Email: How to setup a email account in Mac Mail 8, 9, and 10
Please note this tutorial is specific to Mac Mail 8. To determine the version of mac mail in which you are using. Please see below:
- Open Mac Mail
- Select Mail
- Select About Mail
If you are using version different then Mac Mail 8, please see the Related Articles section at the bottom of this article for a guide specific for your version.
It is recommended that before setting up Mac Mail to use with your domain that you first do the following:
- Have an email address created in your hosting control panel.
- Wait until the domain name has propagated.
The Configuration of Mac Mail
The video below will guide you through the Mac Mail Configuration:
The steps below can be used as an additional resource to the video
- Open the Mac Mail application.
- From the File menu, choose Add Account. First-time users will be automatically prompted to create an account.
- In the appropriate fields, provide your full name, email address to be used and the password.
- If enabled, deselect Automatically Setup Account in order to manually configure the email account, and then click Continue.
- If you wish to have the account automatically configured, simply leave the option selected and follow the prompts provided by the Mail Setup Assistant.
- Choose the proper account type.
- Provide a description for the email account describing what that email account is for.
- Enter your incoming mail server, username and password, and then click Continue.
- If prompted, enter the settings for Mail Incoming Security.
- Add a description for the outgoing mail server explaining what that email account is for.
- Provide the outgoing mail server information.
- If necessary, select Use Authentication and provide the email username and password.
- If prompted, provide the settings for outgoing mail security, and then click Continue. You will then be able to verify their settings in the Account Summary.
- Check Take Account Online.
- Click the Create button to complete the process.
Once the steps have been completed you should now be able to send and receive email via Mac Mail
For more information about Mac Mail Setup Assistant please see the following documentation from Apple
Alfonso de Garay November 14, 2013 at 10:53 am
When do You use IMAP or use POP?
James Davey November 14, 2013 at 11:39 am
Hello Alfonso,
It’s really personal preference. A POP account will download messages to your local system, and remove them from the server. Meaning if you are only checking your mail on one device, you won’t notice anything strange. An IMAP account, however, will ‘sync’ with the server, meaning the messages will appear in your inbox, and remain on the server until you actually delete them. IMAP is better if you are planning on using multiple devices to check the same email, or if you need to keep copies of your messages in case of system failure. IMAP also makes our backups a little more reliable, as all mail will be present at the time of the backup snapshot.
Alfonso de Garay November 14, 2013 at 12:02 pm
How can i change my MAC mail accounts from POP to IMAP?
James Davey November 14, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Hi Alfonso,
There’s really no way to toggle it back and forth, I am afraid. You would simply need to create a second account in Mac Mail, being sure to specify IMAP rather than POP.
Angel Navarrete June 10, 2016 at 10:32 am
So … after hours of frustration and pulling my hair out, I’ve come to the realization that :
1) The video is annoying to watch more than once at such a small resolution.
2) The 587 port information was the cause of my problems problem.
Seriously, use screenshots next time. Users shouldn’t have to switch between a small video/fullscreen, when trying to configure their email clients on a mac. That’s just crazy talk.
Secondly, the information for the incoming port was wrong. Looking around on the website I finally found that the incoming IMAP port is 143, outgoing IMAP port is 993 (ssl) : LINK : https://kb.site5.com/email/email-overview/
Once I changed that, emails just started pouring in and I got rid of all those horrible time-out errors where NOTHING I DID was right. This was of course after watching the video several times, wondering what the hell I did wrong … which apparently, was listening to the video.
Corey Mahon June 23, 2016 at 8:50 am
Hi Angel! Thank you very much for your feedback and I’m glad to hear that you were able to get your mail up and running correctly. We have heard several mentions regarding the video tutorials and we’ll be sure to use screenshots for future tutorial posts. Thanks again and I apologize for the hassle of getting your mail client configured.