Setting up your account the easy way

Chapter 3 explains the option of automatically syncing the email accounts on your Mac or Windows PC with your iPad. If you chose the automatic syncing option when you set up your iPad, your email accounts should already be configured properly. And if you signed in with an iCloud account while setting up your iPad (read Chapter 2), you should already be good to go with your iCloud email account. If so, you may proceed directly to the later section “See Me, Read Me, File Me, Delete Me: Working with Messages.”

If you haven’t yet chosen to sync your accounts on your iPad but want to set up your account the easy way now, go to Chapter 3, read about syncing email accounts, and then sync your iPad with your Mac or PC. Then you, too, can proceed directly to the section “See Me, Read Me, File Me, Delete Me: Working with Messages,” later in this chapter.

Remember that syncing email accounts doesn’t have any effect on your email messages; it merely synchronizes the settings for email accounts so you don’t have to set them up manually on your iPad.

Setting up your account the less-easy way

If you don’t want to sync the email accounts on your Mac or PC, you can set up an email account on your iPad manually. It’s not quite as easy as clicking a box and syncing your iPad, but it’s not rocket science either. Here’s how you get started:

• If you don't have an email account on your iPad: The first time you launch Mail, you see the Welcome to Mail screen. Your choices are iCloud, Microsoft Exchange (business email), Google (Gmail), Yahoo!, AOL, Outlook.com, and Other.

  Merely tap the account type you want to add to the iPad and follow the steps in the upcoming “Setting up an account with another provider” or “Setting up corporate email” section.

• If you have one or more email accounts on your iPad and want to add a new account manually: Tap Settings on the Home screen and then tap Passwords & Accounts ⇒ Add Account.

  You see an Add Account screen, shown in Figure 5-1, with the same account options that appear on the Welcome to Mail screen. Proceed to one of the next three sections, depending on the type of email account you selected.

Setting up an email account with iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, or Microsoft Outlook

If the account you want to create is with iCloud, Gmail (Google), Yahoo!, AOL, or Outlook, follow these steps:

1. Tap the appropriate button on the Welcome to Mail screen (refer to Figure 5-1).

2. Tap Create Account, as shown in Figure 5-2.

   Each service is different and wants different information from you. Most will ask for your name and other identifying information. Follow the on-screen instructions until the process is finished.

   That’s all there is to setting up your account. You can now proceed to “See Me, Read Me, File Me, Delete Me: Working with Messages.”

Setting up an account with another provider

If your email account is with a provider other than iCloud, Microsoft Outlook, Gmail (Google), Yahoo!, or AOL, you have a bit more work ahead of you. You need a bunch of information about your email account you may not know or have handy.

We suggest you scan the following instructions, note the items you don’t know, and go find the answers before you continue. To find the answers, look at the documentation you received when you signed up for your email account or visit the account provider’s website and search there.

Here’s how you set up an account:

1. Starting at the Home screen, tap Settings ⇒ Passwords & Accounts ⇒ Add Account ⇒ Other.
2. Tap Add Mail Account.

3. Fill in the name, address, password, and description in the appropriate fields, and then tap Next.

   With any luck, that’s all you’ll have to do. The iPad will look up and retrieve your account settings. If that doesn’t happen, continue with Step 4.

4. Tap the button at the top of the screen that denotes the type of email server this account uses, IMAP or POP, as shown in Figure 5-3.
5. Fill in the Internet hostname for your incoming mail server, which looks something like mail.providername.com.
6. Fill in your username and password.
7. Enter the Internet hostname for your outgoing mail server, which looks something like smtp.providername.com.
8. Enter your username and password in the appropriate fields.

9. Tap the Next button in the upper-right corner to create the account.

   You’re now ready to begin using your account. See the section “See Me, Read Me, File Me, Delete Me: Working with Messages.”

Rarely, outgoing mail servers don’t need your username and password. The fields for these items on your iPad note they’re optional. Still, we suggest you fill them in anyway. Doing so saves you from having to add them later if your outgoing mail server does require an account name and a password, which almost all do these days.

Setting up corporate email

The iPad makes nice with the Microsoft Exchange servers that are a staple in large enterprises, as well as many smaller businesses.

