POP and IMAP Accounts

Those freebie, brand-name, web-based accounts are super-easy to set up. But millions of people have more generic email accounts, perhaps supplied by their employers or internet providers. They’re generally one of two types:

• POP accounts are the oldest type on the internet. (POP stands for Post Office Protocol, but this won’t be on the test.) A POP account can make life complicated if you check your mail on more than one machine (say, a PC and an iPhone), as you’ll discover shortly.

  A POP server transfers incoming mail to your computer or phone before you read it, which works fine as long as you’re using only that machine to access your email.

• IMAP accounts (Internet Message Access Protocol) are newer and have more features than POP servers, and they’re quickly putting POP out to pasture. IMAP servers keep all your mail online, rather than making you store it on your computer; as a result, you can access the same mail from any computer (or phone). IMAP servers remember which messages you’ve read and sent, and they even keep track of how you’ve filed messages into mail folders. (Yahoo, Gmail, iCloud, and corporate Exchange accounts are all IMAP. Gmail accounts can be POP, too.)

The iPhone can communicate with both kinds of accounts.

Tap your way to Settings → Passwords & Accounts → Add Account. Tap Other, tap Add Mail Account, and then enter your name, email address, password, and an optional description. Tap Next.

Apple’s software attempts to figure out which kind of account you have (POP or IMAP) by the email address. If it can’t make that determination, then you arrive at a second screen, where you’re asked for such juicy details as the host name for incoming and outgoing mail servers. (This is also where you tap either IMAP or POP, to tell the iPhone what sort of account it’s dealing with.)

If you don’t know this stuff offhand, you’ll have to ask your internet provider, corporate tech-support person, or next-door teenager to help you. When you’re finished, tap Save.

To delete an account, open Settings → Passwords & Accounts → [account name]. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the Delete Account button.

The Unified Inbox

If you have more than one email address, you’re in luck. The iPhone offers a unified inbox—an option that displays all the incoming messages from all your accounts in a single place. (If you don’t see it—if Mail opened up to some other screen—keep swiping rightward, backing up one screen at a time, until you do.)

This Mailboxes page has two sections:

• Unified inboxes (and other unified folders). All the incoming messages are consolidated into one unified box called All Inboxes. Below that, you see the inboxes for each of the individual accounts (next page, left).

  This part of the main Mail list also offers unified folders for VIP and Flagged messages, which are described later in this chapter.

  But what you may not realize is that you can add other unified folders to this section. You can, for example, add a folder called Unread, which contains only new messages from all accounts. (That’s not the same thing as All Inboxes, because that inbox can contain messages you have read but haven’t deleted or filed. Maybe a lot of them.)

  You can also add a unified folder showing all messages where you were either the To or Cc addressee; this folder won’t include any mail where your name appeared on the Bcc (blind carbon copy) line, like mailing lists and, often, spam.

  You can also add an Attachments folder here (messages with files attached), a Today folder, or unified folders that contain All Drafts, All Sent, or All Trash. (“All” means “from all accounts.”)

  To hide or show these special uni-folders, tap Edit, and then tap the selection circles beside the names of the folders you want to appear. (You can also take this opportunity to drag them up or down into a pleasing sequence.) Tap Done.

  

• Accounts. Farther down the Mailboxes screen, you see your accounts listed again. You can tap an account’s name to expand or collapse its list of traditional mail folders: Inbox, Drafts (emails written but not sent), Sent, Junk, Trash, and any folders you’ve created yourself (Family, Little League, Old Stuff, whatever). If you have a Yahoo, iCloud, Exchange, or other IMAP account, then the iPhone automatically creates these folders to match what you’ve set up online, as shown above at right.

The Message List—and Threading

If you tap an inbox’s name, you wind up face-to-face with the list of incoming messages. (To return to the Mailboxes list, tap Mailboxes, or swipe to the right.)

At first, you see only the subject lines of your messages, plus, in gray type, the first few lines of their contents; that way you can scan through new messages to see if there’s anything important. You can flick upward to scroll this list. Blue dots indicate messages you haven’t yet opened.

Each message bears a gray at the right side. That means “Tap this message’s row to read it in all its formatted glory.”

Here and there, though, you may spot a double arrow at the right side of the message list, like this: . That means you’re looking at some threaded messages.

That’s where several related messages—back-and-forths on the same subject—appear only once, in a single, consolidated entry. The idea is to reduce inbox clutter and to help you remember what the heck people have been talking about.

