Setting up Mail

Article, Mac OS X, Mail, Novice | March 30th, 2008

Email is a crucial part of all our daily lives now-a-days. With snail mail dying out and email taking the reigns you have to make sure your able to send and receive emails. Let’s get your Mac Mail setup.

First and foremost, make sure you have all the information you need to setup your email from your ISP (Internet Service Provider). If your not sure what this information is, give them a call and they will provide everything for you.

1. Click the Mail icon on your dock to launch Mail.
2. Because this is the first time you have launched Mail, you will be prompted to enter in your email and password. Click Continue once you’ve entered this information.
3. Next you’ll be asked to enter your Incoming Mail Server settings. 90% of ISP’s run off of POP, but occasionally you’ll find you can use IMAP. The big difference here is that IMAP will keep your email messages on the server until you specifically delete them off the server, not just your computer. This is great because it lets you setup and access your emails from Mail on multiple computers and everything will be perfectly synced. Once you’ve filled out the proper information provided from your ISP click Continue.
4. Now you’ll have to setup your Outgoing Mail Server. Most of the time you’ll just need to enter in something like mail.yourisp.com, but occasionally your ISP will require you to use Authentication. If this is the case, check “Use Authentication” and fill in your User Name and Password. Once you’ve filled out the correct information click Continue.
5. Finally, Mail will provide you with a summary of all the information you just entered. Verify that this is all correct and click Create.

There you have it, your email should be all setup and ready for you to start sending and receiving emails. Should you run in to any issues during this process, contact your ISP and they will help you resolve any connection or authentication issues.