What’s more, if your company supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, you can exploit push email so messages arrive pronto on the iPad, just as they do on your other computers. (To keep everything up to date, the iPad also supports push calendars and push contacts.) For push to work with Exchange Server, your company must support one of the last several iterations of Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (most companies are). If you run into a problem, ask your company’s IT or tech department.

Setting up Exchange email isn’t particularly taxing, but you might have to consult your employer’s techie-types for certain settings.

Start setting up your corporate email on your iPad by following these steps:

1. Tap the Microsoft Exchange listing on the Welcome to Mail or Add Account screen.

   Refer to Figure 5-1.

2. Fill in your name and the description you want for your account. Then tap Next.

3. On the next screen, enter your name, email address, password, server, and domain, assuming the Microsoft Autodiscover service didn’t already find it. Then tap Next.

   You might need to contact your company’s IT support to fill in any information you don’t know.

4. Choose which information you want to synchronize through Exchange by tapping each item you want.

   You can choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Notes. When one of these switches is turned on, it turns green, as in Figure 5-4; otherwise, what you see appears dimmed.

5. Tap Save.

The company you work for doesn’t want just anybody having access to your email — heaven forbid your iPad is lost or stolen — so your bosses may insist you change the passcode lock in Settings on your iPad. (The passcode lock is different than your email account password.) Now if your iPad ends up in the wrong hands, your company can wipe the contents clean remotely.

If you’re moonlighting at a second job, you can configure more than one Exchange ActiveSync account on your iPad; there used to be a limit of just one such account per device.

Reading messages

To read your mail, tap the Mail icon on the Home screen. Remember that what appears on-screen depends on whether you’re holding the iPad in landscape or portrait mode, as well as what was on the screen the last time you opened the Mail app:

• Landscape: With the iPad in landscape mode, you see the Mailboxes section (see Figure 5-5), which, as its name suggests, is a repository for all the messages across all your accounts. The number to the right of Inbox (2 in Figure 5-5) matches the number on the Mail icon on your home page. Again, it’s the cumulative tally of unread messages across all your accounts. If you have more than one email account set up, Inbox will instead say All Inboxes.

  

  Below the Inbox or All Inboxes listing are the inboxes for your individual accounts. On our test device shown in Figure 5-5, we had just set up a new account, so it looks all clean and pretty. Depending on how you use email, yours might look considerably busier. Each individual inbox you have displays the number of unread messages for that one account.

  In this view, you can also see the available subfolders for your accounts (Drafts, Sent, Junk, Trash, and so on). If you have multiple accounts, tap through to each account to see its subfolders.

  Check out the VIP, mailbox, too. The VIP mailbox lists all messages from senders you deem most important. We tell you how to give someone VIP status in the later section, “More things you can do with messages.”

  Depending on the last time the Mail app was open, you may see previews of the messages in your inbox. Previews display the name of the sender, the time the message arrived, the subject header, and the first two lines of the message. (In Settings ⇒ Mail ⇒ Preview, you can change the number of lines shown in the preview from one line to five, or even to no preview lines.)

• Portrait: When you hold the iPad in portrait mode, as shown in Figure 5-6, the last incoming message fills the entire screen. You have to tap Inbox (in the upper-left corner of the screen) to summon a panel that displays other accounts or message previews. You can summon the panel also by swiping from the left edge of the screen to the right. The panel overlays the message that otherwise fills the screen.

Messages are displayed in threads, or conversations, making them easy to follow, but you can still view accounts individually. To read your email:

1. If the email mailbox you want to see isn’t front and center, tap Mailboxes button in the upper-left corner of the screen to summon the appropriate one.

   Again, your button may say All Inboxes, Mailboxes, or some other folder name, or it may say the name of the email account currently open. Within an email account, you can see the number of unread messages in each mailbox.

2. (Optional) To summon new messages, swipe down the left panel that lists your accounts or mailboxes and immediately release.

   If you see a spinning gear, the iPad is searching for new mail.

3. Swipe down one of the inboxes or accounts to refresh that specific mailbox. To summon the unified inbox, tap All Inboxes instead.

   If a blue dot appears next to a message, the message hasn’t been read.

