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Who uses the Mac Mail App?

A

Atomic-Ed

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 6, 2007
165
0
I was setting up the mail program yesterday that comes with OSX and overall it looks decent but I am coming from Outlook 2003 so I am used to a ton of features even though I never used all of them myself. Some of the things in the mail program that I can't seem to find or figure out are

How to create reguler folders on the left pane to save mail into?
Where is the send / receive status dialog box?
How can you quickly add people to the address book?

So I am wondering how many use this as their email client or if there is something more robust or closer to Outlook out there? I saw MS has something called entorouge but it doesn't appear to be sold without office 2004 suite which I am not particularly interested in buying just to get their email client.
 
Atomic-Ed said:
How to create reguler folders on the left pane to save mail into?
Where is the send / receive status dialog box?
How can you quickly add people to the address book?
Click to expand...

For the folders, click the little plus in the lower left corner of the main Mail window.

For adding people to the address book: For an individual e-mail that you've received...right-click (or control-click) on the sender's email address that's in the From, Reply or CC field and select "Add to Address Book". If you have a bunch of addresses to import from Outlook or a collection of vCards...open the Address Book app and import them there.

What's the function of the send/receive dialog box? I've never used Outlook. Tell me what it does and maybe I can find the equal in Mail.
 
TheAnswer said:
For the folders, click the little plus in the lower left corner.

For adding people to the address book: For an individual e-mail that you've received...right-click (or control-click) on the sender's email address that's in the From, Reply or CC field and select "Add to Address Book". If you have a bunch of addresses to import from Outlook or a collection of vCards...open the Address Book app and import them there.

What's the function of the send/receive dialog box? I've never used Outlook. Tell me what it does and maybe I can find the equal in Mail.
Click to expand...


1) How did you import your Outlook email over to Mac? I was thinking about getting Outlook2Mail which some say is good.


2) Also, the send/recv lets you know what is happening (ie a popup that tells you "checking for mail", or "getting message #4 out of 7 messages", etc.)

3) Outlook is annoying in that it shows you html in the preview pane- but this increases spam. Does Mac mail do anything differently, or is Mac just as prone to spam as XP?
 
Atomic-Ed said:
...
Where is the send / receive status dialog box?
..
Click to expand...
In the sidebar on the left, with all your other mailboxes, trash, etc. the "Sent" object will change to say "Sending..." with a spinning thing (like the one you see when your computer starts up) that you can click on to see all the messages Mail has sent.

Once the message has been sent, it will change back to read "Sent" and your message will show up in the folder! :)
 
2- When Mail is downloading you mails it has a "downloading" sign at the right of the Inbox folder.

3- Mail has its own Junk Filter, and it is a pretty good one. I never receive junk at my Inbox.


PS. One feature you might like about Mail is the option for Smart Folders, just like the smart Playlists in iTunes. They are very helpful sometimes.
 
zub3qin said:
1) How did you import your Outlook email over to Mac? I was thinking about getting Outlook2Mail which some say is good.
Click to expand...

I never used Outlook (well, actually I think I did when I was on OS 9...but it's been so long I can't remember how I imported everything over).

zub3qin said:
2) Also, the send/recv lets you know what is happening (ie a popup that tells you "checking for mail", or "getting message #4 out of 7 messages", etc.)
Click to expand...

In Mail...I guess the Activity monitor (Window > Activity Monitor) is the closest thing. I know it's there, but I don't use it enough to know.

zub3qin said:
3) Outlook is annoying in that it shows you html in the preview pane- but this increases spam. Does Mac mail do anything differently, or is Mac just as prone to spam as XP?
Click to expand...

I've set pretty strict rules in Mail > Preferences > Rules. I haven't had any problems. I also have one yahoo address that I give to any site that is likely to spam my inbox. I keep my "real" e-mail addresses pretty closely guarded.
 
I use Entourage. But only because the way Mail handles attachments. The spellchecker of Entourage drives me nuts sometimes, although. The option to start every new sentence with a capital can't be switched off.:mad: Is it typical for Microsoft applications? I don't know. But there's seems to be a pattern. For instance, when I'm using MS Word :rolleyes:
 
baxter said:
I use Entourage. But only because the way Mail handles attachments. The spellchecker of Entourage drives me nuts sometimes, although. The option to start every new sentence with a capital can't be switched off.:mad: Is it typical for Microsoft applications? I don't know. But there's seems to be a pattern. For instance, when I'm using MS Word :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

How does Mail handle attachments?
 
i find the spam control on mail to be really good. in gmail it lets in alot of spam but mail blocks all of it. plus it learns what is and what isn't spam.

i expect the new mail in leopard to be really good because it is optimized for multi cores and has alot of new options.

i think mac mail is really great and has all the options you need, unlike outlook which has way too many options!
 
Wow this forum and you members here are just fantastic! I can not believe how quickly everyone responded to answer my questions. Thank you all very much.

The send/receive is how one of the other here explained, it just shows the mail download or upload progress as its happening. I always used this in Outlook and have a habit of watching it as mail comes in or out.

Thanks for the tips on the smart folders option. I will check into that and I never used itunes before so unfortunately I can related it to that as you mentioned it being the same. I will be learning more as I get into using itunes now.

Thanks for the add to address book tip. That is really helpful.

I did not import my old Outlook mail into the mail app in OSX. I decided to start a new just like my Apple experience being my first ever mac. I will leave my old Outlook on my other Vista machine to use as an archive and the mac mail as my main client moving forward.

Thanks again to everyone for their great and fast replies.
 
Exactly, isn't Entourage outlook for mac? Sort of? Use that if that is what you prefer.
 
aliquis- said:
Exactly, isn't Entourage outlook for mac? Sort of? Use that if that is what you prefer.
Click to expand...

Actually from what I can tell it does appear to be alot like Outlook for a mac. Even looks very similar. The point for me is that I am trying to run as much native OSX as possible and I only thought with email being such a core function, that I would consider entorouge since it looked familiar to me. However when I thought about it is when I posted this as to better understand how things I was looking for worked in the mac email app. Thanks to all the good replies here I believe the mail program will be just fine for my needs and I will move forward with it now as my main email app. I did not want to buy MS office just for the email either.
 
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