Chapter 6
How Do I Make the Most of E-mail?

As more people start texting, tweeting, and Skyping, the more old-fashioned e-mail seems. Yes, reading and composing e-mail is dishwater dull, but do you know what else it is? It’s universal. Almost everyone who’s online has an e-mail account, and it remains the best way to get in touch and exchange information (at least digitally). Your iPad or iPad mini comes with a decent e-mail app that’s easy to use, but there are still plenty of tricks and techniques you should know to help you get the most out of Mail on your tablet.

Managing Your E-mail Accounts

The Mail app is a nice e-mail program that makes the most of the two iPad or iPad mini orientations. In portrait mode, you see a big version of the current message, complete with embedded photos and other media. In landscape mode, you get a two-pane view with your Inbox messages in one pane and the current message in the other. Landscape mode is great for composing messages because you get the larger keyboard and a nice, big compose window.

The Mail app also has a few features and settings that make it ideal for doing e-mail away from your desk. First, however, you have to set up your tablet with one or more e-mail accounts.

Syncing your e-mail accounts

The Mail app is most useful when it’s set up to use an e-mail account that you also use on your computer. That way, when you’re on the road or out on the town, you can check your messages and rest assured that you won’t miss anything important (or even anything unimportant, for that matter). The easiest way to do this is to sync an existing e-mail account between your computer and your tablet. If you already have an existing account up and running — whether it’s a Mail account on your Mac, or an Outlook or Windows Mail account on your PC (not, however, the Windows 8 Mail app or Windows Live Mail, which aren’t supported by iTunes) — you can convince iTunes to gather all of the account details and pass them along to your tablet.

The version of iTunes that comes with OS X Mavericks does not support syncing e-mail accounts directly between iTunes and an iPad or iPad mini. Instead, you must configure your Mac to sync this data to your iCloud account, and then configure your tablet to have this data synced from your iCloud account. See Chapter 4 for the details.

Follow these steps to sync e-mail accounts:

1. Connect your tablet to your computer.

2. In the iTunes Devices list, click the iPad or iPad mini.

3. Click the Info tab. Remember that you won’t see the Info tab if you’re running OS X Mavericks.

4. In the Mail Accounts section, use one of the following techniques:

• Mac. Select the Sync Mail Accounts check box, and then select the check box beside each account that you want to add to the tablet, as shown in Figure 6.1.

• PC. Select the Sync Mail Accounts From check box, select your e-mail program from the drop-down list, and select the check box beside each account that you want to add to your tablet.

For some accounts, you need to be careful that your tablet doesn’t delete incoming messages from the server before you have a chance to download them to your computer. I show you how to set that up later in this chapter.

6.1 Make sure that you select the Sync Mail Accounts check box and at least one account in the list.

5. Click Apply. You may see a message asking if AppleMobileSync can be allowed access to your keychain (your Mac’s master password list).

6. If you see that message, click Allow. iTunes begins syncing the selected e-mail account settings from your computer to your tablet.

Remember that your iPad or iPad mini syncs only your e-mail account settings (username, password, mail servers, and so on), not your e-mail account messages.

Adding an account manually

Syncing e-mail accounts as I describe in the previous section is useful when you want to do the e-mail thing on multiple devices. However, you may also prefer to have an e-mail account that’s tablet-only. For example, if you join an iPad or iPad mini mailing list, you may prefer to have those messages sent only to your device. That’s a darn good idea, but it means that you have to set up the account on the iPad or iPad mini itself, which requires a fair amount of tapping.

You may think you can avoid the often excessive tapping required to enter a new e-mail account into your iPad or iPad mini by creating the account in your computer’s e-mail program and then syncing with your tablet. That works, but there’s a hitch: you must leave the new account in your e-mail program. If you delete or disable it, iTunes deletes the account from the iPad or iPad mini.

How you create an account on your tablet with the sweat of your own brow depends on the type of account that you have. iOS recognizes the following six e-mail services:

iCloud. This is the Apple web-based e-mail service (that also comes with applications for calendars, contacts, storage, and more).

Microsoft Exchange. This is an account on an Exchange server, which is common in large organizations. Exchange uses a central server to store messages, and you usually work with your messages on the server, not your tablet. However, one of the great features in iOS is support for Exchange ActiveSync, which automatically keeps your tablet and your account on the server synchronized. I discuss the ActiveSync settings later in this chapter.