4. Tap a message to read it.

5. When you’ve finished reading, tap the Mailboxes button in the upper-left corner of the message.

   The button might carry a different name, depending on which account you have open. For example, it may say Exchange or Inbox.

6. Read additional messages.

   When a message is on-screen, you see at the top the buttons for managing incoming messages, most of which you’re already familiar with:

   • In portrait mode: If the message list pane isn’t visible, drag from the left edge of the screen to the right, and then scroll up or down until you see the message you want to read. Tap the message so that it takes over the entire screen.
   • In landscape mode (and from within an account): Tap a preview listing to the left of a message to read the next or previous message or any other visible message. Scroll up or down to find other messages you may want to read, and tap the appropriate message.

Threading messages

Apple lets you display related messages as threads. The beauty of this arrangement is you can easily trace an email conversation. When you organize messages by thread, the related messages appear as a single entry in the preview pane mailbox, with a right-pointing arrow in a circle to indicate that the message is indeed part of a larger ongoing exchange. When you tap that listing, all messages that make up the threaded conversation appear in the larger pane on the right, though you may have to scroll up or down to see them all. Figure 5-7 (left) shows Bryan and Bryan (it’s a thing!) hanging together by a thread. If you tap an individual message from the thread in the pane on the right, you can swipe to quickly reply to the message, forward it, or mark it unread. These are the same options you see when you swipe a preview in the message list.

When you look at a message that’s part of a thread, the number at the top of the screen tells you how many individual messages make up the entire conversation.

To turn on threading, go to the Home screen and tap Settings ⇒ Mail, and then tap on Organize by Thread so the toggle turns green. You can also choose whether to display the most recent message in a thread on top, and whether to complete the thread so all messages in the conversation are shown, even if you subsequently moved some messages to other mailboxes.

Managing messages

Managing messages typically involves either moving the messages to a folder or deleting them. To herd your messages into folders, you have the following options:

• To create a folder to organize messages you want to keep: Open the Mail app and tap Edit in the Mailboxes column. If you’re in portrait mode you may have to first tap the blue Mailboxes button in the upper-left corner of your screen to reveal the Mailboxes column. In the column of mailboxes on the left side of the screen, tap Edit. Then tap New Mailbox at the bottom. Type a name for the mailbox and choose a location for it.
• To file a message in another folder: Tap the move message icon (refer to Figure 5-5). When the list of mailboxes appears, tap the folder where you want to file the message. Watching the message fly and land in the designated new folder is cool.
• To read a message you’ve filed: Tap the folder where the message now resides and then tap the header or preview for the message in question.
• To delete, move, or mark multiple messages: Tap Edit. In both portrait and landscape views, Edit appears at the top of your inbox or another mailbox when its mail folder is selected. Tap Edit, and it becomes a Cancel button, and Mark All, Move, and Trash buttons appear at the bottom of the list. Tap each message you want to select so that a check mark appears; Mark All becomes Mark, Move All becomes Move, and Trash All becomes Trash:
  • Tap Trash to delete all selected messages.
  • Tap Move to move all selected messages to another folder in the same or another Mail account, and then tap the new folder or mailbox (or both) in which you want those messages to hang out.
  • Tap Mark to mark all selected messages read (or unread) or flagged (or unflagged), or to move messages to the Junk folder.
• To delete a single message: Tap the delete message (trash can) icon in that open message. If you tap the delete message icon by mistake, you have a chance to cancel, provided the Ask Before Deleting switch is turned on in Settings ⇒ Mail.
• To delete a single message without opening it: Swipe one finger to the left across the message in the mailbox list, and then tap the red Trash button that appears to the right of the message. You’ll also see a Flag option and a More button. Tapping More gives you, well, more options: reply, forward, mark it as unread, move it to junk or elsewhere, or have the iPad send a notification when someone replies to the message or thread.

In certain Mail accounts, Gmail being one, the Trash option may be replaced by an Archive option, depending on your preference. That means you’re not getting rid of a message but stashing it or, to be precise, saving the message in your All Mail folder. If the Archive option does present itself, you can turn the feature on or off in Settings ⇒ Mail.

