Home
Index

# Using the Advanced pane in preferences

Use the Advanced pane of the Accounts pane in Mail preferences to set options related to turning on an account, retrieving messages, and keeping content for offline viewing.

| Use this | To |
--- | --- | --- | ---
| Enable this account | Make an account active or inactive. If you disable an account, Mail considers it to be offline; all of the account's mailboxes and messages are hidden from the Mail viewer window, and account activity stops, until you enable the account again. |
| Include when automatically checking for new mail | Specify whether you want Mail to automatically retrieve messages for this account from the incoming mail server. This option can be useful for excluding message retrieval, such as if you have an account you use only occasionally. |
| Compact mailboxes automatically | Specify whether to compact (or automatically permanently erase) deleted messages from a mailbox or to keep them until you manually erase them. This option is available only for IMAP accounts that do not move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox (as specified on the Mailbox Behaviors pane). |
| Keep copies of messages for offline viewing | Specify content you want to keep copies of on your computer so you can access it when you're not connected to the mail server. This option is available only for IMAP accounts. It's recommended that you retain the default selection ("All messages and their attachments") so that you have the ability to search entire messages. |
| Remove copy from server after retrieving a message | Specify when you want to delete received messages from the mail server. This option is available for POP accounts only. You can deselect this option if you need to temporarily access messages from more than one location or computer. |
| Prompt me to skip messages over x KB | Specify the maximum size of messages you want to retrieve automatically, such as 100 KB. This option is useful if you want to retrieve large messages later or when you have a fast connection to the mail server. This option is available for POP accounts only. |
| IMAP Path Prefix | Specify the location of your mailboxes on an IMAP server. Use this option only as directed by your system administrator. |
| Port and Use SSL | Specify the port number to use to send messages, and whether to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to provide a secure connection to the mail server. Use these options only as directed by your system administrator. |
| Authentication | Specify how you want to authenticate your identify to the server. Use this field only as directed by your system administrator. |
| Domain Name | Specify the domain name for the NTLM (NT LAN Manager) authentication method. Use this option only as directed by your system administrator. |
| Use IDLE command if the server supports it | Specify that the server should tell Mail when new messages have arrived, instead of having Mail query the server at regular intervals. This is a more efficient way to check for new messages. This option is available for IMAP accounts only. |

### Related Topics

Leaving large messages on a POP server

Viewing messages on multiple computers