MobileMe Mail Adds Server-side Rules, Archiving, and More
June 22, 2010 --
The new version of MobileMe Mail is out of beta, so whether you read your email on the MobileMe Web site or you have a MobileMe-based email account, you'll have a smoother email experience if you review the new options and consider how they may affect the way you handle your email. I explain why the new version of MobileMe is interesting, run through the major new features, and offer helpful tips for using the new version in the TidBITS article MobileMe Mail Adds Server-side Rules, SSL, and More.
—Tonya Engst
Apple Unveils MobileMe Mail Beta
June 11, 2010 --
Apple recently announced the beta of an update to its Web-based mail service, MobileMe Mail. The beta offers widescreen and compact views, single-click archiving, a message-formatting toolbar, increased security via SSL, server-based rules, and overall enhanced performance. The beta is open to all MobileMe users, and you can switch back to the previous version at any time. To sign up, log in to MobileMe Mail and click the link to request an invitation in the lower left of the page.
—Tonya Engst
Mail Tips and Musings from Joe Kissell
May 11, 2010 --
Find out what Joe thinks about changes in the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard version of Apple Mail and with the topic of email generally. In MacVoices #1076, Joe joins host Chuck Joiner to chat about what's new in the world of handling spam, how to use Google Apps to manage multiple email addresses within a single Gmail account, compromises and changes that Apple made to Mail in order to turn it into an app for an iDevice, and more.
Joe also talks about what's new in his Mail-related ebooks that were released in May of 2010—Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard, Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail, and Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
—Tonya Engst
Three Ebooks Offer Mail Help for Mac, iPad, and iPhone
May 10, 2010 --
We're pleased to bring you not one, not two, but three new Take Control ebooks from Joe Kissell, all aimed at helping you use Apple Mail more effectively and solve pesky email-related problems. Two of these titles are updates to stalwarts of the Take Control series, and the third explores the timely topic of using the Mail app on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. They can all be read on their own or in combination for more comprehensive guidance; various 30-percent-off bundles are available on the book pages linked below.
The new ebooks are:
Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch: Brought to you by the dream team of Joe Kissell (author) and Dan Frakes (editor), this new 96-page ebook takes a practical look at using the Mail app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. It explains various email account options, helps you develop a real-world mobile email strategy that integrates with your Mac, explains the mechanics of sending and receiving mobile email, and provides essential troubleshooting advice. Joe started with the iPhone and iPod touch in mind but was delighted to find that he could extend the manuscript to cover iPad details too, thus providing helpful, timely advice regardless of which device(s) you use for email. $10
Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard: Completely updated for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard's Mail 4, this 133-page ebook provides comprehensive guidance on all things related to Apple Mail. You'll learn the nuts and bolts of receiving, composing, and sending email, along with many advanced topics, including real-world Exchange, MobileMe, and Gmail integration; mastering sophisticated organization and filing techniques; and using digital signatures and encryption. Plus you'll get a handle on various Mail mysteries - the sometimes-present Outbox, the Dock unread count, why smart addresses can be stupid, "unsafe" addresses, the Previous Recipients list, attachment tricks, and much more. $15
Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail: If the 5 pages of advice about eliminating spam from your Inbox in Take Control of Apple Mail in Snow Leopard aren't sufficient for the volume of spam you receive on your Macintosh, this ebook brings out the big guns. Now at version 1.5, this 73-page ebook explains how Apple Mail filters out spam, discusses how to optimize the Junk Mail filter, and gives advice for fixing a spam-clogged incoming queue. Joe also reviews third-party options that can identify even more spam. The ebook comes with a coupon for $5 off on SpamSieve, Joe's favorite plug-in for enhancing Mail's anti-spam capabilities. The ebook covers Apple Mail in 10.3 Panther all the way through 10.6 Snow Leopard. $10
If you're curious about how you might read these and other Take Control ebooks on an iPad, check out Tonya's article on the topic (Reading Take Control Ebooks on an iPad (or iPhone or iPod touch)), which also introduces our still-in-beta account management system. These books won't be available in EPUB format for a week or so, but we'll post the files as soon as we get them back from conversion.
—Adam C. Engst
Read Your Email on Multiple Computers
March 24, 2010 --
In MacVoices #1065, Joe Kissell talks with host Chuck Joiner about two core email concepts - the POP and IMAP protocols. In particular, he explains how IMAP makes it possible to work with your email messages from more than one computer in a fluid, sensible manner. He also gives tips for switching from POP to IMAP and for using IMAP in popular email systems, including Gmail and MobileMe accounts, the Mail program on a Macintosh, the Mail app on an iPhone or iPod touch, and he discusses how the Gmail approach to storing, searching, and labeling email messages can sometimes be "hyper-weird." Joe also talks about how spam filtering can work with IMAP accounts.
—Tonya Engst
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