Google Gmail. This is a web-based e-mail service run by Google.

Yahoo!. This is a web-based e-mail service run by Yahoo!.

AOL. This is a web-based e-mail service run by AOL.

Outlook.com. This is a web-based e-mail service run by Microsoft.

iOS knows how to connect to these services, so to set up any of these e-mail accounts, you only need to know the address and the account password. Otherwise, the Mail app supports the following e-mail account types:

POP (Post Office Protocol). This is the most popular type of account. Its main characteristic for your purposes is that incoming messages are stored only temporarily on the provider’s mail server. When you connect to the server, the messages are downloaded to your tablet and removed from the server. In other words, your messages (including copies of messages you send) are stored locally on your iPad or iPad mini. The advantage here is that you don’t need to be online to read your e-mail — after it’s downloaded to your tablet, you can read it (or delete it) at your leisure.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). This type of account is most often used with web-based e-mail services. It’s the opposite of POP (sort of) because all of your incoming messages, as well as copies of messages you send, remain on the server. In this case, when Mail works with an IMAP account, it connects to the server and works with the messages on the server itself, not on your tablet (although it looks like you’re working with the messages locally). The advantage here is that you can access the messages from multiple devices and multiple locations, but you must be connected to the Internet to work with your messages.

Your network administrator or your e-mail service provider can let you know what type of e-mail account you have. Your administrator or provider can also give you the information you need to set up the account. This includes your e-mail address, the username and password you use to check for new messages, any security information you need to specify to send messages, the host name of the incoming mail server (typically something like mail.provider.com or pop.provider.com, where provider.com is the domain name of the provider), and the host name of the outgoing mail server (typically either mail.provider.com or smtp.provider.com). With your account information clutched in your fist, follow these steps to forge a brand-new account on your iPad or iPad mini:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen appears.

3. Tap Add Account. This opens the Add Account screen, as shown in Figure 6.2.

4. You can proceed in one of the following ways:

• If you’re adding an account for iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Outlook.com, tap the corresponding logo. In the account information screen that appears, type your name, e-mail address, password, and an account description. Tap Save and you’re done!

• If you’re adding another account type, tap Other and continue with step 5.

6.2 Use the Add Account screen to choose the type of e-mail account you want to add.

5. Tap Add Mail Account to open the New Account screen.

6. Use the Name, Email, Password, and Description text boxes to type the corresponding account information, and then tap Next.

7. Tap the type of account you’re adding: IMAP or POP.

8. In the Incoming Mail Server section, use the Host Name text box to type the host name of your provider’s incoming mail server, as well as your username and password.

9. In the Outgoing Mail Server section, use the Host Name text box to type the host name of your provider’s outgoing (SMTP) mail server. If your provider requires a username and password to send messages, type those as well.

10. Tap Save. Your iPad or iPad mini verifies the account info (which might take a minute or three), and then returns you to the Mail settings screen with the account added to the Accounts list.

Specifying the default account

If you’ve added two or more e-mail accounts to your tablet, Mail specifies one of them as the default account. This means that Mail uses this account when you send a new message, when you reply to a message, and when you forward a message. The default account is usually the first account that you add to your iPad or iPad mini. However, you can change this by following these steps:

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

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The Settings app displays the Mail, Contacts, Calendars screen.

3. In the Mail section of the screen, tap Default Account. This opens the Default Account screen, which displays a list of your accounts. The current default account is shown with a check mark beside it.

4. Tap the account that you want to use as the default. The Settings app places a check mark beside it.

Temporarily disabling an account

The Mail app checks for new messages at a regular interval (I show you how to configure this interval a bit later in this chapter). If you have several accounts configured in Mail, this incessant checking can put quite a strain on your tablet battery. To ease up on the juice, follow these steps to temporarily disable an account and prevent Mail from checking it for new messages:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars to see the Mail settings.

3. Tap the account you want to disable. The Settings app displays the account settings.

4. Depending on the type of account, you can use one of the following techniques to temporarily disable it:

• iCloud, Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Outlook.com. Tap the Mail switch to Off. If the account syncs other types of data, such as contacts and calendars, you can also turn those switches off.

• POP or IMAP. Tap the Account switch to Off, as shown in Figure 6.3.

5. Tap Done to return to the Mail settings screen.

When you’re ready to work with the account again, repeat these steps to turn the Mail or Account switch back to On.

