10 Mac OS X Mail Tips You Might Not Have Known

Although Mail sounds like a no frills program for email, it doesn’t mean that OS X users are missing out on anything. Some companies want to talk you out of Mail so they can sell you their email software, but, as many Macintosh users find out, that really isn’t necessary. Mail is a robust program, filled with powerful features that rival those of any premium mail client. Once you get a feel of how Mail works, you might want to learn how to make it do more for you than just basic email tasks. Here you will find 10 Mail tips and tricks that will help you get the more out of Mail than you ever dreamed.

1. Block a sender using OS X Mail – If you are getting tired of seeing new mail from someone you don’t care about, don’t get stressed, just get even. Use this trick to take mail from those unwanted senders and put it directly in the trash. This takes the hassle out of sorting through messages and manually deleting the ones you always knew you’d delete anyway.
2. Keep your trash empty automatically – If you like to keep your mail tidy and don’t want to be annoyed by issues you’ve dealt with long ago, set up Mail so that it periodically empties the trash. You’ll save disk space and calm your nerves too.
3. Remove addresses from auto complete – Auto complete is a nice function, but sometimes it can cause needless embarrassment by filling in addresses that you didn’t mean to use for your message. Fix this by taking addresses out of Mail’s auto complete.
4. Advanced, combined searches – Learn how to combine commands and terms to make your email searches faster and your searches more accurate.
5. Check your Yahoo! Mail with OS X Mail – You don’t have to keep logging in to Yahoo! Separately just to check your online correspondence. Here’s how to use Mail to combine your web mail with your standard mail with Mail.
6. Signature management – Anyone who has configured OS X Mail to handle multiple email accounts knows how convenient it is. Now, if only you could change the signature depending on which account you were using to send mail. You can!
7. Save your common searches to a smart folder – Save time and make things easier once you’ve made a search, go ahead and save it so you can get it done faster next time.
8. Read receipts – If you ever want to know when an email you have sent has been read, Mail can help you. A simple configuration change can have a confirmation email sent to your Inbox as soon as a message you sent is read.
9. Tell Mail where to store attachments -If you’ve ever opened an attachment in Mail and saved changes to it you know that it’s hard to find the location where it was saved. Here’s a trick that puts you in the driver’s seat by telling Mail where to store its attachments.
10. Inline images – Have you ever set up an email message to look really nice with an image and formatting only to discover that Mail converted the image to an attachment? Rather than the default setting that sends images as attachments, change Mail so that it sends the email with the images inline.

The fact that Mail is free with OS X doesn’t mean that it’s a slouchy program. Mail can handle all your mail needs if you want it to. Try some of these tips and tricks and you’ll discover that there’s even more under the hood of OS X Mail than meets the eye.

This is an article from James Adams, a writer based in the UK who works as a writer for Cartridge Save where he reviews products such as the HP 57 ink cartridge among others.