In Mac Mail, have you ever experienced that some (not all) of your e-mail messages do not wrap? Yet the same message in the iPhone and iPad wrap just fine. This is a problem with Mac Mail, and it has been around for a long time. You can search the Internet for many stories of users who are experiencing this problem. But there seems to be only one solution.
You can actually read the message normally in Mac Mail if you just hit the reply button, whether you intend to reply or not.
Info on Apple Mail and Pages has been posted by Mary An Clark on the PMUG site: www.pmug.us/benefits/tips-n-tricks/ and we can thank John Carter for being the contact person for this. Take a look at the other reports posted there, too.
"MacMost.com has just announced a new video on using Mail Signatures," John Carter tells us. "This would be a good follow-up on my article (posted August 11) about using Signatures as an e-mail template. See the video here: Watch Video…
Having trouble or confusions with Apple Mail in Mavericks? John Carter to the rescue. "Lots has changed from previous versions, particularly for Gmail users, and although Apple has restored some functionality in 10.9.1 and the just-released 10.9.2, there's nothing like a healthy dose of expert advice to put you back in control of your email. "To help with that, email expert Joe Kissell has revisited the topic in 'Take Control of Apple Mail.' This new ebook, which covers both Mail for Mavericks and iOS 7, provides 175 pages of essential setup, usage, and troubleshooting advice, whether you use Gmail, iCloud, Exchange, or IMAP — or more than one. The book normally costs $15, but the 30% MUG discount drops that to $10.50. Learn more about the book and purchase via the coupon-loaded link. Want to know more? "Along the way, Joe explains core concepts like special IMAP mailboxes and email archiving, reveals Mail's hidden interface elements, and offers tips on customizing Mail to your preferences (including the best power-user plugins for Mail on the Mac). You'll also learn how to find that message in the haystack, figure out how digital signatures and encryption work in Mail, and uncover solutions to numerous common problems. Perhaps most important, Joe shares his strategy for avoiding email overload; the article where he first introduced it won American Business Media’s Neal Award for Best How-To Article.
Using your Mac is easy to do. Here are some shortcuts. How many are you already using? Which ones will you try later today?
A tip on Mail comes from John Carter who informs us, "If you're using the Mail application to read and write email, and if your email protocol for the account is IMAP, you may have noticed that when you are creating a new message that quite a few copies of your unfinished (and finished) message shows up in the Trash. This is because you have an option set in Mail Preferences for you email account to store Draft messages on the server.
John Carter springs this question, "Have you ever noticed that when you send an e-mail with an attachment, it shows up in your Sent folder with the attachment seemingly replaced with the words 'Missing Plug-in?'
" A few weeks back, some advice was given out to supposedly protect you from a Java related virus. The advice said to open 'Java Preferences' (this application is in /Applications/Utilities, or just search for it with Spotlight) and uncheck the box in the General tab: 'Enable applet plug-in and Web Start applications.' Unchecking that box causes your attachments to disappear from your e-mail in the Sent folder and maybe cause you to think that the attachment didn’t go through.
"To see your attachments in your Sent folder again, make sure that the box is checked and then click on the button 'Restore Defaults.' All will be fine again. As for the Java related virus warning, both Java and Apple have pushed updates that you should have installed, and those updates will protect you - until the next new virus comes along."
But John, we asked, "what about the Safari Preferences"?
Here's John's reply: "Not the same. What you show is for Safari, not Mail. Since I have installed all the latest Java and Apple updates, I have 'Enable Java' box checked in Safari Preferences as well. But that setting does not affect how Mail works."
"Here's a summary of touch gestures for your Mac. I've noticed that touch gestures don't seem to work in Mail," comments Jim Hamm.
Changes? Oh, yes. Jim Hamm must be frowning as he sends us this: "Here are a couple of articles: One and the other one, describing changes coming in Mountain Lion. I'm gonna miss the RSS feed into Mail, which I presently use quite a bit. He quotes this part, "Look to the right, and you may notice Safari’s first major missing feature: RSS. It looks as though Really Simple Syndication was just not simple enough for Apple; the company has excised RSS entirely from Safari (and from Mail as well), leaving feed-parsing to external applications such as NetNewsWire or Reeder. If you have such a program installed and attempt to type in or click on a 'feed://' address, Safari will automatically punt you to your respective program;
otherwise, it displays an error."
