Delete an Outgoing Mail Server in Mac OS X Mail
Mac OS X Mail 1.3 and later
To delete an outgoing mail server in Mac OS X Mail:
- Select Mail | Preferences... from the menu.
- Go to the Accounts tab.
- Click on the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): drop-down list.
- Select Edit Server List... from the menu.
- Highlight the SMTP server you want to delete.
- Click - (beneath the server list) or Remove Server, depending on the Mac OS X Mail version.
- Now click OK or Done.
- Close the Accounts preferences window.
Mac OS X Mail 1.0-1.2
In versions of Mail prior to 1.3, things look differently. There seems to be no obvious way to remove an SMTP server from the list.
Fortunately, Mac OS X Mail keeps its settings in easy to edit XML files, though. While you can't delete an outgoing mail server from within Mac OS X Mail, you can delete it from the settings manually.
To delete an outgoing mail server from Mac OS X Mail 1.0 to 1.2:
- Close Mac OS X Mail.
- Open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist in TextEdit.
- Search for "DeliveryAccounts".
- Delete the SMTP servers you want to get rid of.
- The host name is in the string following Hostname.
- Make sure you delete all of the account, starting with the <dict> tag and ending with </dict>.
- Close TextEdit saving the file.
- Start Mac OS X Mail.
(Updated January 2012)
