Adding Various Mail Accounts

Question

I just got my MacBook and I am trying to figure out the application Mail...
I have an educatino e-mail account set up through my university and I was wondering if I might be able to link that account to Mail... When I go to my education account, I have to type a user name and a password and then I acces my mail. Because of that, will I not be able to sync Mail to that account?
I also would like to add my Yahoo! account as well as my AOL account..
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks-
Nick

Answer 1

Mail is a standard POP & IMAP mail client. You can set up in Mail any mail account that allows either POP or IMAP access, but there is no way for anyone here to know what the specific settings are supposed to be for your education account.
Instructions for setting up an AOL account in Mail, for example, can be found here:
http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/imap/applemail.html
The instructions are for Mail 1.3, and are somewhat outdated, but they can be used for Mail 2.x as well noting that the Special Mailboxes preference pane is called Mailbox Behaviors in Mail 2.x, and that, if I’m not mistaken, you can enable SSL if you wish.
You may also want to read the more general guide the above article is part of (which is also somewhat outdated, but still useful to understand how AOL’s IMAP access works):
Accessing the AOL Mail System using IMAP - An Unofficial Guide
Instead of the settings shown in the article for Trash, you may want to turn ON Move deleted messages to the Trash, but in that case you should turn OFF Store deleted messages on the server.
AOL doesn’t let IMAP clients such as Mail to create or manage mailboxes at the root level of the account directory, only as subfolders of Saved -- that’s why you must turn OFF Store messages on the server for all the mailboxes in Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors, so that they are stored locally instead.
Alternatively to manually setting up the AOL account in Mail, you may use AOL Service Assistant, which also provides assistance for using other AOL services in Mac OS X.
Finally, note that AOL automatically purges your mail from the Inbox after some time. There is nothing you can do about it other than moving/copying your messages somewhere else to avoid losing them. You can create custom local “On My Mac” mailboxes in Mail, for example, and move/copy your mail there manually or set up rules to do it automatically.