Chapter 6
Working with E-Mail in Mail
Get ready to . . .
Add a Gmail, Yahoo!, or AOL Account
Staying in touch with others by using e-mail is a great way to use your iPad. You can access an existing account using the handy Mail app supplied with your iPad or sign in to your e-mail account using the Safari browser. Using Mail involves adding an existing e-mail account by way of iPad Settings. Then you can use Mail to write, format, retrieve, and forward messages from that account.
Mail offers the capability to mark the messages you’ve read, delete messages, and organize your messages in a small set of folders, as well as a handy search feature. In this chapter, you read all about Mail and its various features.
Add a Gmail, Yahoo!, or AOL Account
1. You can add one or more e-mail accounts, including the e-mail account associated with your iCloud account, using iPad Settings. If you have a Gmail, Yahoo!, or AOL account, iPad pretty much automates the setup. To set up iPad to retrieve messages from your e-mail account at one of these popular providers (Gmail, Yahoo!, iCloud, AOL, or Windows Live Hotmail), first tap the Settings icon on the Home screen.
2. In the Settings dialog, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The settings shown in Figure 6-1 appear.
Figure 6-1
3. Tap Add Account. The options shown in Figure 6-2 appear.
4. Tap iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Windows Live Hotmail. Enter your account information in the form that appears (see Figure 6-3).
5. After iPad takes a moment to verify your account information, you can tap on any on/off button to have Mail, Contacts, Calendars, or Reminders from that account synced with iPad.
6. When you’re done, tap Save. The account is saved and you can now open it using Mail.
Figure 6-2
Figure 6-3
Set Up a POP3 E-Mail Account
1. You can also set up most popular e-mail accounts, such as those available through Earthlink or a cable provider’s service, by obtaining the host name from the provider. To set up an existing account with a provider other than iCloud, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo!, or AOL, you enter the account settings yourself. First, tap the Settings icon on the Home screen.
2. In Settings, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then tap the Add Account button at the top right.
3. On the screen that appears (refer to Figure 6-2), tap Other.
4. On the screen shown in Figure 6-4, tap Add Mail Account.
Figure 6-4
5. In the form that appears (refer to Figure 6-3), enter your name and an account address, password, and description, and then tap Next. iPad takes a moment to verify your account and then returns you to the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars page, with your new account displayed.
If you have a less mainstream e-mail service, you may have to enter the mail server protocol (POP3 or IMAP — ask your provider for this information) and your password. iPad will probably add the outgoing mail server (SMTP) information for you, but if it doesn’t, you may have to enter it yourself. Your Internet service provider (ISP) can provide it to you.
6. To make sure that the Account field is set to On for receiving e-mail, tap the account name. In the dialog that appears, tap the On/Off button for the Mail field and then tap Done to save the setting. You can now access the account through Mail.
If you turn on Calendars in the Mail account settings, any information you’ve put into your calendar in that e-mail account will be brought over into the Calendar app on your iPad and reflected in the Notifications Center (discussed in more detail in Chapter 17).
Open Mail and Read Messages
1. Tap the Mail app icon, located in the Dock on the Home screen (see Figure 6-5). A red circle on the icon indicates the number of unread e-mails in your Inbox.
Figure 6-5
2. In the Mail app, if you’re holding the iPad in portrait orientation, if the Inbox you want isn’t displayed, tap the button to the left of the word Inbox (see Figure 6-6) to display your list of inboxes. Tap the inbox whose contents you want to display Note that in landscape orientation, the Mailboxes/Inbox panel is always displayed; in portrait orientation, you display it by clicking the button to the left of the word Inbox.
Figure 6-6
3. Tap a message to read it. It opens (see Figure 6-7).
4. If you need to scroll to see the entire message, just place your finger on the screen and flick upward to scroll down. You can also swipe right while reading a message to open the Inbox list of messages, and then swipe left to hide the list.
You can tap the Hide button (top-right corner of the message) to hide the address details (the To field) so that more of the message appears on your screen. To reveal the field again, tap the Details button (which becomes the Hide button when details are displayed).
E-mail messages you haven’t read are marked with a blue circle in your Inbox. After you read a message, the blue circle disappears. You can mark a read message as unread, to help remind you to read it again later. With a message open and details about it displayed, tap the Mark link on the right side and then tap Mark as Unread. To flag a message, which places a little flag next to it in your inbox, helping you to spot items of more importance or to read again, tap Mark and then tap Flag.
Figure 6-7
To escape your e-mail now and then (or to avoid having messages retrieved while you’re at a public Wi-Fi hotspot), you can stop retrieval of e-mail by using the Fetch New Data control of Mail in iPad Settings.
Reply To or Forward E-Mail
1. With an e-mail message open (see the previous task), tap the Reply/Forward button, shown in Figure 6-8.
Figure 6-8
2. Take one of the following actions:
• Tap Reply to respond to the sender of the message or Reply All to respond to the sender and any other recipients. The Reply Message form, shown in Figure 6-9, appears. Tap in the message body and enter a message.
