10 Sending, Receiving, and Managing Email

For most of us, email is an important way we communicate with others, both in our public and personal lives. Fortunately, your iPhone has great email tools, so you can work with email no matter where you are.

Getting Started

To work with email on your iPhone, you use the Mail app to access your email accounts over the Internet. The Mail app has lots of great features that help you really take advantage of all that email offers.

Before you can start using the Mail app, you have to configure the email accounts you want to access with it. The iPhone supports many kinds of email accounts, including iCloud, Gmail, and many others. Setting up the most common types of email accounts is covered in Chapter 4, “Setting Up and Using an Apple ID, iCloud, and Other Online Accounts,” so if you haven’t done that already, go back to that chapter and get your accounts set up. Then come back here to start using those accounts for email.

If you have a lot of email activity, you’ll want to configure the notifications associated with email. For a detailed explanation of configuring notifications, refer to Chapter 6, “Making Your iPhone Work for You.”

You need to be connected to the Internet through a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection to send or receive email. You can read and reply to downloaded messages, and compose messages when you aren’t connected, though messages you write won’t be sent until you have an Internet connection. (In Chapter 3, “Using Your iPhone’s Core Features,” you find out how to connect your iPhone to the Internet.) As you use email, it’s helpful to understand that email isn’t sent directly between devices—for example, from an email application on a computer to Mail on an iPhone. Rather, all email flows through email servers.

When you send an email, it moves from your iPhone to an email server. That server then routes it to various other servers until it reaches the one associated with the recipients’ email account (for example, a Gmail account). The recipient(s) receive the email on their devices from that server.

Likewise, when someone sends email to you, it ends up on the server associated with your email account (for example, an iCloud account). The devices, such as an iPhone and a computer, that you use to work with your email account then receives the message from the server.

This means you can have the same email messages on more than one device at a time. For example, you see the same messages on your iPhone and an iPad that’s also configured to work with email associated with the same account.

There are three ways emails move from the server onto your iPhone: Manually, Fetch, and Push. For example, Push means that as soon as email arrives at the server, it is pushed onto your device. You can select which method your iPhone uses for each email account; the details are provided in Chapter 4.

Working with Email

The Mail app is ideally suited for working with email on your iPhone. This app offers a consolidated Inbox, so you can view email from all your accounts at the same time.

When you move to a Home screen, you see the number of new email messages you have (if you have any) in the badge on the Mail app’s icon; tap the icon to move to the app. Even if you don’t have any new email, the Mail icon still leads you to the Mail app. Other ways Mail notifies you of new messages include by displaying visual notifications and the new mail sound, if these features are enabled.

The Mail app enables you to receive and read email for all the email accounts configured on your iPhone. The Mailboxes screen is the top-level screen in the app and is organized into two sections.

The Inboxes section shows the inbox for each account along with folders for email based on various criteria, such as having attachments or being unread, along with a folder for your draft messages (those you’ve started but haven’t sent yet). Next to each Inbox or folder is the number of new emails in that Inbox or folder. (A new message is simply one you haven’t viewed yet.) At the top of the section is All Inboxes, which shows the total number of new messages to all accounts; when you tap this, the integrated Inbox containing email from all your accounts is displayed.

The Accounts section, which is underneath the Inboxes section on the screen, shows the set of inboxes and folders associated with each email account. The difference between these sections is that the Inbox options take you to just the Inbox for one or all of your accounts or specific folders (such as the Attachments folder), whereas the Account options take you to all the folders under each account.

Tap the right-facing arrow for an account to expand it so you can see the folders it contains. You can tap any folder or inbox under an account to view the emails stored in that folder or inbox. Tap the downward-facing arrow to collapse an account so that you see only its name.

Receiving and Reading Email

To read email you have received, perform the following steps:

On the Home screen, tap Mail. When you open Mail (assuming you didn’t use the App Switcher to quit the app when you left it), you move back to the screen you were last on; for example, if you were reading an email you return to it. If the Mailboxes screen isn’t showing, tap Back (<) in the upper-left corner of the screen until you reach the Mailboxes screen.

To read messages, tap the inbox that contains messages you want to read, or tap All Inboxes to see the messages from all your email accounts. Various icons indicate the status of each message, if it has attachments, if it is from a VIP, or if it is part of a thread. A message is part of a thread when it has double right-facing arrows along the right side of the screen—individual messages have only one arrow.

Swipe up or down the screen to browse the messages. You can read the preview of each message to get an idea of its contents.

Tap the message you want to read. As soon as you open a message, it’s marked as read and the new mail counter reduces by one. You see the message screen with the address information at the top, including whom the message is from and to whom it was sent. You also see the time and date it was sent. Under that section is the subject of the message in large, bold type; if the message is a reply to other messages, the subject has “Re” added to it. Below that is the body of the message. If the message has an attachment or is a reply to another message, the attachment or quoted text appears toward the bottom of the screen.

