Handling Notifications and Email Messages

When you have email accounts set up properly, as described in Chapter 6, “Setting Up Email,” you can use your iPad’s Mail app to send and receive email messages. You can even send email messages from other apps that support the capability, such as the Notes app.

In the Notes app, you can send a note that you create as an email message, making it easy to share items such as meeting notes. You can also email the notes to yourself for further work before you forward them to others.

---

Sending Email Messages

When you have one or more email accounts configured on your iPad, you’re ready to exchange messages with friends and family and with all kinds of companies, service providers, and others.

It’s easy to create new messages, and your iPad even provides a customizable signature for your messages. The default custom signature is Sent from my iPad, but you can easily change it, as described later in the section “Customizing Your Email Signature.”

  LET ME TRY IT

Creating and Sending an Email Message

Follow these steps to create and send an email message:

1. On the Home screen, tap Mail to launch the Mail app.

If the iPad is in landscape (horizontal) mode, the Inbox for your default email account displays. If it’s in portrait (vertical) mode, tap the Inbox button to see your messages, as shown in Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1. In portrait mode, tap the Inbox button to see incoming email messages.

2. If you have multiple email accounts configured and you want to send the email from a different account and continue using that account, tap the button with your account name in the Inbox. If you want to use the account that’s currently chosen, skip to Step 4.

The Mail app displays the Mailboxes screen.

3. Tap the account you want to use to send the message.

The Mail app now displays the Inbox for that account.

4. Tap the New Message icon.

A new message appears onscreen, as shown in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2. You have lots of options with new messages.

5. Tap in the To field.

A plus symbol (+) appears on the right side of the To field.

6. Enter the recipients. You can type the email address directly, either just the email address (that is, [email protected]) or a name and an email address (that is, Bud Smith <[email protected]>). As you type, the Mail app displays a list of previously used email addresses, from which you can select. You can also select a recipient directly from your Contacts by tapping the + button and choosing the appropriate contact.

The recipient appears in the To: list.

7. If you want, enter additional email recipients—either directly or by using the Add button to select from your contacts.

8. If you want to enter carbon copy (cc) and blind carbon copy (bcc) recipients, tap the Cc:Bcc field and then enter additional recipients directly or use the Add button to select from your contacts.

9. Tap the Subject field and then enter a subject line for your message.

10. Tap in the large text area below the Subject field and then enter the body of your message.

You can copy and paste text and images from other programs, such as the Notes app or the Photos app, into an email message.

To save a draft of the message, press the Cancel button. You’ll then be offered a choice to press the Delete Draft button or the Save Draft button. If you press Save Draft, the message is saved in the Drafts folder.

Composing an email message in another program, such as the Notes app, can be a good way to take your time with composing the text of a message without interfering with your ability to juggle incoming emails.

11. Tap Send.

The mail app sends your message.

---

Rich Text in Email Messages

One of the biggest advances in email on computers has been the increasing use of rich text for email messages. “Rich text” just means text with effects like fonts, bolding, italics, bulleted lists, and so on.

Rich text is great for email because it fits the way people read on an electronic device. Reading from a screen has been compared to staring into a light bulb. It’s harder than reading from paper—although that doesn’t stop people from doing it.

However, people comprehend less when they read from a backlit screen. They tend to read for shorter stretches of time, to skim, and to remember less.

One partial antidote for these tendencies is rich text. By using headers, bold and italic, and bulleted lists, among other effects, text becomes easier to scan. High points can be made stronger, and blocks of text can be made more or less prominent.

iPad email supports rich text. At this writing, it’s the only app included with the iPad that does so. Many third-party apps also support rich text.

iPad email supports the following text effects:

• Bold, italic, and underline

• Indent and “outdent” (reversing the effect of indenting)

Use rich text in iPad email to help you better make your points.

  LET ME TRY IT

Adding Rich Text to an Email Message

Follow these steps to use text effects in an email message:

1. Create a new email message, or reply to an inbound message.

The message appears onscreen.

2. Enter text for your message or reply.

3. Select the text that you want to apply text effects to. If you are changing the indentation for a single line of text, you can simply tap to place the cursor in that line of text; the whole line is implicitly selected for indentation purposes.

The text is displayed as selected.