Searching emails

With Search, you can quickly and easily search through a bunch of messages to find the one you want to read — such as that can’t-miss stock tip from your broker. In the search box at the top of a mailbox preview pane, type Dummies or whichever search term seems relevant. You’ll notice a couple of things right off the bat. You can confine your query to just the current mailbox or widen the search to include all your mailboxes, as Figure 5-8 shows. What’s more, Apple has helpfully organized the search results, so senders who have dummies as part of their name are separated from the subject headings of email messages that include the search term.

Next, for a more granular search, tap Search for “Dummies,” which is below the search field and is preceded by a magnifying glass (refer to Figure 5-8). You have the option of searching for dummies in the body or subject of email messages. (For more on Search, see Chapter 2.)

Search within Mail is quite powerful. For example, you can search by time frame by typing something along the lines of March meetings. You can also search to find just flagged messages from your VIPs (flag unread VIP).

Siri can also find emails on your behalf. For example, ask her to find all the emails from a particular person in a particular month, or have Siri run a search similar to the Dummies example we just used.

If you’re using Exchange, iCloud, or certain IMAP-type email accounts, you may even be able to search messages stored on the server.

Don’t grow too attached to attachments

Your iPad can receive email messages with attachments in a wide variety of popular file formats. Which file formats does the iPad support? Glad you asked:

• Images: .jpg, .tiff, .gif, .png
• Microsoft Word: .doc, .docx
• Microsoft PowerPoint: .ppt, .pptx
• Microsoft Excel: .xls, .xlsx
• Web pages: .htm, .html
• Apple Keynote: .key
• Apple Numbers: .numbers
• Apple Pages: .pages
• Preview and Adobe Acrobat: .pdf
• Rich Text: .rtf
• Text: .txt
• Contact information: .vcf

If the attachment is a file format the iPad doesn’t support (for example, an Adobe Photoshop .psd file), you see the name of the file in your email, but you can’t open it on your iPad, at least not without an assist from a third-party app you may have installed.

Here’s how to read a supported attachment:

1. Open the email that contains the attachment, which you can identify by a little paper clip icon.

   Another option is to conduct a search for Messages with Attachments.

2. Tap the attachment.

   The attachment typically appears at the bottom of the message, so you might need to scroll down to see it.

   In some cases, the attachment downloads to your iPad and opens automatically. In other instances, you may have to tap the button representing the attachment to download it.

3. Read or (in the case of a picture) eyeball the attachment.

   Tap the attachment (in the case of a document), and you can likely read it immediately. Tap Done to return to the message text.

Alternatively, tap and hold down on the attachment in the email, and then tap the app from the presented options. Among the possible choices: Tap Quick Look for a quick peek at the attachment, or tap Markup and Reply to add your comments to a document before whisking it back to the sender. You can also add the attachment to iCloud Drive or Notes, or import it to Apple’s Pages word processor should that app resides on your tablet. Third-party apps you added to your iPad may also become available as a destination for said attachment.

More things you can do with messages

Wait! You can do even more with your incoming email messages:

• To see all recipients of a message: Assuming you can’t see all the names of the people receiving the message, tap the triangle to the right of the recipient. That name expands to show everyone to whom the email was sent or cc’d as a recipient.
• To add an email recipient or sender to your contacts: Tap the name or email address at the top of the message and then tap Create New Contact or Add to Existing Contact.
• To make a sender a VIP: Tap the name or email address at the top of the message and then tap Add to VIP. You may want to give VIP status to important people in your life, such as your significant other, family members, boss, or doctor. A star appears next to any incoming messages from a VIP. You can summon mail from all your VIPs by tapping the VIP folder in the list of Mailboxes. To demote a VIP to an NVIP (not very important person), tap the name or email at the top of the message and then tap Remove from VIP.

• To mark a message as read or unread: Tap and slide the message to the right to reveal three buttons: More, Flag, and Delete. Tap the More button to mark the message as unread if you’ve already read it, or read if it’s already been marked as unread.

  Choose Mark as Unread for messages you may want to revisit at some point. The message is again included in the unread message count on the Mail icon on your Home screen, and its mailbox again has a blue dot next to it in the message list for that mailbox.