6.3 To temporarily disable an e-mail account, tap the Account switch to Off in the account settings screen.

Deleting an account

If an e-mail account has grown tiresome and boring (or you just don’t use it anymore), you should delete it to save storage space, speed up sync times, and save battery power. Follow these steps to delete an account:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to get the Settings app on-screen.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars to get to the Mail settings.

3. Tap the account you want to delete. This opens the account settings.

4. Tap Delete Account. The Settings app asks you to confirm.

5. Tap Delete. The Settings app returns you to the Mail settings screen and the account no longer graces the Accounts list.

Switching to another account

When you open the Mail app (by tapping Mail in the Dock), you usually see the Inbox folder of your default account. If you have multiple accounts set up on your iPad or iPad mini, and you want to see what’s going on with a different one, follow these steps to make the switch:

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

2. In landscape mode, tap the mailbox button in the top-left corner of the screen (but below the status bar). If you’re in portrait mode, tap Inbox and then tap the mailbox button. The Mail app displays the Mailboxes screen, as shown in Figure 6.4.

6.4 Use the Mailboxes screen to choose the e-mail Inbox or account to which you want to switch.

3. Tap the account with which you want to work based on one of the following criteria:

• If you only want to see the account’s Inbox folder, tap the account name in the Inboxes section of the Mailboxes screen.

• If you want to see all of the account’s available folders, tap the account name in the Accounts section of the Mailboxes screen. Mail displays a list of the account’s folders, and you then tap the folder with which you want to work.

In iOS 7 Mail, you can customize the Mailboxes screen by tapping Edit. You can then use the check boxes that appear on the left side of the screen to toggle specific mailboxes on and off (including general mailboxes such as Unread, which displays only the messages you haven’t yet read, and Attachments, which displays only messages that have files attached. You can also change the order of the mailboxes and even add your own mailboxes.

Configuring E-mail Accounts

Setting up an e-mail account on your iPad or iPad mini is one thing, but making it do useful things (or sometimes, anything at all) is quite another. The next few sections take you through a few useful settings that help you get more out of e-mail and troubleshoot e-mail problems.

Leaving messages on the server

In today’s increasingly mobile world, it’s not unusual to find you need to check the same e-mail account from multiple devices. For example, while commuting or traveling, you may want to check your business account using not only your work computer, but also your home computer or your tablet.

If you need to check e-mail on multiple devices, you can take advantage of how POP e-mail messages are delivered over the Internet. When someone sends you a message, it doesn’t come directly to your computer. Instead, it goes to the server that your Internet service provider (or your company) has set up to handle incoming messages. When you ask your e-mail client to check for new messages, it communicates with the POP server to see if any messages are waiting in your account. If so, the client downloads those messages to your computer and then instructs the server to delete the copies of the messages that are stored on the server.

The trick, then, is to configure the e-mail program so that it leaves a copy of the messages on the POP server after you download them. This way, the messages are still available when you check messages using another device. Fortunately, the intuitive folks who designed the Mail app must have understood this because the program automatically sets up POP accounts to do just that. Specifically, after you download any messages from the POP server to your iPad or iPad mini, the Mail app leaves the messages on the server.

The following is a good overall strategy to ensure that you can download messages on all of your devices, while preventing messages from piling up on the server:

Let your main computer be the computer that controls deleting the messages from the server. In Mac OS X, the default Mail setting is to delete messages from the server after one week and that’s fine.

Set all of your other devices — particularly your iPad or iPad mini — not to delete messages from the server.

To leave messages on the server in the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook, choose File → Account Settings, click the account, click Change, and then click More Settings. Click the Advanced tab, and then select the Leave a Copy of Messages on the Server check box. In Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail, choose File → Options → Email Accounts, click your e-mail account, and then click Properties. Click the Advanced tab, and then select the Leave a Copy of Messages on Server check box.

It’s a good idea to check your POP accounts to ensure they’re not deleting messages from the server. To do that (or to use a different setting, such as deleting messages after a week or when you delete them from your Inbox), follow these steps:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The Settings app opens the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen.

3. Tap the POP account with which you want to work. The account settings dialog appears.

4. Tap Advanced. The Settings app displays the Advanced dialog.

5. Tap Remove. The Remove dialog appears.

6. Tap Never. If you prefer that your tablet delete messages from the server after a set period of time, tap After one day, After one week, or After one month.

