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Questions about Mail

Z

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jun 10, 2006
7,302
2,058
Hey everyone, I have switched over from PC's to my new iMac about a month ago, and pretty much understand (and love) everything about Macs and OSX. But there's one application I don't really know much about, and that's mail.
First of all, is Mail intended to be used only by people who formerly used Microsoft Outlook as their email client, or can it be used as an alternative to a mail service such as Yahoo Mail?
I have a Yahoo email address, and I would love it if I could use Mail so go through my emails that I would normally recieve at Yahoo.com. Is this possible? If so, how do I set up Mail so that this can happen? I haven't configured it yet, and when I try to, it asks me about something like IMAP, POP, or Exchange. Which one do I choose if I just want to recieve mail from an internet based email service, assuming this is possible? Thanks for any help you can give.
 
which email service are you using? I use Mail to retrieve my school email, it works beautifully. Try finding out from your email provider the details that you need to input for the Mail application- a google search would help :)
 
Zwhaler said:
Which one do I choose if I just want to recieve mail from an internet based email service, assuming this is possible? Thanks for any help you can give.
Click to expand...

Internet mail services aren't really fundamentally different from any other mail service, so they can use any mail access protocol their creators decided to implement. That said, most of them either support POP or nothing.
 
Zwhaler said:
Which one do I choose if I just want to recieve mail from an internet based email service, assuming this is possible? Thanks for any help you can give.
Click to expand...

I think Yahoo Mail costs $20/year to use POP3 (needed for OS X Mail). If you are willing to get a new email address, try Gmail (http://gmail.google.com/), which has free POP3 access.
 
Ahh... well I think it's too late to switch email addresses, taking it that everything I have signed up for is on that email address. But I do have a school email address, but how do I know which one to select? it is a
ch.[myname]@[myschool].net account. Any advice?
 
To use the school mail account, you'll need to find out from them if they offer POP3 or IMAP access, and what names to use for the POP (or IMAP) and SMTP servers. You'll also want to know if they use secure connections, so that you can switch on that feature in Mail.

You may get lucky and fins out that the addresses are mail.school.net or pop.school.net or something along those lines, but there's no standard naming convention for these things, that's why I say to just ask.

Oftentimes there will be instructions written up only for Outlook or something like that, but that's okay. All the information needed for Mail will be in there.
 
iMeowbot said:
To use Yahoo mail with Mail.app (or any standard email client), you need to pay up :(
Click to expand...


You dont have to anymore. POP access is now free. Once you have it activated here are the setting.

its a pop account

mail server is pop.mail.yahoo.com
username is your Y! username (the part of your email address before the @)
the password is your Y! password
SMTP is smtp.mail.yahoo.com

and thats it

althought I highly discourage the use of yahoo mail because it is a POP service. I highly recomend switching to a IMAP servce (or as I like to say iMAP), like dotMAC
 
Which IMAP do you recommend? Fastmail.fm is good but I cant send it with the smtp server, for that I have to pay...
Any other IMAP servers?
 
frogfroggy said:
Which IMAP do you recommend? Fastmail.fm is good but I cant send it with the smtp server, for that I have to pay...
Any other IMAP servers?
Click to expand...


To start. Really? Yahoo only offers it in some countries? Well I'm the the US and its works great, I dont use it much but it works.

Well I have 2 IMAP accounts that I use. I love dotMAC and highly recomend it, many will disagree with me but I find that the services it offers is worth the $100 a year. THen again I used all of the services everyday, except for backup. That I have a SMTP server on my Grid Server which I host thought media temple. I have a lot of address on it. it works great.

I dont really know of any good free IMAP servers, sorry

cooepr
 
hotmail account on mail

Hi Guys! I'm affraid I really need your help this time...

My Mbp just cd2 17" matte, 2gb, 160 hitachi came two days ago and I'm already in love with mac Osx but there are a few things i still can't do. the most important is this one:

As a windows user I used to read mail on my outlook express account from my hotmail.it PLUS account (the one you have to pay for).