• To flag, reply to, or delete a message: Tap and slide the message to the left to reveal three buttons for Reply, Flag, and Delete. Tap Reply for quick access to Reply, Reply All, and Forward. Tap Flag to flag the message so it will turn up in any search for flagged messages. Tap Delete to quickly delete the message.
• To access other controls for your open email message: Tap the Reply button at the bottom of the screen to reveal another way to access the options we already mentioned, as well as Archive (for Gmail and other services that support this feature), Move to Junk, Move to Other Folders, Notify Me, and Print. The options you see may differ, depending on the features supported by your email service.
• To zoom in on and out of a message: Use the pinch and unpinch gestures, at which we suspect you now excel. See Chapter 2 if you need help with your touchscreen moves.
• To follow a link in a message: Tap the link. Links are typically displayed in blue but sometimes appear in other colors, or underlined, or both. If the link is a URL, Safari opens and displays the web page. If the link is a phone number, the iPad gives you the chance to add it to your contacts, copy it, call it using FaceTime Audio or your iPhone (through the Handoff feature), or send a message. If the link is an address, the Maps app opens and displays the location. If you tap a date, you can create an event on that date or display it in Calendar. And last but not least, if the link is an email address, a new preaddressed blank email message is created.

• If the link opens Safari, Contacts, or Maps and you want to return to your email, tap Mail in the upper-left corner of the display. Or press the Home button on the front of your iPad and then tap the Mail icon. Or double-press the Home button or swipe up from the bottom and select the Mail icon on the dock.

Sending an all-text message

To compose a new email message, tap Mail on the Home screen. As before, what you see next depends on how you’re holding your iPad. In landscape mode, your email accounts or email folders are listed in a panel along the left side of the screen, with the message filling the larger window on the right. In portrait mode, your view will depend on what you were viewing the last time you opened the Mail app. If you don’t see the Mailboxes folder, tap the blue Mailboxes button in the upper-left corner.

Now, to create a message, follow these steps:

1. Tap the compose new message icon (labeled in Figure 5-5).

   The New Message screen appears, like the one shown in Figure 5-9.

   

2. Type the names or email addresses of the recipients in the To field, or tap the + symbol to the right of the To field to choose one or more contacts from your iPad’s contacts list.

   If you start typing an email address, email addresses that match what you typed appear in a list below the To or Cc field. If the correct one is in the list, tap it to use it.

   As part of the intelligent and proactive iPadOS, your iPad may suggest people you typically include when you start to address a message.

3. (Optional) To break the Cc/Bcc, From field into separate Cc, Bcc, and From fields, tap the field.

   The Cc/Bcc label stands for carbon copy/blind carbon copy. Carbon copy (a throwback term from another era) is kind of an FYI to a recipient. It’s like saying, “We figure you’d appreciate knowing this, but you don’t need to respond.”

   When using Bcc, you can include a recipient on the message, but other recipients can’t see that this recipient has been included. Bcc is great for those secret agent emails! Tap the respective Cc or Bcc field to type names. Or tap the + symbol that appears in those fields to add a contact.

4. (Optional) If you tap From, you can choose any of your email accounts on the fly — assuming you have more than one account set up on the iPad.

5. In the subject field, type a subject.

   The subject is optional, but it’s considered poor form to send an email without one.

6. In the message area, type your message.

   The message area is immediately below the Subject field. You have ample space to get your message across.

7. Tap the Send button in the upper-right corner of the screen.

   Your message wings its way to its recipients almost immediately. If you aren’t in range of a Wi-Fi network or a cellular network when you tap Send, the message is sent the next time you’re in range of one of these networks.

Formatting text in an email

One of the goodies in Mail is the capability to format email text by underlining, bolding, or italicizing it. First you select the text by pressing your finger against the screen until you see the options to select some or all text. You can also double-tap a single word to select it, and then expand the selection by dragging the selection handles to include more words.

After making your selection, you’ll have various other options: Cut, Copy, Paste, BIU, Replace, Look Up, Share, Quote Level, Insert Photo or Video, and if you tap the right arrow in the context menu, Add Document, Scan Document, and Insert Drawing. To format text, tap the BIU button. Then apply whichever style (bold, italics, underline) suits your fancy.

