19.2. Checking Your Mail

19.2. Checking Your Mail You get new mail and send mail youve already written using the Get Mail command. You can trigger it in any of several ways
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19.2. Checking Your Mail19.2. Checking Your MailYou get new mail and send mail youve already written using the Get Mail command.You can trigger it in any of several ways: • Click Get Mail on the toolbar. • Choose Mailbox Get All New Mail (or press Shift- -N). Note: If you have multiple email accounts, you can also use the Mailbox Get New Mail submenu to pick just one account to check for new mail. • Control-click (or right-click) Mails Dock icon, and choose Get New Mail from the shortcut menu. (You can use this method from within any program, as long as Mail is already open.) • Wait. Mail comes set to check your email automatically every few minutes. To adjust its timing or turn this feature off, choose Mail Preferences, click General, and then choose a time interval from the Check for new mail pop-up menu.Now Mail contacts the mail servers listed in the Accounts pane of Mails preferences,retrieving new messages and downloading any files attached to those messages. It alsosends any outgoing messages that couldnt be sent when you wrote them.Tip: The far-left column of the Mail window has a tiny Mail Activity monitor tuckedaway; click the square icon at the bottom of the Mail window to reveal Mail Activity. Ifyou dont want to give up window real estate, or you prefer to monitor your mail in aseparate window, you can do that, too. The Activity Viewer window gives you a Stopbutton, progress bars, and other useful information. Summon it by choosing WindowActivity Viewer, or by pressing -0.Also, if youre having trouble connecting to some(or all) of your email accounts, choose Window Connection Doctor. There, you cansee detailed information about which of your accounts arent responding. If yourcomputers Internet connection is at fault, you can click Assist Me to try to get backonline.19.2.1. The Mailboxes ListIf youve used earlier versions of Mail, the first thing that youll notice in Leopard is thatthe Mailbox panel isnt just for mailboxes anymore. Categories like Reminders and RSSFeeds can appear there, too, as shown in Figure 19-4. But the top half of this gray-bluecolumn on the left side lists all your email accounts folders (and subfolders, and sub-subfolders) for easy access. Mail now looks quite a bit like iTunes (and iPhoto, and theFinder)—except here you have mailboxes where your iTunes library and connected iPodswould be.In the Mailboxes panel, sometimes hidden by flippy triangles, you may find these folders: • Inbox holds mail youve received. If you have more than one email account, you can expand the triangles to see separate folders for your individual accounts. Youll see this pattern repeated with the Sent, Junk, and other mailboxes, too— separate accounts have separate subheadings. Tip: If Mail has something to tell you about your Inbox (like, for instance, that Mail cant connect to it), a tiny warning triangle appears on the right side of the Mailboxes column. Click it to see what Mail is griping about.If you see a lightning-bolt icon, thats Mails way of announcing that youre offline. Click the icon to try to connect to the Internet. Figure 19-4. If youve ever used iTunes, youll notice a lot of similarities with the Mail window. All your information sources— mailboxes, notes, To Do items, and RSS Feeds—are grouped tidily in the far left column where you can always see them. Buttons along the top of the Mail window let you create new messages, notes, and tasks with a click. To see whats in one of these folders, click it once. The list of its messages appears in the top half of the right side of the window (the Messages list). When you click a message name, the message itself appears in the bottom half of the main window (the Preview pane). • Outboxholds mail youve written but havent yet sent (because you were on an airplane when you wrote it, for example). If you have no mail waiting to be sent, the Outbox itself disappears. • Draftsholds messages youve started but havent yet finished, and dont want to send just yet. • Sent, unsurprisingly, holds copies of messages youve sent. • Trash works a lot like the Trash on your desktop, in that messages you put there dont actually disappear. They remain in the Trash folder until you permanently delete them or move them somewhere else—or until Mails automatic trash cleaning service deletes them for you (Section 19.5.11.2). • Junk appears automatically when you use Mails spam filter, as described later in this chapter. • On My Macis a folder on your Mac for your mail-filing convenience. You can set these folders up yourself (Section 19.5.6). This handy panel isnt just for mailboxes,. Its also a hangout for other information that Mail corrals, including: • Reminders. Any Notes youve jotted down while working in Mail are here. (See Section 19.8 for notes on Notes.) To Do items hang out here as well (Section 21.16). • RSS Feeds.Who needs to bop into a Web browser to keep up with the news? Mail brings it right to you while youre corresponding. Section 19.7 explains how to set up RSS feeds in Mail. • Mail Activity. You dont need to summon a separate window to see how much more of that message with the giant attachment the program still has to send. To reveal the Mail activity panel, click the middle icon in the bottom left side of the Mail window (Figure 19-5). Figure 19-5. The many panes of Mail. Click an ico ...