Getting rid of mac email

[Eliza]

I used mac email lightly for a while but do not want to use it now or ever.

My question is: How on earth do I get rid of whatever it is that keeps the mac email address as automated email? For example, just clicking on "send email" anyplace will open mac email again with sign in request.

I went to Accounts and changed that to my yahoo email addy. I have looked all over for an hour and I cannot find anything that truly gets rid of mac email. It just keeps coming back.

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

 

[karazelle]

Hi,

when you click on links to send email in different programs, the "default mail application" opens. Normally, that is Apple Mail and it probably is configured with your "Mac email" (which I guess is your MobileMe trial). You can open Apple Mail and then in Mail -> Preferences remove the Apple Mail account. You should also go to System Preferences and MobileMe and remove the username and password from there.

The system Mail preference (which you set in Apple Mail under Mail -> Preferences and Default mail application) is valid for actual programs you install that register as email programs, such as Microsoft Entourage of Microsoft Office, Thunderbird, Eudora, Opera etc.
The problem with Yahoo Mail, Google Mail and Hotmail is that they are pure webservices. The operating system doesn't "know about them" in a way that makes it able to send things to the web service (like contents of the mail, subject, attachments, to-field etc). What you usually need to do to make Yahoo mail your email is either to setup Yahoo mail inside Apple Mail client or another mail client of your choice, or download a proxy program that pretends to be Yahoo Mail and then make that the default. There is a program called Yahoo Mailer out there but it seemed old to me and I haven't had the chance to test it.

Update: Turns out that Yahoo Mailer is universal binary (works on intel macs). Here is the link: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14601

Don't delete Mail in /Applications though. The program itself is practical to keep around and I think software updates expects to see it.

 

[eulogos]

I have this same problem, which drives me crazy at times.
I don't know how to do the things you said I have to do to fix it.

I really resent that when I agreed to that free trial...after refusing three times to BUY the service... they installed this email as the default and left it that way at the end of the trial. Doing things like this does not earn customer good will! And I will probably be stuck with this problem as long as I have the computer, unless I manage to get to an Apple store and get the Geek squad to do it for me. But it is quite a trip for me to an Apple store, and it would probably mean using up a vacation day for that purpose.

Can you post more step by step instructions for doing it myself?
I have a gmail email address right now.
How would I set that up "inside' the Apple mail?
Please explain at a really basic level.
Thank you
Susan Peterson

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Hi eulogos, in future it's much better to start a new thread asking for help rather than resurrecting one from the crypt, no matter how relevant it is to your issue. In your case you could have linked to this old thread in your new thread.

About your question, it is so easy these days but I'm not sure which version of Mac OS X you are using .... I can't speak for early versions as I'm using Lion and have just recently configured Mac Mail to fetch my Gmail & Hotmail mail.

There may be additional steps required for earlier Mac OS X versions but in Mail ver 5, just go to Preferences and in the Accounts column to the left of the window, just click the + sign at the bottom and fill in the details of the specific account.

ie: for Gmail, just fill in your Gmail address + password, then click 'create' and Mac Mail should then automatically find your Gmail account and fill in the server information fields for you ...


Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

The same deal goes for Hotmail accounts, just add a new account as per above, and fill in the relevant details and Mac Mail will do the rest ...

Once again, I can't confirm that if you have an earlier Mac Mail version from Leopard etc that this won't require a little more work, but it still is possible, you might or might not need a 3rd party plug-in .... let us know if you need any further help.