Marking spam in "Mail"

Hi all, another newbie question... If I were using yahoo webmail, I can put a check mark by the "offending email" and then click the spam button. I never have to accidentally open said email. Now with using "MAIL" - there seems to be no way to safely mark the email as spam (actually not seeing a spam marking in any way, shape, or form). So do I need to give up on MAIL for yahoo and stick with webmail - or is there a good way to do this without opening/clicking on the bad email? Thanks in advance you guys!

What is unsafe about clicking on the email and then hitting the "Spam" button? Apple Mail is very good at learning what's spam and would in the future move similar emails into the spam folder right away.

Well, after a "lifetime" of PC's - we're more or less "trained" to NOT open the mail if you know it's spam. Where is the spam button to mark the mail with on the program IF I do have to open the mail? I was hoping for something more like the webmail where you can click multiple checkboxes for various functions, but I suppose just using the cmd button to select multiple messages would work as well (except for the case of spam if you only have 1 spam at the time). Is there something to mark it as spam if you don't open it up? Sorry for the stupid questions, it's a "newbie thing"!

The way I'd do it is to select multiple emails in your Apple Mail by holding the command key and mouse click on the ones you need to mark as spam. The good thing about this process is that you con't actually open the emails - Mail won't display multiple emails in the preview window.

The "Mark as Spam" button is the one with the hand/fist on it and the thumb pointing down. With the spam email selected you can also go to the menu bar: Message -> Mark -> As Junk Mail

There will be a separate folder below your inbox holding the spam messages. When marking emails as spam, Apple Mail learns what to consider as spam and over time move emails into the folder on its own. I usually check that folder once a week to make sure nothing important made it in there and delete them permanently.

Apple Mail won't just start an app or install anything when opening a malicious email. Therefore I don't think it's an issue to select a message and mark it as spam.

On a second thought (I just tried this): You can also have a general email selected (something that's not spam) and instead of "left clicking" on a spam email, use the right click right away. You can then select Mark -> As Junk Mail from the context menu without actually displaying the email contents in the preview window. That might be the solution you are looking for

Welcome to the Mac family!

The best thing is to not open up the mail. Just highlight it and move it to spam. that way the mail was never opened up, and the sender did not know you opened it up, so they will send less of it.

If you double-click the dividing bar between the list of emails and the display window, the display window will collapse. At that point you now have to DOUBLE-CLICK an email to open it. This makes it very easy to select and move a message without accidentally opening it.

Thank you all for the wonderful ideas. Now I can do my mail without the anxiety of the sender having access to knowing my email address is valid as SF alluded to. I appreciate all your wonderful help. This rookie is getting a bit less intimidated by my beautiful MBP! When our house sells, hubby will be getting a MBP also - we're both OVER the multitude of problems that follow PC's around.