As we reported last week some folks have had problems with Mail’s multiple e-mail account support.
With multiple POP3 accounts it’s pretty common to get a “Cannot access mailbox xxx.mbx – it is locked by user xxxxxxx” message. Thankfully, there’s a simple workaround.
Make sure each POP account dumps new mail into its own mailbox, not to a pooled inbox. This is a bit clumsy at first, but you can adapt to it. Since doing so, Russ Harlan, who recommended the workaround, said he hasn’t had a single reoccurrence of the “locked by user” message. He added that Apple acknowledges the bug and promises a fix in a future release. Meanwhile, Harlan has high hopes for Mail since it’s a Cocoa application.
“I think Mail and the AddressBook hold tremendous promise,” he said. “I’m willing to sacrifice a little functionality right now for the power of Cocoa. Apple seems committed to a simple and elegant solution that can supersede Outlook Express.”
Harlan also suggests that Mac OS X users look into Mail’s excellent “Find” feature.
“Like many others, I imagine, I was at first disconcerted by all the ‘indexing’ that seemed to be going on in Mail,” he said. “But take a mailbox chock full of hundreds of messages and do a ‘Find All’ (which mean it includes content.) I have never seen a quicker search. Entourage doesn’t come close.”
Kyle D’Addario concurs with the solution. To give each POP account a different Inbox (done from Prefs -> Accounts -> Edit -> Advanced). Where you’re given the option of “Downloading mail from this account into:” folder, pick a different folder.
“Mail will then move the new folder to the top of the Mailbox window, give it a ‘blessed’ Inbox icon, and the locked mailbox problem is avoided,” he said.
What’s more, in Wednesday’s ” Mac OS X Diary,” I lamented my inability to save a file as a PDF from the Print Center, as you’re supposed to be able to do. However, lots of clever MacCentral readers have already figured out the workaround. Here’s how:
1. Go to Print under file.
2. Click on Preview (your Mac will then process the document).
3. Preview should now be the active application. Proceed to the File menu and select Save As PDF, then choose where you want to save to.
“This has worked for me with both online multiple pages to save as a PDF and with AppleWorks 6.1 preview 2,” Mark Fosgate told MacCentral. “I’ve demoed this for people at CompUSA, as well as here at home.”
Try it. It works. Thanks to Fosgate and the dozens of others who helped solve this problem.