Jim has two comments, "Darn! I liked having the RSS feed available in Mail. This is 'progress'?" However, he goes on to say, "A new feature in Mail is the ability to designate an email from a particular sender--such as 'Moi'--as a VIP...(grin)."
Bright and early, this comes from Jim Hamm. "In Lion OS, first the bad news. Occasionally, for me anyway, the Mail App will quit unexpectedly, for no apparent reason. If, say, this happens after writing an email, perhaps with links and an image (ie., some work involved on my part), and before I can send it, it suddenly disappears as the app quits. Darn, what to do—start over?
"Now the good news. Apple, perhaps (hopefully) in the design engineers' wisdom, has included an auto-save feature in Lion. If I look in the Drafts Folder, there is my email, ready to be sent. And I hadn't even thought to save it as I typed the email. This auto-save is a nice, new feature in Lion.
Jim concludes, "A notice is automatically sent to Apple on the Mail failure so this bug can be corrected in a future OS update."
Here's John Carter's instructions on using Mail in Lion. "First off, the download of Lion is about 3.7GB, and with a 7 Mbps Internet connection (which only provides about a 5 Mbps download rate) it will take a calculated 93 minutes to download. The install itself takes a little over 30 minutes, but then you have to do a software update and that may take another hour depending on what has to be updated (like iTunes, iPhoto, etc.)
"After the download is complete, you will see a new application called 'Install Mac OS X Lion' come up automatically and prompting you to click Next to start the installation. To be on the safe side, you should insert a blank DVD (standard 4.7GB capacity) and burn that application to the DVD before you click Next. (You’ll find the application in the Application folder, but if you don’t burn the DVD at this point in time, that application will be deleted during the installation of Lion. You will want to have that DVD around for safety and security reasons.)
"I’m only going to cover the new Mail application at this time, and I’m using it to create this report.
"The new appearance of Mail can be a bit disconcerting. First, you really need to view Mail in full screen to take advantage of all that it has to offer. Clicking the double-headed arrow in the upper right corner of the Mail application switches to full screen mode. To get out of full screen mode, simply press the ESC key.
"Some people will be put off by the new Mail application GUI. The default is to not show the mailboxes and to show two columns - one for the Inbox message list, which contains two lines of the message body (in Preferences you can select to show only one line), and one for the actual message that is selected from the message list (if that column is blank then no message in the left column has yet been selected). This threw me for a loop at first, and I admit that I panicked, wondering how I was supposed to see all the accounts and mailboxes I created.
"In the image that follows, the right hand column shows two messages sent by the same person with the same subject line (I'm looking at a message in my Inbox mailbox). The bottom message has the number 1 in the upper right corner and the top message has the number 2 in the upper right corner - this shows the sequence of the incoming messages.
"But, you can switch back to the classic view in Preferences:
"I think I’ll stay with the new look, for a while anyway. In the following image, the column on the far left (showing all the mailboxes) is only visible if you click on the tiny button just above it.
"If you have more than one e-mail account or if you want to see all the mailboxes you created, without that column displayed, you have to select which e-mail account Inbox you want to see by clicking on the Inbox button (yep, I have a lot of email accounts):
"Clicking on one item in the message list highlights all other messages in that list by that same sender where the subject line is also the same, hence making up a conversation. The blue highlighted message is the message being looked at and the orange highlighted messages are the related conversations.
"Overall, the text is extremely small on my 20” iMac. I tried to increase the font size of the message headers to no avail. But it does work if you don’t use the column format for the message list - use the classic (Snow Leopard) mode.
"Attempting to adjust the message font is also useless — only the header gets adjusted and not the body.