If you tap Quote Level (if you don’t see it, tap the right-pointing arrow after selecting a word), you can quote a portion of a message you’re responding to. Note: Increase Quote Level must be turned on in Mail Settings. You can also increase or decrease the indentation in your outgoing message.

If you tap Replace, you're provided with alternative word choices to the word you selected. Tap one of the alternative options to select it.

If you tap Look Up, you can summon a definition from the New Oxford Dictionary or another available dictionary, as well as see suggestions, if appropriate, from iTunes, the App Store, nearby locations, movie showtimes, and more.

Sending a photo or video with an email message

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video can be priceless. When that’s the case, follow these steps to send an email message with a photo or video attached:

1. Tap the Photos icon on the Home screen.
2. Find the photo or video you want to send.
3. Tap the share icon at the top of the screen (and shown in the margin).

4. Tap the Mail button.

   An email message appears on-screen with the photo or video already attached. The image may appear to be embedded in the body of the message, but the recipient receives it as a regular email attachment.

   On the Cc/Bcc line of your outgoing message, you see the size of the attached photo. If you tap the size of the image shown, a new line appears, giving you the option to choose an alternative size among Small, Medium, Large, or Actual Size. Your choice affects both the visible dimensions and file size of the photo (with the actual size of the file measured in kilobytes or megabytes reported for each possible choice). You don’t have the option of modifying your video size.

5. Choose what size photo you want to send.
6. Address the message and type whatever text you like, as you did for an all-text message previously, and then tap the Send button.

You have an alternative way of inserting pictures (or videos) in your outgoing mail messages. When you're in the composition window of a new email and your cursor is in the body of that new email, you see the insert photo or video icon just above the keyboard. Tap the icon to reveal a menu that allows you to go to your Photo library, where you can choose from your existing photos and videos, or to Take Photo or Video. Tap Take Photo or Video to open the camera interface, where you can take a new photo or video.

When you 're finished, tap Retake for a do-over or tap Use Photo (or Video) to attach the image you just took to your email.

Adding an attachment to an email message

In addition to attaching photos and videos to an email, you can attach documents. When you're in the composition window of a new email with the keyboard displayed and the cursor in the body field, tap the add document icon to reveal a menu that allows you to add or scan a document.

Tap the Add Document option to open a files-based interface for navigating the files on your device, on iCloud Drive, or on any third-party file-hosting service you may have added to your iPad. Simply navigate to and tap the document you want to attach, and it will be attached automatically to your email.

Tap the Scan Document option to turn your iPad into a mobile scanner! The iPad is just accessing your camera so you can take a picture of the document you want to send. But it offers some additional controls, such as adjusting which portion of the image is included in your attachment. Tap the camera button to take the image. You can then drag the corners of the selection area to adjust your image. When you're satisfied, tap the Keep Scan button at the bottom right of your screen and the Mail app will automatically attach it to your email. If you aren’t satisfied, tap the Retake button to make a new scan.

Marking up an attachment

If you’re attaching a photo or a PDF document, you can take advantage of iPadOS’s Markup feature. With a picture attachment or PDF embedded in your outgoing message, double-tap the attachment, and tap Markup from the menu that appears.

You can summon the Markup feature also when you receive a PDF or picture attachment. Tap on the attachment and then tap the briefcase icon accompanied by the words Markup and Reply in the share sheet that appears.

Now that you’re in markup mode, you can draw on that image or PDF, tapping the simple annotation tools just below. The tools, which are represented by icons, include several pens (your finger will be that pen unless you use an Apple Pencil or another optional stylus), a highlighter, and a pencil. You even have a ruler you can use to draw perfectly straight lines. Come on, how cool is that? To use the ruler, tap to select it from the palette of tools at the bottom of the Markup screen and drag it to where you want to draw your straight line. Then tap to choose the pen you want to use. Use your finger or a stylus to draw along the edge. Now, just pull your finger down the edge of the ruler and you’ll have a perfectly straight line. It’s great.

Tap + in the palette menu to access the text tool, a magnifier, or the signature tool, which lets you draw your signature. You’ll also find an arrow tool for placing perfect arrows in your photo or document, and some other basic shape tools.