When you tap a threaded message, you open what appears to be all the messages in this topic, scrolling and attached vertically as though they’re sheets of paper towel. Messages you’ve already seen appear collapsed, as shown at right on the previous page, to help you keep your bearings.

In general, threading is a nice feature. But if it bugs you, you can turn it off. Open Settings → Mail, scroll down, and turn off Organize By Thread. (While you’re there, notice the option called Collapse Read Messages. It’s responsible for the collapsing effect just described.)

(If you have an iPhone Plus or Max model, you can turn the phone 90 degrees to see the mini-tablet-like view shown below, with the message list and open message visible simultaneously.)

Filters

The iPhone offers one-click filters that hide or show all messages of a certain kind in the list—like ones you haven’t yet read.

See the button below the list of messages? When you tap it, you automatically turn on the first filter: Unread. All the messages in the list that you’ve read are hidden—until you hit again to turn the filter off.

When the filter is on, you can click the word Unread to see a list of other ways to filter the list. You can tell Mail to show you only messages you’ve flagged; only messages to you (or that you were copied on); only the ones with attachments; or only the ones from people in your VIP list. You can also combine filters, if you want.

VIPs

In the real world, VIPs are people who get backstage passes to concerts or special treatment at business functions (it stands for “very important person”). In iOS, it means “somebody whose mail is important enough that I want it brought to my attention immediately when it arrives.”

So who should your VIPs be? That’s up to you. Your spouse, your boss, and your oncologist come to mind.

To designate someone as a VIP, proceed in either of these two ways:

• On the accounts screen, carefully tap the next to the VIP item. Your master list of all VIPs appears (below, left). Tap Add VIP to choose a lucky new member from Contacts.

  

  This is also where you delete people from your VIP list when they’ve annoyed you. Swipe leftward across a name, and then tap Delete. Or tap Edit and then tap each button; tap Delete to confirm.

  Tip

  You can set things up so that when a new message from a VIP comes in, the iPhone lets you know with a sound, a banner, an alert bubble, a vibration, and so on. Tap VIP Alerts to set them up. (That’s a shortcut to the Settings → Notifications → Mail → VIP screen.)

• In a message from the lucky individual, tap his name in the From, To, or Cc/Bcc box. His Contact screen appears, complete with an Add to VIP button.

Once you’ve established who’s important, lots of interesting things happen:

• The VIP inbox automatically collects messages from your VIPs.

• VIP names in every mail list sprout a gray star (above, right).

• If you use iCloud, the same person is now a VIP on all your other iPhones and iPads (running iOS 6 or later) and Macs (running OS X Mountain Lion or later).

Flag It

Sometimes you receive email that prompts you to take some sort of action, but you may not have the time (or the fortitude) to face the task at the moment. (“Hi there, it’s me, your accountant. Would you mind rounding up your expenses for 2007 through 2017 and sending me a list by email?”)

That’s why Mail lets you flag a message, summoning a little flag icon or a little orange dot in a new column next to the message’s name. It can mean anything you like—it simply calls attention to certain messages.

To flag an open message, tap at the bottom of the screen. When the confirmation sheet slides up (below, left), tap Flag.

You can also rapidly flag messages directly in a list (the inbox, for example). Just swipe leftward across the message—half an inch of finger sliding does the trick—to reveal the set of buttons shown above at right.

Tap Flag. (If you tap More, you get the option to Unflag.)

The dot or icon appears in the body of the message and next to the message’s name in your inbox. (In the image above, the top dot looks more like a bull’s-eye; that’s because it’s flagged and unread.) The flag appears even on the corresponding message in your Mac or PC email program, thanks to the miracle of wireless syncing.

The Flagged mailbox appears in your list of accounts, making it easy to work with all flagged messages, from all accounts, in one place.

This might be a good time to point out another, newer way to draw attention to a message: Tell Siri to “Remind me about this later.” See ““Remind Me About This”” for details.

List View: Flag, Trash, Mark as Unread

It’s easy to plow through a teeming Inbox, processing messages as you go, without ever having to open them. All you have to do is swipe across a message in the list horizontally:

• Full left-swipe delete. Swipe your finger leftward all the way across the message to delete it. That’s it: No confirmation tap required.

• Partial left-swipe options. If you don’t swipe leftward all the way, you reveal a set of three buttons on the right: Trash (same as before, but now you have to tap again to confirm); Flag (described in the previous section); and More (opens up a raft of other options, like Reply, Forward, Flag, Move to Junk, and so on).