Swipe up and down the screen to read the entire message.

If the message contains an attachment, swipe up the screen to get to the end of the message. Some types of attachments, most notably photos, appear directly in the message; you don’t have to download them to the device. If an attachment hasn’t been downloaded yet, it starts to download automatically (unless it’s a large file). If the attachment hasn’t been downloaded automatically, which is indicated by Tap to Download in the attachment icon, tap it to download it into the message. When an attachment finishes downloading, its icon changes to represent the type of file it is. If the icon remains generic, it might be of a type the iPhone can’t display, and you need to open it on a computer or other device.

Tap the attachment icon to view it.

Scroll the document by swiping up, down, left, or right on the screen.

Unpinch to zoom in.

Pinch to zoom out.

Tap Done (depending on the type of attachment you were viewing, you might tap Back [<] instead).

To view detailed information about the sender and recipients of the message, tap the top part of the message. The information expands and addresses turn blue indicating you can take action on them.

To get information about a specific person, tap his name or email address. The Info screen appears. On this screen, you see as much information for the person as is available. If it is someone in the Contacts app, you see all of the information stored there, and you can place a call, send a message, and perform other actions associated with her contact information. If it is not someone in the Contacts app, you see the person’s email address along with actions you might want to perform, such as creating a contact for him or adding new information to an existing contact. (See Chapter 8, “Managing Contacts,” for information about working with contacts.)

Tap Done to return to the message.

To read the next message in the current inbox or thread, tap the down arrow. (If the arrow is disabled, you are viewing the most recent email in the inbox or thread.)

To move to a previous message in the current inbox or thread, tap the up arrow. (If the arrow is disabled, you are viewing the oldest message in the inbox or thread.)

To move back to the inbox from where you came, tap Back (<), which shows the number of unread messages in that inbox (all your inboxes if you were viewing them all).

Sending Email

You can send email from any of your accounts. Follow these steps for a walk-through of composing and sending a new email message:

Tap Compose at the bottom of any Mail screen. A new email message containing your signature is created.

Tap the To field and type the first recipient’s email address. As you type, Mail attempts to find matching addresses in your Contacts list, or in emails you’ve sent or received, and displays the matches it finds. These can include individuals or groups with which you’ve emailed. To select one of those addresses, tap it. Mail enters the rest of the address for you. Or, just keep entering information until the address is complete.

Address the email using your Contacts app by tapping Add (+).

Use the Contacts app to find and select the contact to whom you want to address the message. When you tap a contact who has only one email address, that address is pasted into the To field and you return to the New Message window. When you tap a contact with more than one email address, you move to that contact’s screen, which shows all available addresses; tap the address to which you want to send the message.

Repeat steps 2–4 to add other recipients to the message.

Tap the Cc/Bcc, From line. The Cc and Bcc lines expand. If you don’t want to add these types of recipients, skip to step 9.

Follow the same procedures from steps 2–4 to add recipients to the Cc field. Use this field to include people who might benefit from reading the email, but don’t have any responsibility for it (information only).

Follow the same procedures from steps 2–4 to add recipients to the Bcc field. Use the Bcc field for those people whom you want to receive the message but that you want to hide from others on the distribution list (hidden recipients).

If the account you want to send the email from is shown in the From section or if you have only one email account, skip to step 11; to change the account from which the email is sent, tap the From field. The account wheel appears at the bottom of the screen.

Swipe up or down the wheel until the From address you want to use is shown at the center of the wheel.

Tap in the Subject line. The account selection wheel closes.

Type the subject of the message.

If you want to be notified when someone replies to the message you are creating, tap the bell; if not, skip to step 15.

Tap Notify Me. When anyone replies to the message, you are notified.

If you don’t see the body of the message, swipe up the screen, and it appears.

Tap in the body of the message, and type the message above your signature. Mail enables you to use all of the iOS’s great text tools, such as Predictive text. Of course, you can tap the microphone to dictate your email, too. (Refer to Chapter 3 for the details of working with text.)

To make the keyboard larger, rotate the iPhone so that it’s horizontal.

When you finish the message, tap Send. The progress of the send process is shown at the bottom of the screen; when the message has been sent, you hear the sent mail sound, which confirms that the message has been sent. If you enabled the reply notification for the message, you are notified when anyone replies to it.

Replying to Email

Email is all about communication, and Mail makes it simple to reply to messages.

Open the message you want to reply to.

Tap Share (the arrow).

Tap Reply to reply to only the sender or, if there was more than one recipient, tap Reply All to reply to everyone who received the original message.

If the message to which you’re replying has attachments, tap Include to include those in your reply or Don’t Include to leave them out. If the message doesn’t have attachments, you don’t have this option.

