My work has just set up external access to its IMAP server, so that I can work as easily from home as the office. Excellent.

The external access is secured with a self-signed SSL certificate. Unless you import the certificate into your Keychain you get endless annoying error messages. And importing it wasn’t as easy as you might expect.

In the end, I offered to write up a walk-through for other Mac users in the College, and I’m posting it here too. It’s all documented in Apple Mail’s help file under “I’m getting a certificate-related error message” but visual learners will appreciate the pictures.

How to accept a self-signed SSL certificate in Mail.app permanently (with screenshots) after the jump.

(more…)