• Tap Forward to send the message to somebody else. The form shown in Figure 6-10 appears. Enter a recipient in the To field, and then tap in the message body and enter a message.
3. Tap Send. The message goes on its way.
If you want to copy an address from the To field to the Cc or Bcc field, tap and hold the address and drag it to the other field.
Figure 6-9
Figure 6-10
Create and Send a New Message
1. With Mail open, tap the New Message icon. A blank message form appears (see Figure 6-11).
Figure 6-11
2. Enter a recipient’s address in the To field. If you have saved addresses in Contacts, tap the plus-sign symbol (+) in the Address field to choose an addressee from the Contacts list.
3. If you want to send a copy of the message to other people, enter their addresses in the Cc/Bcc field. If you want to send both carbon copies and blind carbon copies (copies you don’t want other recipients to be aware of), note that when you tap the Cc/Bcc field, two fields are displayed; use the Bcc field to specify recipients for blind carbon copies.
4. Enter the subject of the message in the Subject field.
5. Tap in the message body and type your message.
6. Tap Send.
Mail keeps a copy of all deleted messages for a time in the Trash folder. To view deleted messages, tap the Inbox button and then, in the dialog that appears, tap the Mailboxes button to show all mailboxes. If you have more than one mail account (therefore more than one mailbox), tap the account name in the Accounts list and a list of folders opens. Tap the Trash folder and all deleted messages are displayed.
Format E-mail
1. A new feature that comes with iOS 5 is the capability to apply formatting to e-mail text. You can use bold, underline, and italic formats, and indent text using the Quote Level feature.
2. Tap on the text and choose Select or Select All to select a single word or all the words in the e-mail. Note that if you select a single word, handles appear that you can drag to add adjacent words to your selection.
3. Tap the arrow at the far end of the toolbar that appears.
4. To apply Bold, Italic, or Underline formatting, tap the BIU button (see Figure 6-12).
Figure 6-12
5. In the toolbar that appears (see Figure 6-13) tap Bold, Italics, or Underline to apply formatting.
Figure 6-13
6. To change the indent level, tap at the beginning of a line and then tap the arrow in at the far end of the toolbar. In the toolbar that appears tap Quote Level.
7. Tap Increase to indent the text or Decrease to move indented text further toward the left margin.
To change the minimum size of text in e-mails use the iPad Settings. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then tap the Minimum Font Size setting. Choose from Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large, and Giant in the list that appears.
Search E-Mail
1. Say you want to find all messages from a certain person or containing a certain word in the Subject field. You can use Mail’s handy Search feature to find these e-mails. With Mail open, tap the Inbox button.
2. In the Inbox, tap in the Search field. The onscreen keyboard appears.
3. Enter a search term or name as shown in Figure 6-14.
Figure 6-14
4. Tap the From, To, or Subject tab to view messages that contain the search term in one of those fields, or tap the All tab to see messages in which any of these three fields contains the term. Matching e-mails are listed in the results (refer to Figure 6-14).
You can also use the Spotlight Search feature covered in Chapter 2 to search for terms in the To, From, or Subject lines of mail messages.
To start a new search or go back to the full Inbox, tap the Delete key in the top-right corner of the onscreen keyboard to delete the term or just tap the Cancel button.
Delete E-Mail
1. When you no longer want an e-mail cluttering your Inbox, you can delete it. With the Inbox displayed, tap the Edit button. Circular check boxes are displayed to the left of each message (see Figure 6-15).
Figure 6-15
2. Tap the circle next to the message you want to delete. (You can tap multiple items if you have several e-mails to delete.) A message marked for deletion shows a check mark in the circular check box (refer to Figure 6-15).
3. Tap the Delete button at the bottom of the Inbox dialog. The message is moved to the Trash folder.
You can also delete an open e-mail by tapping the trashcan icon on the toolbar that runs across the top of Mail or swiping left or right on a message displayed in an inbox and tapping the Delete button that appears.
Organize E-Mail
1. You can move messages into any of several predefined folders in Mail (these will vary depending on your e-mail provider and the folders you’ve created on their server). After displaying the folder containing the message you want to move (for example, Trash or Inbox), tap the Edit button. Circular check boxes are displayed to the left of each message (refer to Figure 6-15).
2. Tap the circle next to the message you want to move.
3. Tap the Move button.
4. In the Mailboxes list that appears on the left (see Figure 6-16), tap the folder where you want to store the message. The message is moved.
Figure 6-16
If you receive a junk e-mail, you might want to move it to the Spam or Junk folder if your e-mail account provides one. Then any future mail from the same sender is automatically placed in the Spam or Junk folder.
If you have an e-mail open, you can move it to a folder by tapping the Folder icon on the toolbar along the top. The Mailboxes list displays; tap a folder to move the message.