The Re: screen appears showing a new message. Mail pastes the contents of the original message at the bottom of the body of the new message below your signature. The original content is in blue and is marked with a vertical line along the left side of the screen.

Add or change the To, Cc, or Bcc recipients and select the account from which you want to send the reply. These tasks work just like when you create a new email message.

Write or dictate your response.

Tap Send (arrow). Mail sends your reply.

Forwarding Emails

When you receive an email you think others should see, you can forward it to them.

Read the message you want to forward.

If you want to include only part of the current content in the message you forward, tap where you want the forwarded content to start. This is useful (and considerate!) when only a part of the message applies to the people to whom you are forwarding it. If you want to forward the entire message, skip to step 4.

Use the text selection tools to select the content you want to include in your forwarded message.

Tap Share (arrow).

Tap Forward.

If the message includes attachments, tap Include at the prompt if you also want to forward the attachments, or tap Don’t Include if you don’t want them included. If it doesn’t have attachments, you don’t see this option.

The Forward screen appears. Mail pastes the contents of the message that you selected, or the entire content if you didn’t select anything, at the bottom of the message below your signature. If you included attachments, they’re added to the new message as well.

Address the forwarded message using the same tools you use when you create a new message.

Type your commentary about the message above your signature.

Tap Send. Mail forwards the message.

Managing Email

Following are some ways you can manage your email. For example, you can check for new messages, see the status of messages, delete messages, and organize messages using the folders associated with your email accounts.

Checking for New Email

To manually retrieve messages, swipe down from the top of any Inbox or the Mailboxes screen. The screen “stretches” down and when you lift your finger, the Mail app checks for and downloads new messages.

Mail also retrieves messages whenever you move into the app or into any inbox or all your inboxes. Of course, it also retrieves messages according to the selected Fetch New Data option. It downloads new messages immediately when they arrive in your account if Push is enabled or automatically at defined intervals if you’ve set Fetch to get new email periodically. (Refer to Chapter 4 for an explanation of these options and how to set them.)

The bottom of the Mailboxes or an Inbox screen always shows when email was most recently downloaded to your iPhone; on the bottom of inbox screens, you also see the number of new email messages (if there are any unread messages).

Understanding the Status of Email

When you view an inbox or a message thread, you see icons next to each message that indicate its status. When a message doesn’t have any icons, that means it doesn’t have attachments, you’ve read it but haven’t done anything else with it, or it isn’t from a VIP. (VIPs are explained in the Go Further sidebar, “VIPs,” later in this chapter.)

Managing Email from the Message Screen

To delete a message while reading it, tap Trash. If the warning preference is enabled (see the Go Further sidebar, “Mail Settings,” at the end of this chapter to learn how to enable this warning), confirm the deletion and the message is deleted. If the confirmation prompt is disabled, the message is deleted immediately.

To take other action on a message you are reading, tap Share (arrow). On the Share sheet that opens, you can choose a number of commands. The action you select is performed on the message you’re viewing.

Managing Multiple Emails at the Same Time

You can manage email by selecting multiple messages on an inbox screen, which is more efficient because you can take action on multiple messages at the same time.

Move to an Inbox screen showing messages you want to manage.

Tap Edit. A selection circle appears next to each message.

Select the message(s) you want to manage by tapping their selection circles. As you select each message, its selection circle turns into a white check mark in a blue circle. Selected messages are also highlighted in gray bars. At the top of the screen, you see how many messages you currently have selected. The actions you can perform become active at the bottom of the screen.

To delete the selected messages, tap Trash. Mail deletes the selected messages and exits Edit mode.

To change the status of the selected messages, tap Mark.

Tap the action you want to take on the selected messages. The action you select is performed and you return to the Inbox screen and exit Edit mode.

Storing Email in Specific Locations

Over time, you might end up with a lot of messages in your inboxes. You can keep the email you want to retain organized by storing it in folders, which work just like document folders on a desktop computer and are analogous to a file folder used to keep papers organized. To keep your inboxes neat and tidy, follow these steps:

Move to an Inbox screen showing messages you want to move to a folder.

Tap Edit. A selection circle appears next to each message.

Select the messages you want to move by tapping their selection circles. As you select each message, its selection circle turns into a white check mark on a blue circle. The actions available for what you select become active at the bottom of the screen.

Tap Move. The Mailboxes screen appears. At the top of this screen you see the number of messages you are moving. Under that are the mailboxes available under the current account.

Swipe up and down the screen to browse the mailboxes available in the current account.

Tap the mailbox to which you want to move the selected messages. They are moved into that folder, and you return to the previous screen, which is no longer in Edit mode.

Working with Messages in a Specific Mailbox

You can open a mailbox within an account to work with the messages it contains. For example, you might want to open the Trash mailbox to recover a deleted message.

Move to the Mailboxes screen.