Now I would like to make the same with the application mail (or do you suggest me thunderbitd?) but I can't be able to find proper details... can anyone help or suggest me a solution?
Is there a free email provider which allows you to use on of the quoted programmes for free? what's the best out there? I cannot afford .mac I'm afraid...
Thanks a lot!!!
 
frogfroggy said:
Which IMAP do you recommend? Fastmail.fm is good but I cant send it with the smtp server, for that I have to pay...
Any other IMAP servers?
Click to expand...

You only have to pay a one time membership fee though. I forget, but it's something like $10 or $15 for lifetime access to their SMTP server. Alternatively your ISP will usually give you free access to thier smtp server, so you can use fastmail to receive and your ISP to send (still with your fastmail acct as a return address).

I used to be really high on fastmail as it is well thought out and has lots of options, but they only give you 8mbs of storage for a free account and if you pay the one time membership fee it only jumps up to 16 mb. This is a joke compared to Gmail or really any other email service.
 
Erasmus® said:
Now I would like to make the same with the application mail (or do you suggest me thunderbitd?) but I can't be able to find proper details... can anyone help or suggest me a solution?
Is there a free email provider which allows you to use on of the quoted programmes for free? what's the best out there? I cannot afford .mac I'm afraid...
Thanks a lot!!!
Click to expand...

I checked microsoft entourage but I would prefer to avoid microsoft software... please help!!!!!
 
Erasmus® said:
As a windows user I used to read mail on my outlook express account from my hotmail.it PLUS account (the one you have to pay for).
Click to expand...

You should be able to find the setup information in Outlook Express. Try this on your PC:

  1. Open Outlook Express
  2. Go to Tools | Accounts
  3. Click on the profile for hotmail.it, then click Properties
  4. In the Properties dialog box, click on the Servers tab. Most of the information you need is here... Incoming mail server, outgoing (SMTP) server, username, etc.
  5. If the Outgoing Mail Server requires authentication is selected, then click on Settings, and get the details. (click Cancel after you're done).
  6. Click on the Advanced tab, and write down these settings as well.
You should then be able to set up OS X Mail.
 
first thanks! second...

First of all thanks for the help: it is very apreciated.

unfortunately, I still couldn't sincronise my hotmail account with my mail program. I first tryed to follow your instructions, but the problem is I do not receive all the information you said when I select my "server" tab on my pc. I can only read:
under "server voice" - the server url, which is: http://services.msn.com/svcs/hotmail/httpmail.aps
under "mail server" - my mail adress and my encripted password.
I don't really now what the problem is, unfortunately I'm not an expert. I'm using an xp home edition on my old pc.

In the meantime, I had a check on the website:
http://email.about.com/cs/macosxmailtips/qt/et042503.htm

I tryed out the program it suggests, but the instructions do not refer to ".it" mail accounts so I guess I'm doing something wrong. Please help me again!

If this becomes to difficult, I would be ready to move to a different FREE provider, but I would like to choose the one that works best with my apple programs. Can you suggest me something? I know the best choice would be ".mac" but I can not afford the cost.

Thanks a lot!!!
 
Gmail

I'm sure others will come up with other good recommendations, but if you are willing to switch email addresses, I recommend using Gmail (http://gmail.google.com/). Not only is the service free, but Google allows free POP3 access, which you'll need for OS X Mail. They also provide a large mailbox (> 2GB) and the ability to send large attachments.

Erasmus® said:
If this becomes to difficult, I would be ready to move to a different FREE provider, but I would like to choose the one that works best with my apple programs. Can you suggest me something? I know the best choice would be ".mac" but I can not afford the cost.
Click to expand...
 
i have a yahoo account (which is free) and use mail and it works like a dream. i also run my gmail, school email, and hotmail using httpmail (version tracker if you wish to get it) which all work fine
 
I am in the U.S. and still can not get the pop access to work.

Are you using a program like YPOPS?
 
I am trying to use the mail application with my AOL email address. I cannot figure out how to work it. Does anybody have any advice they can give me? Should I be doing POP or IMAP?? What server should I have?
 
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