Mac Mail, and any new user advice?

By Chelsea, 16 January, 2012

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hi! After using my iPhone and loving it for a year, I decided to get a Mac. I'm enjoying it so far, especially the trackpad. I've been on this site for the last few minutes on my Mac. I do have a few questions: 1. I can't seem to figure out the nuances of the Mail program. How do you look at and download attachments quickly? Is there a keyboard shortcut for deleting messages? I'm finding myself doing a lot of interacting in mail; is this the general case. 2. How do I effectively work with auto-correct? I seem to always be pressing the wrong arrow key, and the flick down gesture doesn't seem to work like it does in iOS. 3. I love the apps already being posted; they will help get me started! Any additional advice from the Mac community? Thanks so much! Chelsea

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By Nicolai Svendsen on Sunday, June 24, 2012 - 18:21

Hello Chelsea 1. I can't seem to figure out the nuances of the Mail program. How do you look at and download attachments quickly? Is there a keyboard shortcut for deleting messages? I'm finding myself doing a lot of interacting in mail; is this the general case. If you are in a message that has attachments, you can hit command-Y to quick look them. Quick Look is a nice feature because it allows you to view a file without really opening it, as long as OS X natively supports it. it can be a document, an image, etc. If you wish to open the attachment, you can go to the attachment itself in the body of the e-mail message. It will show as an imbedded image. When you are on the image with the VoiceOVer Cursor, hit VO-Shift-M to bring up its contextual menu and choose "Open." In Snow Leopard, you had a specific area which dealt with message attachments, but that's not the case anymore it seems. Also, you can just use the delete key to erase a message. Interacting with a table is only necessary if you wish to view a specific column, like the Subject only, without hearing the sender, date, etc. If you are using the non-Classic view under Lion, you cannot hear the subject only while continuing to move down the list of messages. You can change this under the View preferences in Mail. Simply check the "Use Classic view" checkbox and it turns into a table in which you can explore individual columns. 2. How do I effectively work with auto-correct? I seem to always be pressing the wrong arrow key, and the flick down gesture doesn't seem to work like it does in iOS. The Trackpad Commander does not work with Autocorrect at this time. The Trackpad Commander and the gestures have not been modified very much since it was introduced. You can, however, hit down arrow to choose an option, then left and right arrow to go to the previous and next suggestion if you have multiple choices. When you are on the suggestion you want, just hit the return key. 3. I love the apps already being posted; they will help get me started! Any additional advice from the Mac community? It all depends on what you need to do. Everyone is different. :)
Actually the fact that the attachment area is not visible is false. go to headers and it's right there. If you have headers set to none like I do then hit cmd shift h and you will be shown all headers. Interact with the headers area and go to the attachments section. Hope that helps.
Actually, it didn't used to be the case. I say that because when I first updated to 10.7, I never had headers set to anything but all at the time, since that's what the default used to be until I switched it to none. Obviously, I bugged it, and it looks like they brought it back. It makes it a lot simpler.

By Felix on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - 18:21

In reply to by Nicolai Svendsen

By the way, when quick looking a message which has multiple attachments, the first attachment is previewed. Hold Option to change the Quick Look button to Slideshow, which then previews the attachments in a singleQuick Look window that displays each attachment in turn.