4. Tap the right arrow in the selection balloon.

The phrase “Quote Level” appears. If text is selected, the letters B I U also appear, as shown in Figure 7.3.

Figure 7.3. Formatting text helps make things stand out.

5. To change the quote level, tap Quote Level. Choose Decrease, if the text had previously been indented, or Increase, to indent the text. To add bolding, italic, or underlining, tap the B | U option, then choose Bold, Italics, or Underline.

The text updates to reflect the formatting you’ve applied.

Customizing Your Default Email Signature

Your iPad is set up to include the signature line “Sent from my iPad” at the bottom of each new message you send. This is good advertising for your iPad—and might make you feel cool because you’ll be seen to be using such a cool device. It’s not that informative for the recipient, however. In fact, they might imagine that you rushed the reply, rather than waiting to send a longer reply from your computer, which would make it easier to type.

Instead, you might want your default email signature to include other information, such as your name, email address, phone number, and so on. That way, even if your email message is forwarded, selectively copied and pasted, and otherwise reused, people who receive the information can easily get back in touch with you.

Follow these steps to modify your email signature:

1. From the iPad Home screen, tap Settings; then tap Mail > Contacts > Calendars.

2. Tap Signature.

Your iPad displays the Signature screen, as shown in Figure 7.4.

Figure 7.4. Update your signature.

3. To clear the existing signature information, tap the Clear button.

4. Type your custom signature into the text area.

5. When done, press the Mail > Contacts > Calendars button.

You might want to send yourself a test email showing your new signature to get a good idea how it will look to others and to check it for errors.

---

Receiving and Managing Messages

As you use your iPad, it receives and stores incoming messages. This enables you to keep up with your email even when you’re keeping appointments, shopping, or traveling. You can reply to messages, forward messages, save an image or attachment you receive with a message, and delete messages.

The Mail icon on your iPad’s Home screen shows the number of unread messages you have at any given time. Keep an eye on this number to see if you’ve received new messages.

Checking for New Messages

Keeping up to date on your email messages is a big deal—for some, it might almost be called an obsession. If you have a Wi-Fi-only iPad, you can only receive and send email messages when you have a Wi-Fi connection available. If you have a 3G iPad, you can additionally receive and send email messages when you have a data-capable wireless mobile phone connection, which is likely to be a great deal more of the time.

Following are two types of email accounts, which act differently when you check for new messages:

• Push: Email services such as MobileMe and Microsoft Exchange support email push, which is very convenient. The server sends, or “pushes,” each message to your devices, almost as soon as they’re received by the server. Messages appear in your email Inbox with no specific effort on your part. The iPad has Push turned on by default.

• Fetch: Other email services require you to set up your iPad to periodically request new messages, or to manually request the latest and greatest for your Inbox to be brought up to date. This is less handy but saves battery power. You can also turn off push capability on a push-capable service and fetch emails instead to save battery life and to give you more control of how up-to-date you are.

  LET ME TRY IT

Configuring Pushing and Fetching

Follow these steps to turn push email on or off and to set up the fetch interval for your device:

1. From the iPad Home screen, tap Settings; then tap Mail > Contacts > Calendars.

2. Tap Fetch New Data.

3. To avoid receiving pushed messages, slide the Push switch to Off.

You’ll still receive messages when you manually request them.

4. To change the Fetch interval, tap the choice you want—15 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, or manually.

5. To select different approaches for different email accounts, press Advanced; then choose Fetch or Push and, if applicable, the Fetch interval for each email account.

  LET ME TRY IT

Manually Fetching New Messages

You might want to manually fetch messages before checking your email, even if you have push email and automatic fetches set up. One of the key features of email is being up-to-date, and manually fetching messages makes sure that you’re completely updated. You might also want to turn off push and/or scheduled fetches to save battery power.

Follow these steps to fetch new messages:

1. Start the Mail app. If your iPad is in portrait (vertical) orientation, tap the Inbox button to see your inbox.

You see the date and time of the last refresh in the bottom of the inbox area.

2. To refresh a single email account, press the Refresh icon in the lower left of your Inbox.

Your iPad fetches any new messages for that account.

3. To refresh multiple email accounts at once, press the name of your account to bring up the Mailboxes screen. Press the Refresh icon in the lower left of the Mailboxes screen, as shown in Figure 7.5.