Using a different server port

For security reasons, some Internet service providers (ISPs) insist on routing all of their customers’ outgoing mail through their Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) servers. This usually isn’t a big deal if you’re using an e-mail account maintained by the ISP, but it can lead to the following problems if you’re using an account provided by a third party (such as your website host):

Your ISP might block messages sent using the third-party account because it thinks you’re trying to relay the message through the ISP server (a technique often used by spammers).

You might incur extra charges if your ISP allows only a certain amount of SMTP bandwidth per month or a certain number of sent messages, whereas the third-party account offers higher limits or no restrictions at all.

You might have performance problems, such as the ISP server taking much longer to route messages than the third-party host.

You may think that you can solve the problem by specifying the third-party host’s SMTP server in the account settings. However, this usually doesn’t work because outgoing e-mail is sent by default through port 25. When you use this port, the outgoing mail goes through the ISP’s SMTP server. To work around this problem, many third-party hosts offer access to their SMTP servers via a port other than the standard port 25. For example, the iCloud SMTP server (smtp.icloud.com) also accepts connections on ports 465 and 587.

Follow these steps to configure an e-mail account to use a nonstandard SMTP port:

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

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen appears.

3. Tap the POP account with which you want to work. The account settings dialog appears.

4. Tap SMTP. The Settings app displays the SMTP dialog.

5. In the Primary Server section, tap the name of your server. The Settings app displays the server settings.

6. Tap Server Port. The Settings app displays a keypad so that you can type the port number, as shown in Figure 6.5.

6.5 Tap Server Port to type the new port number for outgoing messages.

Configuring authentication for outgoing mail

Because spam is such a big problem these days, many ISPs now require SMTP authentication for outgoing mail. This means that you must log on to the SMTP server to confirm that you’re the person sending the mail (as opposed to some spammer spoofing your address). If your ISP requires authentication on outgoing messages, you need to configure your e-mail account to provide the proper credentials.

If you’re not sure about any of this, check with your ISP. If that doesn’t work out, by far the most common type of authentication is to specify a username and password (this happens behind the scenes when you send messages). Follow these steps to configure your iPad or iPad mini e-mail account with this kind of authentication:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to get the Settings app on-screen.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. The Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen appears.

3. Tap the POP account with which you want to work. The account settings dialog appears.

4. Tap SMTP. The Settings app displays the SMTP dialog.

5. In the Primary Server section, tap the server name. The Settings app displays the server settings.

6. In the Outgoing Mail Server section, tap Authentication. The Settings app displays the Authentication dialog.

7. Tap Password.

8. Tap the server address to return to the server settings screen.

9. In the Outgoing Mail Server section, type your account username in the User Name box and the account password in the Password box.

10. Tap Done.

Configuring E-mail Messages

The rest of this chapter takes you through a few useful and timesaving techniques for handling e-mail messages on your iPad or iPad mini.

Creating e-mail VIPs

Somebody once said that the world doesn’t have an information overload problem, it has a filter problem. In other words, the tsunami of information that comes your way every day wouldn’t be such a headache if you had the tools to separate the important from the trivial, the useful from the pointless, the steak from the sizzle.

iOS Mail offers one such tool: the VIP List. This is a simple list of people that you designate as important. From an e-mail perspective, “important” means these are people whose messages you want to read right away because they always contain information that’s useful or interesting to you. To find messages from these people, you normally have to wade through the sea of messages in your various account inboxes (or the All Inboxes mailbox, which combines all your accounts). With the VIP List, however, Mail sets up a special VIP inbox that only shows messages from your VIPs, so they’re easily located. Additionally, the VIP feature is part of the Notification Center, so you see a special banner alert whenever you receive a message from one of your VIPs. Take that, information overload!

Follow these steps to set up your VIP List:

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

2. If you’re currently viewing an inbox, tap Mailboxes to return to the Mailboxes screen.

3. Tap VIP. Mail displays the VIP List screen.

4. Tap Add VIP. Mail opens the All Contacts screen.

5. Tap the contact you want to designate as a VIP. Mail adds the contact to the VIP List.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you’ve added all of your VIPs. Figure 6.6 shows the VIP List with a few names added. Note that if you need to delete a VIP, you can tap Edit, and then tap the red Delete button beside the contact.