In markup mode, you have the option to change the color and thickness of the lines and symbols you draw and change the font and size of text.

Saving an email to send later

Sometimes you start an email message but don’t have time to finish it. When that happens, you can save it as a draft and finish it some other time. Here’s how:

1. Start an email message, as described in one of the previous sections.
2. When you’re ready to save the message as a draft, tap the Cancel button in the upper-left corner of the screen.

3. Tap the Save Draft button if you want to save this message as a draft and complete it another time.

   If you tap the Delete Draft button, the message disappears immediately without a second chance. Don’t tap Delete Draft unless you mean it!

To work on the message again, tap the Drafts mailbox. A list of all messages you saved as drafts appears. Tap the draft you want to work on, and it reappears on the screen. When you’re finished, you can tap Send to send it or tap Cancel to save it as a draft again.

The number of drafts appears to the right of the Drafts folder, the same way the number of unread messages appears to the right of other mail folders, such as your inbox.

Replying to, forwarding, or printing an email message

When you receive a message and want to reply to it, forward it, or print it, open the message and then tap the reply icon (the curved arrow at the lower-right corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 5-10). Then tap Reply, Reply All, Forward, or Print, as described next:

• Reply and Reply All: The Reply button creates an email message addressed to the sender of the original message, with the content of the original message embedded in your reply. The Reply All button creates an email message addressed to the sender and all other recipients of the original message, plus anyone who was cc'd. (The Reply All option appears only if more than one recipient was on the original email.) In both cases, the subject is retained with a Re: prefix added. So if the original subject were iPad Tips, the reply’s subject would be Re: iPad Tips.

  

• Forward: Tapping the Forward button creates an unaddressed email message that contains the text of the original message. Add the email address(es) of the person or people you want to forward the message to, and then tap Send. In this case, rather than a Re: prefix, the subject is preceded by Fwd:. So this time, the subject would be Fwd: iPad Tips. If the email you’re forwarding has an attachment, you’ll be given the option to forward the attachment along with the message.
• Print: Tap Print if you want to print using an AirPrint-capable printer.

It’s considered good form to leave the subject lines alone (with the Re: or Fwd: prefix intact), but you may want to change them sometimes. You can edit the subject line of a reply or a forwarded message or edit the body text of a forwarded message the same way you’d edit any other text. Worth noting: When the Re: is modified, a new email thread is created and the modified message won’t be included in the old thread listing.

To send your reply or forwarded message, tap the Send button as usual.

Settings for sending email

You can customize the mail you send and receive in lots of ways. In this section, we explore settings for sending email. Later in this chapter, we show you settings that affect the way you receive and read messages. In each instance, start by tapping Settings on the Home screen.

You can customize your mail in the following ways:

• To hear an alert when you successfully send a message: From the main Settings screen, tap Sounds. Make sure the Sent Mail setting is turned on. You’ll know because you’ll see a sound type listed (among alert sounds and ringtones), Swoosh by default. Tap Sent Mail to select a different sound or choose None if going silent is your preference.

  If you want to change other settings, tap the Sounds button at the top of the screen. If you’re finished setting the settings, tap the Home button on the front of your iPad or swipe up from the bottom of your screen.

• To add a signature line, phrase, or block of text to every email message you send: Tap Settings ⇒ Mail, and then tap Signature at the bottom of the right pane. The default signature is Sent from my iPad. You can add text before or after it, or delete it and type something else. Your signature will be affixed to the end of all your outgoing email. You can choose a signature that is the same across all your accounts or select different signatures for each account.
• To set the default email account for initiating email from outside the Mail application: Go to Settings ⇒ Mail ⇒ Default Account. Note that if you have only one email account set up on your iPad, the Default Account setting will not be visible. If you have more than one email account on your iPad, tap the account you want to use as the default. The designated email account is the one that’s used when you want to email a picture directly from the Photos app, for example. Also, if you choose one default account, you can dispatch mail from another account when you send your message.

