what is the correct way to set up your email accounts in your desktop computer?

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Level 1

10 points

what is the correct way to set up your email accounts in your desktop computer?

In an effort to resolve all sorts of strange behavior taking place with my email, I've been looking into the settings for icloud and Mail, the app. Is there a difference between the "mail, contacts &calendars" settings in system preferences of your desktop computer and the actual account settings in Mail, the app?

More specifically, do I only enter my individual email accounts in the account settings for Mail, and only the icloud settings for my me account in the system preferences section?

I hope I'm making sense because I need help desperately.

Thanks in advance

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 16GB RAM 2TB HD 3.4 GHzIntel Corei7

Posted on Jul 24, 2013 1:59 AM

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Answer 1

AdriHD

Level 1

11 points

Jul 24, 2013 2:07 AM in response to Jose Arroyo2

You need to do this through System Prefs rather than the Mail App.

Mail itself will, strangely enough only deal with mail and nothing but mail! 😀

If you go though

System Preferences -> Mail aAccounts etc... -> Add/remove

That is where you can set up their existence. This includes all calendar, notes etc... accounts.

Just to add, if you're new to apple:

Click on:  logo, top left of the screen,

System Preferences in the menu

In there you'll find mail etc....

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Answer 2

Jose Arroyo2 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 24, 2013 2:19 AM in response to AdriHD

Embarrassing as it is to admit, I have been a long time Apple user, but in the past couple of months my email has started to disappear, sometimes right in front of my eyes the moment it arrives to the inbox.

In any case, are you saying that I should not add my different email accounts in the Mail app account settings? How would I go about assigning email signatures if I only use the system preferences settings?

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Jul 24, 2013 2:43 PM in response to Jose Arroyo2

Apple support article on account setup for Mail.

Account Setup

When I set mine up I did the accounts in Mail and they then showed up in System Preferences. There is no way in System Preferences/Mail, Contacts & Calendars to set up the server settings for example.

You can set your signatures in Mail/Preferences/Signatures.

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Answer 4

AdriHD

Level 1

11 points

Aug 12, 2013 10:16 PM in response to Jose Arroyo2

To answer the OP's original question.

Both the System Preferences -> Mail, Contacts and Calendars AND the Mail.app -> Accounts route both take you to the system preferences pane.

Just so you can confirm it, try both methods to get to the accounts list, and at the top left of the particular window you'll see 'Show All' which takes you back to System Prefs.

I think it's just apples way of getting everyone to the right place i.e. those who are use to using system prefs and those who are used to setting up accounts in their mail apps 🙂

That's good old apple and their user friendly interfaces for you 🙂

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