6.6 Use the VIP List to filter your incoming mail and display messages from important people in the VIP mailbox.

After you’ve added a VIP or three, tapping the VIP inbox displays recent messages from your important folks. To return to the VIP List screen instead, tap the blue Info button that appears to the right of the VIP inbox in the Mailboxes screen.

Formatting an e-mail

We’re all used to rich text e-mail messages by now, where formatting such as bold and italics is used to add pizzazz or emphasis to our e-musings. iOS Mail gives you a limited set of formatting options for text: bold, italics, and underline. It’s not much, but it’s a start, so follow these steps to format text in the Mail app:

1. In your e-mail message, tap within the word or phrase you want to format. The Mail app displays the cursor.

2. Tap the cursor. Mail displays a set of options.

3. Tap Select. Mail selects the word closest to the cursor.

4. If needed, drag the selection handles to select the entire phrase you want to format. Mail displays a set of options for the selected text.

5. Tap the arrow on the right side of the options. Mail displays more options.

6. Tap the BIU button. Mail displays the Bold, Italics, and Underline buttons, as shown in Figure 6.7.

7. Tap the formatting you want to apply. Mail leaves the formatting options on the screen, so feel free to apply multiple formats if needed.

8. Tap another part of the screen to hide the formatting options.

6.7 You can now format e-mail text.

If you’re composing a message on your computer and decide to work on it later, your mail program stores it as a draft that you can reopen. The Mail app doesn’t appear to have this option, but it does. In the message window, tap Cancel (counterintuitive, I know!), and then tap Save Draft. When you’re ready to resume editing, open the account in the Mailboxes screen, tap Drafts, and then tap your saved message.

E-mailing a link

The web is all about finding content that’s interesting, educational, and, of course, fun. If you stumble across a page that meets one or more of these criteria, the only sensible thing to do is share your good fortune with someone else, right? So, how do you do that? Some pages are kind enough to include an E-mail This Page link (or something similar), but you can’t count on having one of those around. Instead, the usual method is to copy the page address, switch to your e-mail program, paste the address into the message, choose a recipient, and then send it.

And, yes, with the iOS copy-and-paste feature, you can do all that, but boy, it sure seems like a ton of work. So are you stuck using this unwieldy method? Not a chance (you probably knew that). Your iPad or iPad mini includes a great little feature that enables you to plop the address of the current Safari page into an e-mail message with just a couple of taps. You then ship out the message and make the world a better place.

Follow these steps to quickly add a link to an e-mail:

1. Use Safari to navigate to the page you want to share.

2. Tap the Actions button (the one with the arrow) in the status bar. Safari displays a dialog with several options.

3. Tap Mail. This opens a new e-mail message. As you can see in Figure 6.8, the new message already includes the page title as the Subject and the page address in the message body.

4. Choose a recipient for the message.

5. Edit the message text as you see fit.

6. Tap Send. Mail fires off the message and returns you to Safari.

6.8 Your iPad or iPad mini can create a new e-mail message with a web page’s title and address already inserted.

Creating iCloud message folders

In your e-mail program on your computer, you’ve no doubt created lots of folders to hold different types of messages that you want or need to save: projects, people, mailing list gems, and so on. This is a great way to reduce Inbox clutter and organize the e-mail portion of your life.

Of course, these days the e-mail portion of your life extends beyond your computer and probably includes a lot of time spent on your iPad or iPad mini. Wouldn’t it be great to have that same folder convenience and organization on your favorite tablet? Happily, you can. If you have an iCloud account, any folders (technically, Apple calls them mailboxes) that you create on your iCloud account — either on your computer or on the iCloud site — are automatically mirrored on the Mail app.

Even better, you can create new iCloud message folders right from the comfort of your tablet. Follow these steps to create a new folder:

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

2. In landscape mode, tap the mailbox button in the top-left corner of the screen (but below the status bar). If you’re in portrait mode, tap Inbox, and then tap the mailbox button. The Mail app displays the Mailboxes screen.

3. In the Accounts section, tap your iCloud account. Mail displays the iCloud folders list.

4. Tap Edit. Mail opens the iCloud folders list for editing.

5. Tap New Mailbox. The Edit Mailbox screen appears.

6. Type a name for the new folder.

7. Tap the Mailbox Location, and then tap the folder in which you want to store your new folder.

8. Tap Save. Mail adds the folder, and iCloud propagates the change to the cloud.

9. Tap Done.

To move a message to your new folder, display the iCloud Inbox folder, tap the message, tap the Move button (the folder icon), and then tap the new folder.