"The old Mail app had a Save button in the toolbar when writing a new message. There is no save button in the toolbar and there is no save button in the customize offerings for the toolbar. I guess Apple is trying to do us a favor by eliminating useless operations and made that function automatic when needed. But you can still click on File —> Save to save the current message as a draft. If you quit the message before sending it (red dot), you are given the option to discard the message or save it as a draft. If Mail unexpectedly quits or the computer shuts down while writing a new message, the message is saved in the Drafts folder."
In conclusion John closes with, "In other words, there’s a lot about Mail that needs a little getting used to - except for those who are new to the Mac."
If it's logical, easy, and fun --- then it's Mac! You want to keep up with the latest. When you click on RSS you will be notified in your list of email. Here's where you select RSS for the newsblog. Click to enlarge the screen shot.
Here's where you select RSS to get John Carter's posting to www.pmug.us
And this is how it comes up in my email list in Mail. Try it for yourself, and keep up with your PMUG.
Expanding on his earlier tips on Mail John Carter sends this info:
I tried to find something that could
show all the keyboard shortcuts for Mail.
I couldn’t find one place that showed them all.
I found that Command-K was shown in two
different places with different functions. That’s not helpful.
The best place to look for the keyboard
shortcuts for any application is to look at the Menu list:
Here's the list of keyboard symbols. Double click to enlarge.
Is it way too much information? John Carter smiles when he says this "should send some people over the edge with way too much information," but he adds, "I'm sure someone will find something here to make their email experience a little better."
Is it magic? No, it's just Mac. Allen Laudenslager points out a very handy feature of Mail. "I sometimes need to save my emails in a form that I can use later. Using Apple Mail this is dead simple. I just open the email and go to File > Print. In the bottom left hand corner of the print box is a button called PDF that allows me to save the email as a PDF file that I can send as an attachment to another email or print at a later date. Works exactly the same way in Google mail since both Safari and Firefox end up at the same print box with the same features.
"Where this really comes in handy is paying bills on line. Most sites have a Print Receipt feature (you may have to hunt around a cluttered page to find it, though) that ends up in the same print box. I save the receipt as a PDF file in a special folder called 'Bills paid online' and when/if I need to prove I paid the bill I can just email the receipt.
"If the particular business doesn't have a 'print a receipt' feature, all the businesses I pay on line do have a page that shows the payment, so I just print that web page using the same steps.
"If you've been afraid to pay on line because you need that receipt, here is a way to get the convenience of paying on line and the security of a hard copy receipt."
Is there an easy way to know that an email contains an attachment without opening the message? John Carter tells us, "Yes. There is a column that can be made visible in Mail that will show a small paperclip image if a message contains an attachment, and in addition, it will be accompanied by a number identifying how many attachments are in that message. If you don’t see that paperclip for a message that has an attachment, then you can set up Mail to show it.
Right click on any column header in Mail to open a menu. You should see something like the following menu (using Mail version 4.4):
Notice that the top item is “Attachments.” If it isn’t checked, click on it.
After activating that column, it will appear on the far right of the column list (above all the message headers).
You can drag that column to any position in the header I like it closer to the far left:
Here's an example of what you could see:
The blue dot shows me which email I haven’t read.
There you are. Enjoy knowing which message has an attachment and how many it contains."
Note: John sends me an attachment and the icon says "tiff." But I can't use it; I need a "jpeg." I drag the attachment by its icon over to the desktop. Clicking on it there opens it in Preview. I go to the menu at the top, choose File, then Save As. From the drop-down Format list I choose "jpeg" and I choose to save it to the desktop. Now I can copy the "jpeg" to the blog.
John Carter responds to questions about Gmail. "Regarding the difference (as a user) between IMAP and POP for a Gmail incoming account, using an IMAP Gmail incoming account actually provides two benefits over a POP Gmail incoming account, but one of those benefits can appear to be an inconvenience and confusing if not clearly understood.
Let’s start with a simple display of what Mail looks like with an IMAP Gmail account:
| Figure 1 |
With a POP Gmail account, the GMAIL mailbox you see above wouldn’t exist.
Figure 2 shows what an IMAP account provides that a POP account does not:
| Figure 2 |
Everything you see in Figure 2 under [Gmail] are references to the actual mailboxes in the remote Gmail repository, and you can actually play around with the messages in those mailboxes as though they were local in your computer.
