Using Mac OS X Mail.app

When you first launch Mail, you will be prompted for your account information.

1. First there is a Welcome to Mail screen. Click Continue.
   
   
2. Next:
   • Account Type: While it says .Mac to start with, for your ACCC email account, you have the choice of IMAP or POP. Most people will want to use IMAP, since you will be able to view your mail with any client. With IMAP, you can also filter your mail on the server into folders and these folders will exist with any mail client (pine, Webmail, Mail, Eudora, etc.) If you chose to use POP, you will only be able to read your email on the one machine that you're using POP on. The main advantage of POP is that it is simple, and you will not run out of storage space on the server; every time you check your email, the mail is saved on your computer and deleted from the server. However, Mail will let you save old mail and large attachments locally, on your Mac, so IMAP is the recommended choice. You may of course choose use POP if you prefer, though.
   • Account Description: If you are defining more than one email account to use Mail.app with, and it is very good at taking care of several accounts at the same time, enter a descriptive name for this account in the Account Description box.
   • Full Name: is the name that you want to appear on outgoing email.
   • Email address: is your netid@uic.edu.
     
   
   
   
3. This leads us to the next item, Incoming Mail Server.
   • Incoming Mail Server: This is the server that you receive email on; mailserv, tigger, or icarus. Enter the full name of the server in Incoming Mail Server. In the you use more than one email account, you can set up Mail to check the rest of your accounts later. Remember to add use the full name: mailserv.uic.edu, tigger.cc.uic.edu, and icarus.cc.uic.edu. (Mailserv has to be mailser.uic.edu or the SSL secure transfer won't work.)
   • User Name: and Password: are your UIC netid and ACCC common password.
     
   Mail.app will check your connection.
   
   
   
4. Outgoing Mail Server:
   • If you are at UIC: Type "smtpserv.cc.uic.edu" into the outgoing mail server field.
   • If you are not at UIC or not using the VPN software (if you're not at UIC),or if you travel between home and campus, type mail.uic.edu for Outgoing Mail Server, click Use Authentication and enter your netid and ACCC password for Username: and Password:.
     
   Mail.app will check your connection again.
   
   
   
5. If Mail informs you of a failure when it's checking your incoming or outgoing mail server, make sure that you typed in the correct server names (for the incoming server, you may not have a mailserv account; try tigger or icarus). Also double-check your netid and password.
   
   
6. If everything is OK, though, then you'll be asked to import mail from other mail programs.
   
   
   
7. If you were using POP before and mail was saved by, say, Eudora, then you can import this mail into Mail. If you were using IMAP, then most of your mail should be saved on the server and Mail will make this available to you. We will cover the import process in another section.
   
   
8. After you have finished the import process (or clicked No ) click Done. Mail will show its main window. Unfortunately, if you are using IMAP, there is a bit of additional configuration required to view your mail correctly.
   
   
9. We need to go to Mail.app's preferences to do this. Click Mail in the menu bar and select Preferences...
   
   
10. When the Preferences window opens, click the Accounts button at the top. After that, click Advanced. You should see a screen that looks like the one below.
    
    
    
11. Only one option needs to be modified: IMAP Path Prefix It needs to be: mail/
    as per the picture above.
12. Close the Preferences window and you will be back in the Mail.app main window.

To see mail in your Inbox, click In in the mailbox drawer. To read a message, just click once on its subject. It will appear below the list of messages in a "preview pane" on the bottom right. If you'd like to see the message in its own window, just double click the subject. A view of Ada Byron's inbox and a sample message is shown below:

This picture exposes most of Mail's features. The number of new messages in a folder are shown beside the folder name. You can see that Ada has 2 new message in her Inbox, and 123 new messages in her spam folder. Since we're looking at Ada's Inbox right now, you can see that the new messages are marked with blue dots. The dock icon will also display the number of new messages.

Right now Ada's reading a message; it is hi lighted in the Inbox view and shown in the preview pane.