Creating a custom signature

E-mail signatures can range from the simple — a signoff such as “Cheers,” or “All the best,” followed by the sender’s name — to baroque masterpieces filled with contact information, snappy quotations, or even some text-based artwork! The Mail app takes the simple route by adding the following signature to all of your outgoing messages (new messages, replies, and forwards):

Sent from my iPad

I like this signature because it’s short, simple, and I, of course, want my recipients to know that I’m using my iPad. If the default signature doesn’t rock your world, you can follow these steps to create one that does:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. You see the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen.

3. In the Mail section, tap Signature. The Signature screen appears.

4. If you have multiple accounts and you prefer to create a unique signature for each one, tap Per Account and then tap the account you want to work with. If, instead, you leave the All Accounts item selected, Mail will use the same signature for all your accounts.

5. Type the signature you want to use. Mail saves your new signature as you type.

Disabling remote images

Lots of messages nowadays come not just as plain text, but also with fonts, colors, images, and other flourishes. This fancy formatting, called either rich text or HTML, makes for a more pleasant e-mail experience, particularly with images in messages. Who doesn’t like a bit of eye candy to brighten his day?

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is a set of codes that folks use to put together web pages.

Unfortunately, getting images in your e-mail messages can sometimes be problematic for the following reasons:

A cellular connection may cause trouble. It may take a long time to load the images or, if your data plan has an upper limit, you may not want a bunch of e-mail images taking a big bite out of that limit.

Not all e-mail images are benign. A web bug is an image that resides on a remote server and is added to an HTML-formatted e-mail message by referencing an address on the remote server. When you open the message, Mail uses the address to download the image for display within the message. That sounds harmless enough, but if the message is junk e-mail, it’s likely that the address also contains either your e-mail address or a code that points to it. When the remote server gets a request to load the image, it knows not only that you’ve opened the message, but also that your e-mail address is legitimate. So, not surprisingly, spammers use web bugs all of the time because, for them, valid e-mail addresses are like gold.

The Mail app displays remote images by default. To disable remote images, follow these steps:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings. Your iPad or iPad mini opens the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. You see the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen.

3. In the Mail section, tap the Load Remote Images switch to the Off position. Mail saves the setting and hides remote images in your e-mail messages.

Note that Mail now hides remote images, which means that the images are still available if you want to display them when you have a fast connection or when you’re dealing with a message that you know is benign. In Mail, display the message, scroll to the bottom, and then tap Load All Images.

Preventing Mail from organizing messages by thread

The Mail app groups your messages by thread, which means the original message and all of the replies you receive are grouped together in the account Inbox folder. This is usually remarkably handy, because it means you don’t have to scroll through a million messages to locate the reply you want to read.

Mail indicates a thread by displaying a double arrow (>>) instead of a single arrow (>) to the right of the first message in the thread, as shown in Figure 6.9. Tap the message to see a list of the messages in the thread, and then tap the one that you want to read.

6.9 A double arrow (>>) on the right side of a message tells you there are multiple messages in the thread.

Organizing messages by thread is not always convenient. As you view and scroll through your messages (by tapping the Next (downward-pointing arrow) and Previous (upward-pointing arrow) buttons), Mail jumps into a thread when you come to one. You then scroll through each message in the thread, which can be a real hassle if there are a large number of replies.

If you find that threads are more of a hassle than they’re worth, you can follow these steps to configure Mail not to organize messages by thread:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars. You see the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings screen.

3. Tap the Organize By Thread switch to the Off position. The Settings app saves the setting and no longer organizes your images by thread.

Marking all messages as read

If veteran iOS users had a complaint about the Mail app, it would be how hard it was to manage Inboxes. For example, it was tedious to mark messages as read in a second Mail app. Say you’d already read all your messages on your computer: you obviously wouldn’t need to reread them on your iPad or iPad mini, but the only way to mark them as having been read was to open each one. No big whoop for five or ten messages, but a very big whoop indeed for dozens, or even hundreds, of messages.

