This page contains a walk through of the preference panes for Mac OS 10.2 Mail app what a rule (email filter) looks like.

• To access the Mail preferences click on the Mail menu and choose Preferences.



• The Accounts view is the default pane. This pane allows you to do the following:
1. View the number of accounts.
2. Change the time interval for checking new mail.
3. Change the alert sound for new messages.
4. Add a new account.
5. Edit an existing account.
6. Remove an existing account.
• If you want to check the settings on an existing account:
1. Click once on the account to highlight it.
2. Click the Edit button.



• After clicking the Edit button you will see the Account Information tab.
• Account Information is the first of three tabs for editing an existing acccount.
• Check to ensure that the account information is correct.



• This is the Special Mailboxes tab.
• This tab controls the Sent, Junk, and Trash folders.



• This is the Advanced tab. There are some things to check in this pane.
1. Ensure Enable this account is checked.
2. Ensure Include when automatically checking for new mail is checked.
3. Change Remove copy from server to Right Away.

Click OK to return to the Accounts window.



• The Fonts & Colors panes contains font settings and the color layers of quoted text when replying to email.
• These settings don't usually need to be changed.



• The Viewing pane controls how messages look in Mail.



• The Composing panes controls:
• The format of the messages (text or HTML).
• Spell checking.
• Auto complete of email addresses (including interfacing with LDAP server).
• Replying using quoted text.



• The Signatures pane is used to:
• Add and Edit signatures to "sign" emails.
• Duplicate or Remove a signature.
• Select a default signature.



• The Rules pane is used to:
• Create email rules, also known as filters.
• The "Junk" mail filter is already created. It learns very fast to filter out junk mail.
• You can also arrange the order of the Rules to make filtering more effective depending on your needs.



• Click Add Rule to create a new rule. The image below shows what the Rule criteria pane looks like.