Getting email in 2 places; handling autofill on Macs

August 14, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Q. I have one email address and two home computers. Whichever computer logs on first is the first to get email. How can I get email to go to both computers regardless of which logs on first?

J.A., Havelock, N.C.

A. The details will be different depending on the email program you use, but Paul Rosenberg of Love Your Computer in Chapel Hill, N.C., offers some general advice.

Go to the settings of the mail account on each computer and select the following two options. “Leave mail on server” will ensure that both computers receive all new mail. “Delete from server when deleted on computer” will ensure that the mail server does not fill up with already-read mail.

Verizon Wireless provides an exhaustive list of instructions to help you “leave mail on server” on nearly any platform. Visit www.tinyurl.com/geeks-server/ to find yours.

Q. Great advice on autofill for PCs, Anne, that I will definitely use on my Dell PC. What about dealing with autofill addresses on a Mac? I have one of those as well and have the same autofill issues. Is there a way to remove the incorrect addresses there as well?

R.H.

A. Bob Chandler, of Raleigh, N.C., IT company MacVantage, provides guidance on dealing with autofill in the Safari Web browser and in Mail (sometimes called Apple Mail).

In Safari, you control autofill settings through the autofill preferences, he said.

Open Safari and choose “Preferences” from the Safari menu. In the Preferences, click on “AutoFill.”

You’ll see three options. “Using info from my Address Book card” is how Safari fills in your personal information on a Web form. If you click the “Edit” button, it will take you to your card in the address book and let you add or change information.

“User names and passwords” stores information for websites where you have stored your login credentials. Clicking the “Edit” button will let you remove the information for a particular website or for all the sites. You can’t edit the username or password; you can only remove it.

The final option, “Other forms,” stores website-specific information. The “Edit” button here also just lets you remove the information but not edit it.

In Mail, Macs autofill email addresses for you from two sources: the address book where you have stored people’s email addresses and people you have emailed in the past, whom Mail calls “Previous recipients.”

These previous recipients can become a source of problems. If you have mistyped an email address in the past or someone’s email address has changed, Mail may still be autofilling with the erroneous or old email address.

To deal with “Previous Recipients,” open Mail. Choose “Previous Recipients” from the Window menu. This will bring up a list of people you have previously emailed. You can’t edit addresses here unless they are in your address book, but you can remove incorrect entries.

If a small address-card icon appears next to an entry, this means that the contact is in your address book. Double-clicking on the icon will bring up the card so you can edit it.

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2011, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.).

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