Chapter 17. Reading, Writing, and Organizing Email
After you have set up at least one email account on your iPad, you can read messages that you’ve retrieved and write new messages to send to others. As you receive messages from others, you may want to move them to different folders or just delete them altogether.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to read, write, and organize email on your iPad.
Reading Email
Each email account you set up on your iPad contains multiple folders for storing messages. When you receive messages, they get stored in the Inbox folder. If you have set up multiple email accounts, you’ll have a single inbox that displays new mail for all accounts called All Inboxes, as well as an individual Inbox for each account, as shown in Figure 17-1.
To read your messages stored in an email account, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Mail. The Mail screen appears, displaying what you last viewed.
Tap the Back button that appears in the upper-left corner of the screen. If you have set up multiple email accounts, a list of your email accounts appears.
(Optional) Tap the email account under Inboxes that you want to use, or just tap All Inboxes to view all mail sent to all accounts. If you have set up only one email account, you can skip this step.
Tap the Inbox folder. A list of messages appears.
Tap the message you want to read. Your message appears in the right pane of the screen, as shown in Figure 17-2.
Moving a Message to Another Folder
Since your Inbox folder constantly receives messages, you may want to organize them in different folders that you can create through your email provider. By moving messages to different folders, you can stay organized. In addition, moving messages also lets you retrieve deleted messages from the Trash folder.
Moving a Single Message
To move a single message to a different folder, follow these steps:
While in the Mail app, tap the Move icon (it looks like a folder) that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen. A list of folders appears in the left pane, as shown in Figure 17-3.
Tap a folder where you want to store the currently displayed message, or tap Cancel.
Moving (or Deleting) Multiple Messages
To move multiple messages to a different folder (or delete multiple messages instead), follow these steps:
Follow all the steps in Reading Email in What You’ll Be Using to view any message.
Tap the Edit button that appears in the upper-right corner of the Inbox window. Small circles appear to the left of each message, as shown in Figure 17-4.
Tap the circle to the left of each message that you want to move or delete. A checkmark appears in the circle.
Tap the Delete or Move button at the bottom of the Inbox window. (If you tap the Move button, you’ll need to tap a folder displayed in the Inbox window to choose which folder to move your selected messages in.)
Note
Instead of a Delete button, you may see an Archive button with certain email accounts, such as Gmail.
Replying to, Forwarding, or Printing an Email Message
The simplest way to write a message is to reply to an existing message that you’ve already received. That way, you can send the message back to the sender’s email address to provide a little context with your response without having to type it all over again. Another option is to forward a message. This lets you send a received message to someone else.
Replying to a Message
To reply to a message, follow these steps:
Follow all the steps in Reading Email in What You’ll Be Using to view the message to which you want to reply.
Tap the Reply icon (it looks like an arrow pointing to the left and appears at the upper right of the screen). A menu appears listing Reply, Forward, and Print options, as shown in Figure 17-5.
Tap Reply. A message window appears along with a virtual keyboard, as shown in Figure 17-6.
(Optional) Type any additional text that you want to add to the message.
Forwarding a Message
Forwarding a message can be handy when you want to resend something that somebody sent you, such as a joke or interesting picture. To forward a message, follow these steps:
Follow all the steps in Reading Email in What You’ll Be Using to view the message that you want to forward.
Tap the Reply icon (it looks like an arrow pointing to the left and appears at the upper right of the screen). A menu appears listing a Reply, Forward, and Print options (shown earlier in Figure 17-5).
Tap Forward. If the message contains a file attachment, a window may pop up asking if you want to include or not include the file attachment with your forwarded copy of the message, as shown in Figure 17-7.
Tap Include or Don’t Include. A message window appears with a virtual keyboard.
Tap the To field, and type an email address.
Tap Send. Your iPad sends your message.
Printing a Message
If you have a wireless printer or a compatible printer connected to your computer, you may be able to print an email message wirelessly through your computer. To print a message, follow these steps:
Follow all the steps in Reading Email in What You’ll Be Using to view the message that you want to forward.
Tap the Reply icon (it looks like an arrow pointing to the left and appears at the upper right of the screen). A menu appears, listing Reply, Forward, and Print options (shown earlier in Figure 17-5).
Tap the Print button.
Writing a New Message
Rather than reply or forward a message, you may want to create a new message to send to someone. To create a new message, follow these steps:
While using the Mail app, tap the New Message icon (it looks like a square with a pencil writing on it that appears at the upper right of the screen). A New Message window appears with a virtual keyboard.
Tap the To field, and type an email address.
Note
If you tap the plus sign icon that appears in the far right of the To field, a Contacts window pops up, allowing you to tap the name of a person’s whose email address you’ve already stored in the Contacts app.
Tap the Subject field, and type a subject for your message.
Tap the text field, and type your message.
Tap Send. Your iPad sends your message.
Deleting Messages
The more messages you receive, the more you’ll likely need to delete messages to keep your Inbox folder from overflowing with too many messages. To delete messages, you can delete them individually or select multiple messages and delete them all at once.
To delete a message, follow these steps:
Follow all the steps in Reading Email in What You’ll Be Using to view the message you want to delete.
Tap Trash at the top of the screen. The currently displayed message gets moved to the Trash folder.
Searching Email
After you’ve received multiple messages, you may lose track of all of them. One way to deal with this flood of information is to constantly move messages into their own folders. Since this takes constant effort, you may find it easier just to search for a particular message instead.
You can search for text that appears in the From, To, or Subject fields, or you can search for text that appears in any of those three fields. This lets you search for messages that you received from a specific email address, messages that you sent to a particular email address, messages with certain types of subjects, or all three (the From, To, and Subject fields).
To search for a messages stored in an email account, follow these steps:
While using the Mail app, tap a folder that contains the messages you want to find. A list of messages appears.
Tap the From, To, Subject, or All button at the top of the folder window.
Tap the Search field. A virtual keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 17-8.
Type a word or phrase. As you type, the folder window displays only those messages that match your search criteria.
Tap the message you want to read.
Additional Ideas for Reading, Writing, and Organizing Messages
After you’ve read a message, you may want to store it in another folder right away or delete it to keep your Inbox folder easy to manage. If you allow a flood of messages to fill your Inbox folder, it will be harder to find the one message you really want.
The Search feature can help you find a particular message, but to ensure that this Search feature works, train yourself to type descriptive words or phrases in the Subject field of all your outgoing messages. That way, you’ll be able to search for a particular message using the Subject field.
Take time periodically to browse through your messages and weed out the ones you don’t need. The less cluttered your Inbox folder, the easier it will be to find what you need when you need it.