Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Checking Your Mail

You get new mail and send mail you’ve already written using the Get Mail command. You can trigger it in any of several ways:

• Click the button 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.

• Right-click (or two-finger click) Mail’s 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 to turn this feature off, choose Mail→Preferences, click General, and then choose a time interval from the “Check for new messages” pop-up menu.

Tip

If you choose Automatically, then you’ll get incoming messages the instant they arrive—at least in any accounts that offer “push” email.

Now Mail contacts the mail servers listed in the Accounts pane of Mail’s preferences, retrieving new messages and downloading any files attached to those messages. It also sends any outgoing messages that couldn’t be sent when you wrote them.

Tip

The far-left column of the Mail window has a tiny Mail Activity monitor; click the second button () at the lower-left corner of the ...