Apple Mail Questions

I've been having some problems with gmail both with my mac at home and at work. Sometimes attachments take forever to upload or just hang (I did download all safari updates for both computers).

I'm wondering what you guys thinks of Mail.
I'm also wondering how it works. I heard that it downloads emails to the hard drive but I wouldn't want that because I don't want to waste hard drive space. Is there a way around that?

Thanks

 

I've found that gmail accounts tend to cause problems with Mail - I have 3 accounts linked to it, and they often cause Mail to hang.

As for how gmail works: you likely are using IMAP, rather than POP3, if you fairly recently added your gmail account. Below is a link to explain IMAP (and its benefits over POP3).

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol

 

I like Mail, though I've had issues with it as well. I use it with my school's Exchange server. It works well, but for most of my old emails that synched, the abbreviated listing of the emails (the part that lists subject, when it was received, who sent it, etc) doesn't match up with the actual email when I click on it. It's a very odd problem.

 

Hope this isn't a notebook forum faux pah (not spelled right) but I did ask this earlier on a thread I started but couldn't seem to get an answer, so I try one more time.

New MB, I have 3 e-mail accounts that I manage, Gmail,AOL,.MAC.
I want to be able to save emails in different folders on MB.
If the email has an attachment I see a button to save but it appears that I cannot chose where to save. I know I can set it up to save to a specific folder but I want the option to pick the folder each time I save an attachment.

When there is no attachment it appears the best (only) way to save the email is to go File>save as, but here my choices are limited, while I can save to the document folder I don't see any sub folders.

Third question, is there a place I can find my deleted emails?

Thanks

I love this key board!

 

For saving attachments, you will need to press and hold the save icon, this will bring up a sub-menu, select save all, then you will be able to choose where to save it. Also you can change the default save location in mail preferences, normally it is set to "downloads". So a quick click of save will send attachments there.
As for saving the email itself, if its in your inbox, then it saved. Why save it again? Perhaps using timemachine would be a better way to have a backup?
For deleted emails they will be in the trash in mail. If you have deleted them from the trash, or have the trash set to auto empty, then they are gone, unless of course you have regular timemachine backups.
a

 

Underpantman, Thanks for your help it is much appreciated. Is there a way to have sub-folders in my inbox? There are a lot of e-mails I need to save and without moving them to another file or subfolder within mail it will become too cumbersome to sort through. I'm sure that I'm just missing something, surely there is away to just drag and drop an email into a subfolder.

 

Is there a way to not have mail download emails to the hard drive?

 

I also have to say that I have a ton of problems with Mail and gmail. Always causes it to hang.

I've been using the new Entourage and it works beautifully.

 

Mail are called Mailboxes. As a switcher it to me a while to get used to this terminology. As a long time Outlook user Mailbox was at the top for me with folders/sub folders in the Mailbox. Mailboxes in Mail are like the old wooden slots at a hotel or whatever where you put different mail in different boxes.

You have mailboxes, and smart mailboxes (mailboxes that have rules basically). If you email account supports IMAP like .MAC accounts do then you have the option of having those mailboxes "on my Mac" or on the .Mac account. If on the .Mac account you can see it via the webmail. Its basically there and Mail on your Mac sees it when your logged in, they sync.

POP accounts of course dont support this.

GMAIL is a different beast. It can be seriously confusing when using IMAP. Unlike .MAC and other IMAP email accounts, mailboxes on your Mac are "Lables" in Gmail. Plus GMAIL has the all mail folder that contains all mail, including deleted mail. It gets messy fast. I suggest using POP3 with Mail and a GMAIL account.

 

Excuse my ignorance, but I'm not sure that the comments pertain to my question. I will try again.
When I get mail in any of my mailboxes, I want to sort the ones I need to keep into subfolders or some file of my choosing> I do this in order to keep my inbox uncluttered. It seems that smart mailboxes will follow a fixed set of rules, am not interested in that. I need to manually sort.
example:
AOL (inbox)
Gmail (inbox)
.Mac (inbox)
now somewhere below that (or in another file located outside mail)
Football (file)
vacation
purchases
finance
I want to allocate emails into folders such as above. Is this possible?
Thanks

 

There are a few ways to do this. And the best way to think of mail is that its like itunes. So you can either setup a mailbox, and then manually setup rules (under mail preferences), and or manually drag and drop emails from your account mailbox's.
Or
you can setup smart mailbox's, much like smart playlists, they will, depending the rules you choose, display those emails... but the emails will not physically be there.
hope this helps
a

 

Finally figured it out. Sorry I'm such a newbie, but I need things spelled out step by step. I setup new mailboxes using the + sign on bottom of the mail and put the mailbox on my Mac. I see from that I can also add sub folders.

Thank you very much.