If necessary, swipe up the screen to see the email accounts you’re using. Each account has its own section showing the mailboxes stored on that account.

If you don’t see an account’s mailboxes, expand the account by tapping its right-facing arrow.

Swipe up and down to browse the mailboxes in the account.

Tap the folder or mailbox containing the messages you want to view. You see the messages it contains. In some cases, this can take a few moments for the messages to be downloaded if that folder or mailbox hasn’t been accessed recently.

Tap a message or thread to view it. Or, tap Edit and select multiple messages to move them to a different location. For example, if you accidentally deleted messages, open the Trash mailbox for the account to which those messages were sent and move them back to the inbox for that account using the steps in “Storing Email in Specific Locations.”

Saving Images Attached to Email

Email is a great way to share photos. When you receive a message that includes photos, you can save them on your iPhone.

Move to the message screen of an email that contains one or more photos or images.

Swipe up the message to see all the images it contains.

Touch and hold on an image. The Share tools appear.

Tap Save Image to save just the image you touched or tap Save X Images, where X is the number of images attached to the message, to save all the photos. (If there is only one image, the command is just Save Image.) The images are saved in the Photos app on your iPhone. (See Chapter 16 for help working with the Photos app.)

Finding Email

As you accumulate email, you might want to be able to find or focus on specific messages. You can do this by filtering an inbox or by searching for specific messages.

Filtering Email

You can quickly filter the email messages in an inbox as follows:

Open the inbox you want to filter. Choose All Inboxes to filter all your email at once.

Tap Filter. The contents of the inbox are filtered by the current criteria, which is indicated by the term under “Filtered by.” The Filter icon is highlighted in blue to show the inbox is filtered.

Tap the current filter criteria.

Set the criteria by which you want to filter the messages in the inbox; the current criteria are indicated by check marks or green switches. For example, tap To: Me to only show messages on which you are included in the To block.

Tap Done. You return to the inbox and only messages that meet your filter criteria are shown.

Tap Filter to display all the messages again.

Searching Email

You can find specific email messages by searching for them. For example, suppose you want to retrieve an email message that was related to a specific topic, but you can’t remember where you stored it. Mail’s Search tool can help you find messages like this quite easily.

Move to the screen you want to search, such as an account’s inbox or a folder’s screen. If you want to search all your mailboxes, this step is optional as you can select all your mailboxes later in the process.

If necessary, swipe down to move to the top of the screen to display the Search tool.

Tap in the Search tool.

To search in all your mailboxes, tap All Mailboxes, or to search in only the current mailbox, tap Current Mailbox.

Enter the text for which you want to search. As you type, Siri makes suggestions about what you might be searching for. These appear in different sections based on the type of search Siri thinks you are doing, such as People, Subjects, and more. The Top Hits section shows messages that seem to be the best matches; tap one of these to open that message.

To use one of Mail’s suggestions to search, such as a person, tap their name; or continue typing your search term and when you are done, tap search. Mail searches for messages based on your search criterion and you see the results.

Work with the messages you found, such as tapping a message to read it. When you’re done with the message, tap Back (<) in the upper-left corner of the screen to return to the search results.

To clear a search and exit Search mode, tap Cancel.

Managing Junk Email

Junk email, also known as spam, is an unfortunate reality of email. No matter what precautions you take, you’re going to receive some spam emails. Of course, it’s good practice to be careful about where you provide your email address to limit the amount of spam you receive.

Consider using a “sacrificial” email account when you shop, post messages, or provide your address in the other situations that might lead to spam. If you do get spammed, you can stop using the sacrificial account and create another one to take its place. Or you can delete the sacrificial account from your iPhone and continue to use it on your computer where you likely have better spam tools in place.

The Mail app on the iPhone includes a basic junk email tool. However, if you use an account or an email application on a computer that features a junk mail/spam tool, it acts on mail sent to your iPhone, too. For example, if you configure spam tools for a Gmail account, those tools act on email before it reaches your iPhone. Similarly, if you use the Mail app on a Mac, its rules and junk filter work on email as you receive it; the results of this are also reflected on your iPhone. To change how you deal with junk email on your iPhone, change the junk email settings for your account online (such as for Gmail). Or, change how an email app on a computer (for example, Mail on a Mac) deals with junk mail. The results of these changes are reflected in the Mail app on your iPhone.

Many email accounts, including iCloud and Gmail, have Junk folders; these folders are available in the Mail app on your iPhone. You can open the Junk folder under an account to see the messages that are placed there.

Marking Junk Email

You can perform basic junk email management on your iPhone by doing the following:

When you view a message that is junk, tap Share (the arrow).

If needed, swipe up to see the Move to Junk command.

Tap Move to Junk. The message is moved from the inbox to the Junk folder for the account to which it was sent. Future messages from the same sender go into the Junk folder automatically.