  

• Full right-swipe. Swipe your finger to the right all the way across the message to mark it as new (unread). Great for reminding yourself to look at this message again later. Or, if it’s already unread, that swipe marks it as read.

To a certain extent, you can customize these gestures. You can turn off the right-swipe gesture. Or swap the positions of the Flag and Read options, for example, so that you flag a message when you swipe fully to the right and Read appears as a button when you swipe to the left. Or you can put the Archive button into the place of Flag when you swipe to the left.

To check out your options, open Settings → Mail → Swipe Options.

Tap Swipe Left to specify which button appears in the center of the three when you swipe partway leftward: None, Mark as Read, Flag, or Move Message. Tap Swipe Right to choose which function you want to trigger with a full rightward swipe (None, Mark as Read, Flag, Move Message, or Archive).

Read It

The type size in email messages can be pretty small. Fortunately, you have some great iPhoney enlargement tricks at your disposal. For example:

• Spread two fingers to enlarge the entire email message.

• Double-tap a narrow block of text to make it fill the screen, if it doesn’t already.

• Drag or flick your finger to scroll through or around the message.

• Choose a larger type size for all messages. See ???.

Links are “live” in email messages. Tap a phone number to call it, a web address to open it, a YouTube link to watch the video, an email address to write to it, a time and date to add it to your calendar, and so on.

Reply to It

To answer a message, tap the Reply/Forward icon () at the bottom of the screen; tap Reply. If the message was originally addressed to multiple recipients, then you can choose Reply All to send your reply to everyone simultaneously.

A new message window opens, already addressed. As a courtesy to your correspondents, Mail pastes the original message at the bottom of the window.

If you’d like to splice your own comments into the paragraphs of the original message, replying point by point, then use the Return key to create blank lines in the original message. (Use the loupe—“Making the Keyboard Work”—to position the insertion point at the proper spot.)

The brackets by each line of the original message help your correspondent keep straight what’s yours and what’s hers.

Before you tap Send, you can add or delete recipients, edit the subject line or the original message, and so on.

Forward It

Instead of replying to the sender, you may sometimes want to pass the note on to a third person. To do so, tap . This time, tap Forward.

A new message opens, looking like the one that appears when you reply. You can precede the original message with a comment of your own, like, “Frank: I thought you’d be interested in this joke about your mom.” Finally, address and send it as usual.

Follow It

Your phone can notify you when anyone responds to a certain email conversation.

If you’re composing or replying to a message, tap in the subject line to make the appear; tap it. If you’re reading a message, tap at the bottom of the screen, tap Notify Me, and confirm by tapping Notify Me again (previous page, left). In a list, swipe leftward, partly across a message; tap More; tap Notify Me. In each case, a icon appears beside the message (or thread) in the list (previous page, right).

When anybody replies, a notification banner appears on your screen, ready for swiping and reading.

File or Delete One Message

Once you’ve opened a message that’s worth keeping, you can file it into one of your account’s folders (“mailboxes”) by tapping the at the bottom of the screen. Up pops the list of your folders; tap the one you want.

It’s a snap to delete a message you no longer want, too. If it’s open in front of you, tap or at the bottom of the screen. The message rapidly shrinks into the icon and disappears.

You can also delete a message from the message list—the inbox, for example—by swiping left.

There’s a long way to delete messages from the list, too, as described next. But for single messages, the finger-swipe method is much more fun.

File or Delete Batches of Messages

You can also file or delete a bunch of messages at once. In the message list, tap Edit. A circle appears beside each message title. You can tap as many of these circles as you like, scrolling as necessary, adding a with each touch.

Finally, when you’ve selected all the messages in question, tap either Trash (or Archive) or Move.

If you tap Move, then you’re shown the folder list so you can say where you want them moved to. If you tap Trash, the messages disappear.

If you decide you’ve made a mistake, just shake the phone lightly—the iPhone’s undo gesture. Tap Undo Move to put the filed messages back where they just came from.

Add the Sender to Contacts

When you get a message from someone new who’s worth adding to your iPhone’s Contacts address book, tap that person’s name (in blue, on the From line). You’re offered buttons for Create New Contact and Add to Existing Contact. Use the second button to add an email address to an existing person’s “card.”

