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Some .Mac users have it, some don't. We're talking about the Web-side Junk mail folder. If you don't have it and have been banging your mouse against the wall trying to get it in there, like we were on Friday, we think this how-to will be sort of like digital aspirin.

The first thing you'll want to do is determine whether or not you've got the Junk mail folder in there to begin with. So, log into your .Mac account and click "Mail" and login.

Once you login, you should see the new .Mac Mail UI. It looks a lot like OS X's Mail.app. If you see the familiar brown Junk mail folder in the right-side pane, as it appears in the image at right, then you don't need to do anything more. You've got it. But we do suggest keeping an eye on it.

Watch your your existing .Mac Mail Junk folder, if it doesn't populate with messages then you might need to come back to this page and follow the rest of the tutorial.

If you don't see the Junk mail folder in the left-side pane we've got the sure-fire solution right here.

First, launch Mail.app. You'll need to do this even if you don't use Mail.app on the Mac your working on. Once you've launched Mail.app click on Apple-menu > Mail > Preferences.

Once you're in Mail.app's Preferences, click on Junk Mail. You should see the following options:

Next, put a check mark in the "Enable junk mail filtering" checkbox. Then, under "When junk mail arrives" put a check mark in the "Move it to the Junk mailbox (Automatic)" radio button. This will active the Junk folder on your Mail.app client.

Now, still in Preferences, click on the "Accounts" icon. Note: if you have more than one .Mac email address you'll have to repeat the next steps for each email account.

After clicking on "Accounts" you should see all of your configured email accounts in the left-side pane and three tabs to the right: Account Information, Mailbox behaviors, and Advanced. You'll now click on "Mailbox Behaviors."

After clicking on "Mailbox Behaviors" you will have arrived on the final step necessary to get the beloved Junk mail folder to appear on .Mac Mail. Where you see "Store junk messages on server" you'll put a check in that box by clicking the box once:

Now go back to the left-side accounts pane to select another .Mac email address if you have one. You will be asked to save the changes, so click the "Save" button.

If you don't have another .Mac email address you will simply click the red "close" button on the upper left side of the Preferences window, and at that point you will be asked to save your changes. You will, of course, click "Save."

At this point you've told Mail.app to sync Junk messages to .Mac Mail. It might take a short period of time for the Junk mail folder to appear online, but it will show up. We had some luck getting the Junk folder to appear by Synchronizing accounts in Mail.app. To do this, simply go back to Mail.app, click on Apple Menu > Mailbox > Synchronize All Accounts (see image at right).

Synchronization happens in the background, but you can monitor the progress by watching the Activity viewer. Access this window by clicking "Apple+0 on your keyboard, or by clicking Apple Menu > Window > Activity Viewer.

Logging in and out of .Mac Mail will also help to give the Junk mail folder a kick start, but we can't say whether or not this is necessary. Since it's so easy to do we recommend it doing so.

That's it. You should at this point have your Junk mail folder in .Mac Mail. Give it a few hours to begin syncing with Mail.app if you keep Mail.app open on another Mac.

Finally, we're not quite sure whether or not dragging junk mail to the Junk folder in .Mac Mail actually updates the junk mail profile used on Mail.app. With that in mind, we tend to mark spam in Mail.app rather than dragging these messages to .Mac Mail's Junk folder.

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Don't miss the How to Buy a Macintosh Guide. Save money on your next Apple Computer purchase.

Sure. You don't have to live with the super-long http://homepage.mac.com/yourDotMaclogin/. That's unwieldy and hard to share, but YourNewDomain.com, that's easy to remember easy to share, and easy to forward to your current (or new) DotMac account.

When you use a custom domain that is forwarded to your DotMac account you can put that URL on your business card, calling card, email and message board signature, whatever. When that URL is entered in a browser it will take you to the page on your DotMac account you specify.

So, the first thing you need to do is find a domain if you don't have one. GoDaddy is a sponsor of Apple-Project, so we recommend using Godaddy to register your new domain. You can use any registrar you choose, just make sure they offer free domain name forwarding before you sign up.

As for GoDaddy, we've been using them for about five years and don't have any complaints at all. Registering domains is fast and inexpensive, and Godaddy makes managing your domain fairly painless. Give them a try, check below to see if the domain you're looking for is available:


The next step is to swing by our original How-To Forward Any Domain to your DotMac Account. It's on our old site, but we plan to revamp the how-to and post it here, on the new and improved Apple-Project.com site. In the meantime, register a domain and forward it to your DotMac account, it's easy breezy.

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Don't miss the How to Buy a Macintosh Guide. Save money on your next Apple Computer purchase.

Like the new look? Let us know.

With Apple-Project's new paint job, we got a little nostalgic for the old content. Not that it's out of date, it's just not built into the new site. Not yet.

So if you've arrived looking for some of our most popular How-To's, here's a quick rundown (they're also in the sidebar):

How to Buy An Apple Macintosh and save big!
How to Really save 25%-50% on DotMac.
How to Really save 15%-50% on AppleCare Plans.
How to Check Mail.app storage status with just a few clicks right from your Mac.
How to Add Adsense to your iBlog blog
How to Add Adsense to your iWeb blog
How to Painlessly add your iChat status on your blog
How to Make iWeb your .mac homepage
How to Easily and inexpensively (how's about $7/year sound?) forward a domain to .Mac.
How to Customize .Mac homepage, that is, if you're still using homepage.
How to Integrate Google Maps into Address Book application.
How to Easily host ebay images w/ .Mac. Free.
How to Create an easy-to read serial number in Address Book application.

There's more where that came from (click here). We're also going to pretty-up all of our how-to's and add them to this site. Plus, we've got plans to do a bunch of new Apple how-to's so stay tuned, bookmark Apple-Project and tell your friends and your pets, etc.


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Don't miss the How to Buy a Macintosh Guide. Save money on your next Apple Computer purchase.