Figure 7.5. Use the Refresh icon in the Inbox or Mailboxes screen to refresh your email.

Your iPad fetches any new messages for all your accounts.

Reading Messages

Use the Mail app to read the messages you’ve received. You can read messages for a single account or for all accounts.

Saving images embedded in messages is described in the section, “Saving an Email Message to Your Phone,” later in this chapter. You can also play audio attachments in many formats by tapping on them. PDF files, word processing files, meeting invitations, and many other files can open in a program that can handle them; tap the attachment to open it.

The Mail app also gathers chains of messages into conversations, or groups that begin with an original message and include replies to that message, replies to the replies, and so on. The messages in a conversation are referred to as threaded, with each one connected to the next.

The threaded messages are shown as one conversation in your Inbox; when you choose a conversation, the messages in it display, as if the conversation were a folder. You then have to click an individual message to read it in full. You can turn this functionality off in Settings, as described in this section, and deal with email messages individually if you prefer.

  LET ME TRY IT

Turning Threading On and Off

By default, your iPad arranges email messages in conversations with threaded messages gathered together. However, you can turn this feature off.

Conversations are convenient for collapsing email messages into chunks of related messages that you can deal with more easily, but conversations also make it harder to find specific email messages—or to spot the connections between different interchanges that occur at the same point in time.

As a result, you might have a strong preference for using or not using conversations and turn the feature on or off for the long term—or you can turn conversations on and off frequently to meet different needs.

Follow these steps to turn threading on and off:

1. From the iPad Home screen, tap Settings; then tap Mail > Contacts > Calendars.

2. Slide the Organize by Thread switch to the opposite position, On or Off.

  LET ME TRY IT

Reading Messages

Unread messages appear with a blue dot next to them. The number of unread messages in an account displays, along with the name of that account.

Follow these steps to read messages:

1. Launch the Mail app. If your iPad is in portrait (vertical) mode, tap the Inbox button to see the Inbox.

If you want to read messages from the currently selected account, skip to step 4.

2. If you have multiple email accounts and want to change which accounts display in the Inbox, tap the account name or the All Inboxes button in the upper-left corner. If your account supports folders, a list of folders displays; tap Mailbox to see the mailboxes.

A list of mailboxes displays, as shown in Figure 7.6.

Figure 7.6. Choose the Inboxes or accounts you want to go to.

3. To read messages for all your accounts, tap the All Inboxes button. To go straight to the inbox for a specific account, tap the button with the name of that inbox. To go to an account (so you can see the folders in that account), tap the button with the name of that account; then tap Inbox or the folder with the emails you want to see.

A list of email messages and conversations displays. A conversation with two messages is shown in Figure 7.7.

Figure 7.7. Tap a message to see its contents or tap a conversation to see the messages that make it up.

4. Tap the message or conversation you want to read. If you tap a conversation, a list of messages in the conversation displays. Tap the message within the conversation that you want to read.

The email message you selected displays.

5. To zoom in on part of a message, double-tap it. Double-tap again to zoom out. You can also pinch or spread your fingers on the message text to zoom in or out.

6. To see the destination of a link, press and hold it.

The link’s destination address displays.

7. To follow a link, tap it.

For a Web link, Safari opens, displaying the Web page. For other links, a map or a new email message might open.

8. To mark a message as unread, tap Mark as Unread next to the subject line.

9. To navigate among messages, tap the Next and Previous icons in the upper-right corner of the message. The next section describes other actions you can take.

10. To see more messages, scroll to the bottom of the list of messages and tap the Load More Messages button.

If you have an active Internet connection, more messages load.

Replying to a Message

You won’t always need to reply to messages you receive on your iPad. Also despite the many conveniences of your iPad, you can choose to do the bulk of your email management on a computer, where it’s easier to file messages, add, save, or edit attachments, and type long messages or replies. In some cases, you might make a quick reply from your iPad and then a longer reply, possibly with an attachment, from your computer at a later time.

  LET ME TRY IT

Replying to a Message

Replying to messages somehow seems to cause a lot of “oh no” moments perhaps because people often do it quickly. Problems with message replies include sending a reply with high emotional content because of being irritated or rushed and using Reply All when there are people on the reply list whom you didn’t actually want to include.