Open an Attachment

The Mail program downloads and displays the icons for any kind of attachment—but it can open only documents from Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), those from Apple iWork (Pages, Keynote, Numbers), PDFs, text, RTFs, VCFs, graphics, .zip files, and un-copy-protected audio and video files.

Just scroll down, tap the attachment’s icon, wait a moment for downloading, and then marvel as the document opens up, full screen. You can zoom in and out, flick, rotate the phone 90 degrees, and scroll just as though it were a web page or a photo.

When you’re finished admiring the attachment, swipe rightward to return to the original email message.

Snag (or Send) a Graphic

If you get sent a particularly good picture, just hold your finger on it. You’re offered the Save sheet, filled with options like Save (into your Photo app’s Camera Roll), Copy, Print, and Assign to Contact (as a person’s face photo). All the usual sending methods are represented here, too, so you can fire off this photo via AirDrop, Messages, Mail, Twitter, and Facebook.

Snag a Contact or a Date

Mail can recognize contact information or calendar information from an incoming email message—and can dump it directly into Contacts or Calendar for you.

You’ll know when it’s found something—the block of contact information below somebody’s signature, for example—because you see a special gray banner at the top of the screen (shown on the facing page).

If it’s somebody worth tracking, tap add…. A new Contacts screen appears, ready to save.

Similarly, if the message contains a reference to a date and time, the same sort of banner appears, offering to pop the appointment onto your calendar. (This banner appears only when it’s really sure you’re being offered a date and time: e-invitations and airline-ticket confirmations, for example.)

iOS: saving you time since 2016.

Unsubscribe

Every now and then, when you open a piece of junk mail, Mail offers you an Unsubscribe button at the top (above, right). And sure enough: Tapping it (and then tapping Unsubscribe to confirm) gets you off that mailing list.

Now, before you uncork the champagne, keep in mind that this button appears only on some pieces of spam—from only the kind-hearted, legitimate senders who include an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of their messages. All Mail does is automate that process (and move the Unsubscribe button to the top).

View the To/From Details

When your computer’s screen is only a few inches tall, there’s not a lot of extra space. So Apple designed Mail to conceal header details (To, From, and so on) that you might need only occasionally. For example, you usually don’t actually see the word “From”—you typically see only the sender’s name, in blue. The To and Cc lines (???) may show only first names, to save space. And if there’s a long list of addresses, you may see only “Michael & 15 more”—not the actual list of names.

You get last names, full lists, and full sender labels when you tap More following the header information. Tap Hide to collapse these details.

Mark as Unread

In the inbox, any message you haven’t yet read is marked by a blue dot (). Once you’ve opened the message, the blue dot goes away.

If you slide your finger to the right across a message in the list, you trigger the Unread command—you make that blue dot reappear. It’s a great way to flag a message for later, to call it to your own attention. The blue dot can mean not so much “unread” as “un–dealt with.”

Move On

Once you’ve had a good look at a message and processed it to your satisfaction, you can move on to the next (or previous) message in the list by tapping or in the upper-right corner. Or you can swipe rightward to return to the inbox (or whatever mailbox you’re in).

Search

Praise be—there’s a search box in Mail. The search box is hiding above the top of every mail list, like your inbox. To see it, swipe down or just tap the status strip at the top of the screen.

Tap inside the search box to make the keyboard appear, along with helpful canned searches like Flagged Messages and Messages with Attachments. As you type, Mail hides all but the matching messages; tap any one of the results to open it.

You don’t have to specify which fields to search (From, To, Subject, Body), or which folder. You’re searching everywhere.

Wait long enough, and the search continues with messages that are still out there on the internet but are so old that they’ve scrolled off your phone.

Signatures

A signature is a bit of text that gets stamped at the bottom of your outgoing messages. It can be your name, a postal address, or a pithy quote.

Unless you intervene, the iPhone stamps “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of every message. You may be just fine with that, or you may consider it the equivalent of free advertising for Apple—or it may just feel like gloating. In any case, you can change the signature if you want to.

From the Home screen, tap Settings → Mail → Signature. You can make up one signature for All Accounts, or a different one for each account (tap Per Account). A Signature text area appears, complete with a keyboard, so you can compose the signature you want. It can even include emoji!

Finish with a Phone Call

If you’re typing out some reply, and you realize that it’d be faster to wrap this up by phone, hold down the home button (or iPhone X-class side button) to trigger Siri and just say, “Call him” or “Call her.”

If the addressee has a phone number in Contacts, Siri knows who you mean; she dials the number for you, right from the Mail app!