# Get Started

Opera's news and email client is designed for speed, elegance, and user friendliness.

Opera Mail automatically sorts all mail you receive by date. It keeps messages in a single database, allowing them to be displayed in multiple views without copying or moving.

## What you need to get started

To use Opera Mail, all you need is an email address and service that offers IMAP or POP access to your inbox, for example, FastMail.FM, Gmail, Yahoo!, or AOL.

Webmail Service | IMAP | POP
--- | --- | ---
AOL Mail | Yes | Yes
FastMail | Yes | Yes
Gmail | Yes | Yes
MobileMe | Yes | Yes
Windows Live Hotmail | No | Yes
Yahoo! Mail | No | Yes

Providers that offer neither POP nor IMAP access are generally not supported, although there are a number of third-party utilities that you could try, listed below. Note that Opera Mail does not offer support for these.

- YPOPs! for Yahoo! Mail
- IzyMail for Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Windows Live Mail, Lycos Mail, AIM Mail and others
- FreePOPs which supports all of the above and many more through custom modules

## Make Opera Mail your default client

To make Opera your default email client on Mac, take the following steps:

1. Open Apple Mail (Mail.app).
2. In Apple Mail preferences, set the default email reader option to Opera Mail.

## Import messages and set up Opera Mail

Follow this procedure to set up Opera Mail and import messages, contact information, and settings from other email clients:

1. Select Opera Mail > Mail Accounts...Tools > Mail Accounts.... The "Manage Accounts" window appears.
2. Click “Add...” button. The "New Account Wizard" window appears.
3. Select "Import email" from the window and click "Next >".
4. Select the email client you wish to import information from.
5. Select which account to import into; choose “New account” to import to a fresh account.
6. Select whether to import settings, contacts, messages, or a combination.
7. Click “Import” to start importing.

Imported messages are treated as follows:

- The Mail panel contains your email accounts. Toggle the panels by pressing `F4`, selecting Opera Mail > Toolbars > Panel View > Toolbars > Panels, or clicking the arrow located at the bottom left of the window.
- Opera Mail combines all your imported accounts under the category heading “All Messages”.
- Your individual email accounts' folder tree is listed under its own category header.
- Messages in your old Outbox, Sent, Drafts, and Trash folders are in the corresponding views.
- All old incoming messages (from your inbox and folder tree) appear in the Received view.

## Set up a new account

Follow this procedure to import messages, contact information and settings from an online account, such as an existing FastMail.FM, Gmail, Yahoo! or AOL account:

1. Select Opera Mail > Mail Accounts...Tools > Mail Accounts.... The Manage Accounts window appears.
2. Click the “Add...” button. The “New Account Wizard” window appears.
3. Select “Email” from the window and click “Next >”.
4. Type your name into the “Real name” field. This will establish what name recipients will see on emails you send them.
5. Type the email address of the account you wish to import into the “Email address” field.
6. Optionally, you may wish to include your organization in the “Organization” field.
7. Click “Next >”.
8. Enter your login information for the webmail account you wish to import.
9. Type your login or username in the “Login name” field, including the web address of the account, for example someone@example.org.
10. Type your password, provided by the service provider for this account, in the “Password” field.
11. Select the account type associated with this account by choosing between “Regular email (POP)” or “IMAP”. If unsure about your account settings, check the help section of your service provider.
12. Click “Finish”.

Messages that are not already on your computer will then be downloaded from the mail server.