R4L/Services/Hosting/Email/Config/MacMail

Configuring my Mac Mail Client for IMAP

We recommend using IMAP instead of POP for accessing your incoming email. Pop configurations will often delete mail from the server, making it unavailable to other devices or computers you would use to access your email. With IMAP, you can access your mail using your computer and smartphone, and keep mail syncronized between devices.

Important note: In the description below, we use you@yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com as your email address and domain name. You need to substitute of course your real email address and domain name.

About Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): In the instructions below, we are not enabling SSL. If you wish to connect to the incoming IMAP and outgoing SMTP server using encryption, then leave these enabled. There will not be an SSL certificate on the server to match mail.yourdomain.com or imap.yourdomain.com, so your mail program will warn you that you are connecting without a certificate. Confirm the exception when this happens.

1. Open up you Mac Mail program, and click on the "File" menu, then click on "Add Account".

   

2. Enter your name, email address and password for your email account and then click "Continue".

   

3. Select "IMAP" from the "Account Type" drop-down and enter a description in the "Description" field. Enter the Incoming Mail Server as mail.yourdomain.com or your server name (ahsX.R4L.com) where X is a number. Enter your full email address in the "User Name" field, then enter your account password in the "Password" field. Click "Continue".

   

4. Type in a description for the "Outgoing Mail Server" and enter your "Outgoing Mail Server" which should be smtp.yourdomain.com or your server name (ahsX.R4L.com) where X is a number. Leave "Use only this server" selected and select "Use Authentication". Enter your full email address in the "User Name" field, then enter your account password in the "Password" field. Click "Continue".

   

5. Click "Create".

   

6. Click on the "Mail" menu, then click on "Preferences". Holding down the command key plus comma is a convenient shortcut to the applications preferences.

   

7. Click the "Account Information" tab and then click on the "Outgoing Mail Server" drop-down and select "Edit Server List...".

   

8. For now, unselect "Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)". Click "OK". You can re-enable this later if you wish.

   

9. Click on the "Advanced" tab and unselect "Use SSL". For the SMTP (outgoing mail) connection, set the Server Port to 587 and save your changes. For the IMAP (incoming mail) connection, check that the Use SSL optoin in unchecked and that the Server Port is set to 143. Save your changes, and your Mac Mail is now configured and ready to use.