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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