This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How to: Set Up Your Email On Easily In Mac OS X Lion
For years many users have struggled setting up their email accounts through Apple’s internal Mail application. Especially, Gmail iMAP services. In Mac OS X Lion Apple has simplified the process. You can still add your email account by the standard Mail application as you have previously. Or you can use the new automated method.
Simply navigate to the System Preferences and you will notice a new option titled Mail, Contacts & Calendars as highlighted below:
Clicking on this area will lead you into the following window:
On the right hand side of the screen, as shown above, you have many of the popular email providers available that you can select from. The advantage with adding your email address via this method is you no longer need to know the fine details of your email account, such as the incoming or outgoing server, and which port they should be on.
Selecting a common provider such as Gmail will present the following window:
Enter your name, email address, and password and upon selecting “Set Up” your email account will be configured with the best settings for your network. If you are used to the iOS platform you will notice that this process is very similar and has been taken directly from iOS.
If your provider does not show up in this list you can always select “Other” which will present the following options:
As you can see you can add not only a Mail account but iChat, iCal, and Address Book accounts, along with a Mac OS X server account. These options come with the requirement of having to present more information in order to add your service. If in doubt please check with your IT support professional.
Going back to take a look at the main preference window you will notice should you select Gmail for instance that the view you are presented with will change and resemble that as shown below:
On the right hand side you are presented with the associated services. You will notice for Gmail that I have my Mail & Notes along with Chat activated. I don’t use Gmail for calendars as I use my iCloud account to perform this task.
You will also notice the Details button to the right hand side. Selecting this will simply give you your username, password (hidden behind bullets), and description you have given the account. Should you change details of your email account on the server for instance you will also need to change it on your Mac. This is one such easy way to make this change. It can also be done directly in the application preferences for Mail.
Should you wish to remove an email account from your Mac you can come to this window, select the account in the left hand panel and simply press the (-) minus button at the bottom of the column.
Please remember when deleting accounts from your Mac if they are not IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) email accounts and you have not backed up your content then the content in most cases your email will be lost and unrecoverable. POP (Post Office Protocol) is one of the main offenders for this loss of data as the emails in general will be downloaded to a single Mail application and removed from the server either immediately or after a default amount of time unless you have specifically indicated in your Mail app that you wish for the emails to remain on the server. It is therefore recommended prior to making any changes you do a complete backup of your system to avoid such data loss.
