.Mac Account
Apple's .mac account can be set up as either an IMAP or POP account. To understand the difference between an IMAP and POP account visit the Glossary.
You can access you .mac IMAP account through POP mail, so that the mail will be downloaded to the inbox. Also see Changing .Mac Mail from IMAP to POP
Step 1: Create a POP account 
Select IMAP from Account type popup if you wish to set up the account as an IMAP account. More on setting up IMAP accounts here.
Step 2: Create Account...be sure to check authentication
Option: In the settings for your .Mac account, enter "smtp.mac.com" as the SMTP server and, after clicking "Click here for advanced sending options", set the SMTP port to 587. You'll also have to turn on authentication for SMTP in that same "advanced sending options".
1. Click "Click here for advanced sending options"
2. Check the following boxes.
[X] SMTP service...
[X] Override server... AND enter 587 as the port
[X] SMTP server requires...
(X) Use same settings...
Note: You can also use your own ISP SMTP for sending. This works on any additional account like dot Mac, yahoo, pair.com, gmail etc.
Now when you download your mail, it will go to your Inbox or folder if you use the MLM or rules. Just remember the mail is deleted from the server and now resides on your computer.
Note: If you start using mac.com as a POP account, you may end up removing all mail from the server as you download it. That could be a good thing if you have only one computer - you'll never fill up the server mailbox again. If you have more than one computer and want to access mail from both of them, make sure you leave the setting "Leave mail on server" on Options page of the account checked. If you ever switch back to IMAP you'd start off from an empty server.
mac.com FAQs
- View .mac mail in Inbox
- Dialogue box to permanently delete the message
- Import Mail's Smart folder
- Share Entourage database with laptop and desktop via dot mac
- Use alias accounts
1) Is there a way to view both my .Mac and POP accounts in the Inbox? By default, Entourage separates them and I have to click on each mailbox to see the mail.
You presumably have your .mac account set up as IMAP. An IMAP account shows up as a separate icon in the folder window. Just create a account as described above. Remove the IMAP account from the 'Send & Receive All' schedule, you can leave the account intact and just collapse the server icon in the folder list - that way, it will always be available at the click of a mouse if you ever need the IMAP functionality.
2. When I try to delete a message, I get an annoying dialogue box asking me to confirm whether I want to permanently delete the message. This is a pain. Is there any way to change this so the message is immediately deleted?
This is a function of an IMAP account. If you don't delete mail, your mail box could quickly fill up. Use the option to create a POP account described in FAQ 1 above. A POP account deletes the mail on the server when it is downloaded unless you specifically select to leave mail on server under the Options tab.
3) How do you import Apple's Mail Smart folders?
First, Mail can't export smart mail folders, so you have to move the mail into a normal folder. This folder can then be dragged to the desktop to form an 'MBOX' export. Unfortunately, Mail's MBOX format is not the same as an industry standard MBOX file (which Entourage would have been able to read without any problem!). Mail creates an MBOX *Folder*. Inside this folder is another folder called "Messages" which will contain all the emails as .emlx files. Again, this is a non-standard file type, although in this case the file format is OK. Just rename all these emlx files to end in .eml and they can be opened in Entourage (or dragged into a folder)
See directions for converting .emlx to .eml here. Easy Way: Download "emlx to mbox converter"
4) A friend told me that I could have my Entourage database saved to dot Mac and share that db with my laptop and desktop. Has anyone heard of this? If yes, how would you do it?
It's possible in theory, but not really practical.
The database rapidly grows to many hundreds of megabytes, even several gigabytes. Even if you managed to maintain the database small enough so it would fit in the space allowed by dot mac, working with files that size over the slow dot mac network connection would result in all sorts of errors – probably, ultimately, terminal.
You could certainly NOT let two machines access the same data as the database is not designed for multiple users and has no record or transaction locking built in. One machine could be altering data that is being moved by another machine – disaster in very short order!
One option is to take advantage of .Mac's IMAP service. IMAP essentially synchronizes your email client (in this case Entourage) with your Mailbox on .Mac. For example: if you create a folder on one computer it will sync up to .Mac and then that will sync with your second computer. This is essentially the same thing you're asking to do.
5) I can't figure out how to use the alias accounts I have set up under my mac.com account in Entourage.
I use Entourage with 3 different email accounts. The "reply from account sent to" feature doesn't work in Entourage. No matter what I set in the preferences all email coming to different accounts get sent a reply from my default account - which I don't want. Naturally I would like to reply from the account the email was sent to.
You can send messages through these alias accounts, but note that since your alias only redirects to your main account, you cannot configure Entourage to reply via the alias e-mail address which the original message was sent to.
.Mac rejects the alias address when trying to send
Michel Bintener, MVP posted these instructions on the Entourage newsgroup concerning alias addresses:
The alias has to be set up in a slightly different way. First of all, there's no need to specify any incoming server information; any mail sent to your alias will be redirected automatically to your main identity, so if you fill in the incoming server information, you should normally receive duplicates of any e-mail messages sent to the alias account.
Here's a detailed configuration for the alias account settings in Tools>Accounts: enter your name, then the alias e-mail address. You can leave the "Receiving mail" portion blank. In the "Sending mail" section, enter smtp.mac.com, then click on the button that says "Click here for advanced sending options". In that new pop-up window, activate "SMTP server requires authentication", then select "Log on using" and enter your *regular* .Mac e-mail address, followed by your password.
That's the answer to your question: .Mac rejects sending messages from your alias account since the alias account, strictly speaking, does not exist on the .Mac servers. Instead, you always send messages through your main account, and that's why you need to make the modifications I've just mentioned.