MacBook Air Portable Genius, 4th Edition

You Can’t Send E-mail

When you compose messages using Apple Mail on MacBook Air, you may find that you can’t send those messages. For example, the Send button may be disabled, or you may receive bounce messages from your ISP telling you that the messages could not be delivered.

A disabled Send button almost always means that you haven’t selected or configured an outgoing mail server for your account. If you know you already have an outgoing mail server (also called an SMTP — Simple Mail Transport Protocol — server) configured, follow these steps to select it:

1. In Mail, choose Mail →Preferences. The Mail preferences appear.

2. Click Accounts. Mail displays a list of your e-mail accounts.

3. In the Accounts list, choose the one with which you want to work.

4. Click the Account Information pane.

5. In the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) pop-up menu, choose the server you want to use for sending your messages. Mail now enables the Send button and uses this server to send your messages.

If you see only None in the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) menu, you need to configure an SMTP server to use with your account. From the Account Information pane, use the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) pop-up menu to choose Edit SMTP Server List. Click the Add button (+) to create a new server entry and then type the server details.

If you already had an SMTP server selected, the likely reason that you can’t send e-mail is that the server isn’t configured correctly. From the Account Information pane, use ...