Let me expand those mailboxes under MAILBOXES in Figure 1 to show you:
| Figure 3 |
“jrcarter” is my primary email. “AstroGimmicks” and “Sunrise Trust” are business accounts. The reality is that those three accounts actually forward their messages to the Gmail account. The Gmail account is a secondary personal account and is rarely given out and which has the primary purpose of delivering messages to Mail. And to be on the safe side, I have set up all four email accounts in Mail to collect messages. Complex, but that is my nature.
An IMAP Gmail account gives you access to all the mailboxes available in the remote Gmail mail repository as well as the local mailboxes (ON MY MAC). A POP Gmail account only gives you access to the local mailboxes. What gets confusing about the remote mailboxes is the “All Mail” mailbox, which is visible only by expanding both GMAIL and [Gmail] as shown in Figure 2.
TIP: In Gmail, they don’t call them mailboxes or folders. They call them labels. That’s rather confusing to anyone who ever used any mail program other than Gmail.
Any message that appears in the All Mail label actually resides in one of the other labels. If you delete a message from All Mail, it also gets deleted from the ‘real’ label. Deleting a message from any label other than Trash or All Mail moves it to Trash and it remains visible in All Mail (All Mail includes Trash). That’s another confusing aspect. The trick is to never delete anything from the All Mail label if you’re not sure which other label it actually resides in or if you don’t care if it gets deleted permanently. If you delete everything from the All Mail label, you delete everything from all other labels as well, including any messages you may have wanted to keep. Simply put, the All Mail label is only there to let you search for a message that might live in one of the other labels. Otherwise, leave it alone. To add even more confusion, sometimes I have deleted messages from All Mail only to see it show up there again. Stop chasing your tail and just manage messages in the other labels.
The really scary part is that if you delete a message from one label, it just might show up looking like a duplicate in All Mail and/or Trash. You can go crazy trying to track that down, so just worry about keeping Trash in the remote repository cleaned out regularly. And by the way, Trash in the local repository is not the same Trash in the remote repository.
I discovered that with an IMAP account, you can copy a mailbox from the local repository (ON MY MAC) to the remote repository (GMAIL) just by dragging it from within ON MY MAC to within GMAIL. That’s very useful, because if you created mailboxes in the local repository, you might prefer to see them in the remote repository when accessing mail from another computer or online. Just be sure to remove it from the local repository after copying it to the remote repository. Any Rules you had set up to move messages into a mailbox will NOT automatically update; you have to edit the rule to point to the new mailbox in GMAIL. Copying a mailbox with lots of messages may take time to trickle up, so don’t delete the local mailbox until you know it has completed the transfer.
This brings up the other major advantage of using an IMAP account over a POP account. If you keep all your mailboxes in the remote repository, you can access those messages from any computer anywhere by going online to access Gmail. Furthermore, if you have two or more computers that you access mail from (laptop and desktop), using IMAP on each computer gives you the advantage of accessing all your mail in any mailbox as long as those mailboxes are in the remote repository.
If what you have now is a POP Gmail account and you want to switch to an IMAP Gmail account, follow these steps:
Do we need a class on this?
Five fantastic Address Book tips are forwarded to us by Art Gorski who found this Macworld article. Take a look and see what will make you more efficient.
Here David Passell outlines a technique for organizing mail, using the Thread feature in Mail.
1. Under View drop down check 'Organize by Thread.'Also click on From, To, Subject, Date Received (either latest last--arrow down, or latest first--arrow up) as desired
2. Highlight all the Email messages in a thread. (or other subject of interest)
3 Do a copy (CMD-C)
4. Open a New Message in Email
5. Do a paste (CMD-V) of what is copied.
6. On the message, do a SAVE, then CLOSE. I am asked if I want to save as a draft, and I say yes.
7. Find it in Drafts, open it, and do desired editing. (suggest removing all the header except sender and recipient, and all the footer text. Also remove the duplicates of previous messages.
8. Enter - To: desired recipient (can be yourself), any Cc: or Bcc: Subject:
9. Send the message.