The iPad lends itself to replying to email on the go, so think carefully before you reply to avoid making an email etiquette mistake. Follow these steps to reply to a message:

1. In the Mail app, when you see a message you want to reply to, tap it.

Mail opens the message.

2. Tap the left-pointing arrow in the upper-right corner of your screen, which is the Actions icon.

Mail displays a list of commands, as shown in Figure 7.8: Reply, Reply All (shown only if there are multiple recipients), Forward, or Print.

Figure 7.8. Replying to a message is easy—almost too easy sometimes.

3. Tap Reply or, if applicable, Reply All.

The Mail app creates a new message. It has the sender listed in the To: field; any other recipients (if Reply All was selected) listed in the cc: field; the original subject line, with Re: attached to the beginning, as the new subject line; and the original message text added to the bottom of the message.

4. Type your message to the sender. (You also have the opportunity to edit the original message if necessary.)

5. Tap Send.

The Mail app sends your reply.

Forwarding a Message

Forwarding a message is an important way to keep people up to date and in touch. Here’s how to do it on the iPad.

  LET ME TRY IT

Forwarding a Message

1. In the Mail app, when you see a message you want to reply to, tap it to open it.

Mail opens the message.

2. Tap the left-pointing arrow in the upper-right corner of your screen, which is the Actions icon.

Mail displays a list of commands (refer to Figure 7.8): Reply, Reply All (shown only if there are multiple recipients), Forward, or Print.

3. Tap Forward.

The Mail app creates a new message. It has the original subject line with Fwd: attached to the beginning, as the new subject line, and the original message text added to the bottom of the message.

4. In the To: field, type the name and/or email address of the recipients. The contact you want might appear in a list below the To: field; if so, tap to choose it. Alternatively, tap the + button and choose the appropriate contact there, if available. Otherwise, type in the email address.

The recipient appears in the To: list.

5. Add any additional recipients in the To: list.

6. To enter Cc: and/or Bcc: recipients, tap the Cc:Bcc field; then enter additional recipients—directly in the Cc: or Bcc: area or use the Add button to select from your contacts.

Remember that other recipients don’t see people copied using Bcc, and Bcc recipients are not included in Reply All.

7. Type your message to the sender. (You also have the opportunity to edit the original message if necessary.)

8. Tap Send.

The Mail app sends your reply.

Saving an Email Image to Your iPad

You can receive photos and other images in email messages. You can easily save a copy of the image to the Photos app on your iPad.

  LET ME TRY IT

Saving an Email Image to Your iPad

1. In the Mail app, tap the message that contains an image you want to save.

Mail opens the message.

2. Tap and hold the image.

The Mail app displays a list of commands (refer to Figure 7.8).

3. Choose Save Image.

The image is saved in the Photos app.

To learn how to view photos on your iPad, see “Viewing Photos” in Chapter 15.

Deleting and Moving Messages

You can delete a single message, delete multiple messages, or move messages to a different folder.

  LET ME TRY IT

Deleting a Message

1. In the Mail app, open the message that you want to delete.

Mail opens the message.

2. Tap the Trash Can icon in the upper-right corner.

The Delete Message button appears.

3. Tap the Delete Message button.

The message is deleted.

  LET ME TRY IT

Moving a Message

1. In the Mail app, open the message that you want to move.

Mail opens the message.

2. Tap the folder icon in the upper-right corner.

A list of folders for the current account appears.

3. Navigate to the destination account and folder you desire and tap it.

The message is moved.

  LET ME TRY IT

Deleting or Moving Multiple Messages

1. In the Mail app, in a list of messages, tap the Edit button.

Open circles appear next to the email messages.

2. Tap next to each message that you want to delete or move.

A check mark appears next to each selected message, as shown in Figure 7.9.

Figure 7.9. Selected messages appear checked.

3. To delete the messages, click the button with the trash can icon or the word Delete at the bottom of the list of messages.

The messages are deleted.

4. To move the images, click the button with a folder and the word Move at the bottom of the list of messages.

A list of folders appears.

5. Tap the folder you want to move the images to.

The images are moved to the selected folder.

6. To avoid deleting or moving the files, press the Cancel button at the top of the list of messages.

The messages are not deleted or moved.