Happily, that annoyance can be crossed off the iOS gripe list because the Mail app now gives you a simple way to mark everything as read in one (more of less) fell swoop:

1. In the Mail app, open the mailbox you want to manage.

2. Tap Edit. Mail puts the mailbox into edit mode.

3. Tap Mark All. Mail asks what you want marked.

4. Tap Mark as Read. Mail marks every message in the mailbox as having been read. Sweet!

Configuring the Exchange ActiveSync settings

If you have an account on a Microsoft Exchange Server network, and that server has deployed Exchange ActiveSync, you’re all set to have your tablet and Exchange account synchronized automatically. That’s because ActiveSync supports wireless push technology, which means that if anything changes on your Exchange server account, that change is immediately synced with your tablet. This occurs with all of the following:

E-mail. If you receive a new message on your Exchange account, ActiveSync immediately displays it in the Mail app.

Contacts. If someone at work adds or edits data in the server address book, those changes are immediately synced to your Contacts list.

Calendar. If someone at work adds or edits an appointment in your calendar, or requests a meeting with you, that data is immediately synced with the Calendar application.

Reminder. If someone at work adds or edits a reminder, that data is immediately synced with the Reminders app.

Notes. If you or a colleague adds or edits a note, that change is immediately synced with the Notes app.

ActiveSync works both ways, too. If you send e-mail messages, add contacts or appointments, or accept meeting requests, your server account is immediately updated with the changes. And all this data whizzing back and forth is safe, because it’s sent over a secure connection.

Your iPad or iPad mini also gives you a few options for controlling ActiveSync. The following steps show you how to set them up:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings to open the Settings app.

2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars to open the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings.

3. Tap your Exchange account. The Exchange account settings screen appears, as shown in Figure 6.10.

4. To sync your Exchange e-mail account, tap the Mail On/Off switch to the On position.

5. To sync your Exchange address book, calendars, reminders, and Notes, tap the Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Notes On/Off switches, respectively, to the On position. In each case, if the Settings app asks what you want to do with the local content on your device, tap Keep on My iPad.

6. To control the amount of time that gets synced on your e-mail account, tap Mail Days to Sync, and then tap the number of days, weeks, or months you want to sync.

6.10 Use the Exchange account settings screen to customize the ActiveSync support.

Controlling e-mail with Siri voice commands

You can use the Siri voice recognition app to check, compose, send, and reply to messages, all with simple voice commands. Tap and hold the Home button (or press and hold the Mic button of the iPhone headphones, or the equivalent button on a Bluetooth headset) until Siri appears. To check for new e-mail messages on your iCloud account, you need only say “Check e-mail” (or just “Check mail”). You can also view a list of the following iCloud messages:

Displaying unread messages. Say “Show new e-mail.”

Displaying messages where the Subject line contains a specified topic. Say “Show e-mail about topic,” where topic is the topic you want to view.

Displaying messages from a particular person. Say “Show e-mail from name,” where name is the name of the sender.

To start a new e-mail message, Siri gives you the following options:

Creating a new message addressed to a particular person. Say “E-mail name,” where name is the name of the recipient. This name can be a name from your Contacts list, or someone with a defined relationship, such as “Mom” or “my brother.”

Creating a new message with a particular subject line. Say “E-mail name about subject,” where name defines the recipient and subject is the Subject line text.

Creating a new message with a particular body. Say “E-mail name and say text,” where name is the recipient, and text is the message body text.

In each case, Siri creates the new message, displays it, and then asks if you want to send it. If you do, you can either say “Send” or tap the Send button. If you have a message displayed, you can send back a response by saying “Reply.” If you want to add some text to the response, say “Reply text,” where text is your response.

You can also use Siri within Mail to dictate a message. Dictation supports American English, British English, Australian English, French, German, and Japanese. When you tap inside the body of a new message, the keyboard that appears shows a Mic button beside the spacebar. Tap it, and then start dictating. The following are some tips about using Dictation:

For punctuation, you can say the name of the mark you need, such as “comma” (,), “semicolon” (;), “colon” (:), “period” or “full stop” (.), “question mark” (?), “exclamation point” (!), “dash” (-), or “at sign” (@).

You can enclose text in parentheses by saying “open parenthesis,” then the text, and then “close parenthesis.”

To surround text with quotation marks, say “open quote,” then the text, and then “close quote.”

To render a word in all uppercase letters, say “all caps,” and then say the word.

To start a new paragraph, say “new line.”

You can have some fun by saying “smiley face” for :-), “wink face” for ;-), or “frown face” for :-(.

When you’re finished, pause for a few seconds to let the Dictation feature know that you’re done. Dictation then processes your speech and converts it to text within the message window.