As a side note, you can open and close the Mailbox drawer to the left of the Inbox index and the preview pane by choosing Hide/Show Mailboxes from the View menu.

If you had already configured Mail and want to add another account (or change the current one), the procedure is simple. Open Preferences from the Mail menu, click Accounts, and then click the + below the list of accounts. You can then select the account type (probably IMAP), and add the details like you did before. (See the figure in step 10 above.)

The Mac OS X Address Book allows you to do lots of things. You can add multiple email addresses, phone numbers, IM screen names, etc. The + (plus) button will add another email address or phone number, the - (minus) button will delete it.

The Address Book is in your dock by default; it's icon is a brown book with an @ on it. Click on the icon to open your Address Book.

To add a new contact, click the small + (plus) button under the list of contacts. This will create a blank card (the template that it follows is customizable in Preferences). When you're done editing the card, just click Edit, and your changes will be saved automatically.

You can also categorize your contacts by adding them to groups. Groups are an easy way to, for example, create a mailing list. To create a group, click the plus under the list of groups, and then type the name you want for your group and hit Enter. To add contacts to your group, just drag the contact's name to the group and drop it into the group:

To send a message to a group you created, you can either find the group in Address Book and Control-click on the name:

Once you have entered your contacts, they are available inside Mail. To access them, simple create a new mail message (File -> New), and start typing the Contact name or Group name in the To: field. Mail will automatically complete the name based on the Address Book and previously received messages.

One of the main advantages of using Mail is that it integrates with other applications. You can highlight text in any program, go to the Application menu, select Services, and then pick Send. Mail will load and copy the selected text into a new message. (Similarly, you can highlight an email address and select Send To in the Mail menu; this will create a blank message addressed to the address you selected.)

Apple's iLife programs integrate with Mail, as well. In iPhoto, just select some photos and click Mail. The photos will appear in a blank email inside Mail.

iChat also integrates with Mail. If you receive an email message from someone in your Address Book, Mail will show their iChat status. If they are online, you can reply to them through iChat instead of emailing them. iChat and Mail also both use pictures from the Address Book, so you can add a photo of your contact and it will appear whenever they email or IM you.

Importing Mail from an "mbox" File (like the ones generated by the ACCC EMail Quota Utility)

When you download the file, save it somewhere convenient, say your Desktop.

Then, in Mail.app, select Import Mailboxes... from the File menu (or click Yes when asked during initial setup). This will bring up a dialog asking you what email program you would like to import messages from. Select the Other option.

Next, click Continue. Select the folder that holds the mailbox you want to import. Mail will find the mailbox(es) in the folder and list them.

Click Continue. Mail will import the mailbox(es) and tell you that the imported mailboxes will be in a folder named "Import" in your mailboxes list; click Done.

The Import folder is on your Mac and it can be be manipulated like any other folder.

Importing Mail from Eudora

If you've been using Eudora, it is likely that you have accumulated old email that you would like to have access to inside of Mail. To do this, select Import Mailboxes... from the File menu (or click Yes when asked during initial setup). This will bring up a dialog asking you what email program you would like to import messages from. Click Eudora and click Continue.

On the Import dialog box, select the folder with the Eudora mailboxes you want to import; Eudora mailboxes are usually in: /Documents/Eudora Folder/Mail Folder/

The rest is the same as for mboxes.

I can't give you screen shots because it wouldn't work for me. I hope you have more luck if you try to do it.

The UIC online phonebook is available through an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server. The Mac Address Book works well with LDAP servers and once you set up your Address Book to do LDAP, it will be freely available to Mail.app.

Instructions are on this Web page: Using the UIC LDAP White Pages with Macs

After you have LDAP set up with Address Book, open Mail.app and open a new message. Type a name -- either a last or a first name will do, but unless the first name is very usual, you might not find your person -- in an address line and the names and email addresses of people at UIC whose names match what you have typed will be listed. Click on a person's name to select him or her from the list. It couldn't be easier.