Checking and viewing email settings

Several settings affect the way you can check and view email. You might want to modify one or more, so we describe what they do and where to find them:

• To specify how often the iPad checks for new messages: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen, and then tap Passwords & Accounts ⇒ Fetch New Data. You’re entering the world of fetching or pushing. Check out Figure 5-11 to glance at your options. If your email account supports push and the Push setting is enabled on your iPad, fresh messages are sent to your iPad automatically as soon as they hit the server. If you turned off push or your email account doesn’t support it, the iPad periodically fetches data instead. Choices for fetching are Every 15 Minutes, Every 30 Minutes, Hourly, Manually, and Automatically. Tap the one you prefer. With push email, messages can show up on the lock screen and in Notification Center.

  

• To set the number of lines of each message to be displayed in the message list: Go to Settings ⇒ Mail ⇒ Preview, and then choose a number. Your choices are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 lines of text or None. The more lines of text you display in the list, the fewer messages you can see at a time without scrolling, so think before you choose 4 or 5.
• To specify whether the iPad shows the To and Cc labels in message lists: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, and then turn on or off the Show To/Cc Label setting.
• To turn on or off the Ask before Deleting warning: Go to Settings ⇒ Mail. Next, turn on or off the Ask before Deleting setting. If this setting is turned on, every time you want to delete an email, you must tap the trash (or archive) icon at the top of your email and then tap the red Delete button. When the setting is turned off, tapping the trash icon deletes the message, and you never see a red Delete button.
• To change swipe options: Go to Go to Settings ⇒ Mail ⇒ Swipe Options. You can choose whether swiping left (on the preview pane) flags messages and whether swiping right marks messages as unread.
• To mark email addresses that originate or are received from a designated mail server: Tap Settings ⇒ Mail ⇒ Mark Addresses and flip the switch on. Enter the email address from your company (or wherever) that you do not want marked. From then on, when you’re composing a message, all email addresses sent to or from the specified address will appear in blue, while all other mail addresses will be shaded red. Why do this? The idea is that you can more easily identify mail dispatched to addresses outside your organization, alerting you to a potential security risk if you’re exchanging, say, sensitive information.
• To specify whether the iPad will automatically display images embedded in an email: Tap Mail and then tap Load Remote Images in the right pane so the switch is on. If it’s off, you can still manually load remote images. Security risks are associated with loading remote images, and they can also hog bandwidth.
• To organize your mail by thread: Tap Organize by Thread so that the setting is on. Then, as mentioned, you can choose whether to show the most recent message on top and whether to show all messages in a thread, even those since moved to other mailboxes.

Altering account settings

The last group of email settings we explore in this chapter deals with your email accounts. You most likely will never need most of these settings, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention them briefly. So here they are, whether you need ’em or not:

• To stop using an email account: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen, tap Passwords & Accounts ⇒ account name, and then flip the switch for Mail to off (gray).

  This setting doesn’t delete the account; it only hides it from view and stops it from sending or checking email until you turn it on again. (You can repeat this step to turn off calendars, contacts, reminders, and notes in a given account.)

• To delete an email account: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen; tap Passwords & Accounts ⇒ account name ⇒ Delete Account ⇒ Delete. Tap Cancel if you change your mind and don’t want your account blown away, or tap Delete to proceed.

  Deleting an email account will also remove calendar entries, contact names, and notes from the given account.

You can find still more advanced Mail settings, reached the same way: Tap Settings ⇒ Passwords & Accounts ⇒ Account ⇒ Advanced. Your exact path may be different depending on the kind of account you're working with. For example, Gmail requires you to tap Account and iCloud requires you to tap Account ⇒ iCloud ⇒ Mail to get to the Advanced settings.

The settings you see under Advanced (sometimes shown as Advanced Settings under a specific email account) will vary by account. This list describes some of the settings you might see:

• Specify how long until deleted messages are removed permanently from your iPad: In iCloud Mail, your choices are Never, After One Day, After One Week, and After One Month. Tap the choice you prefer. Other mail accounts may give you different time frame options or not present this setting.

• Choose whether drafts, sent messages, archived messages, and deleted messages are stored on your iPad or on your mail server: Tap Advanced and then choose the setting under Mailbox Behaviors. You can decide for drafts, sent messages, and trash. If you choose to store any or all of them on the server, you can’t see them unless you have an Internet connection (Wi-Fi or cellular). If you choose to store them on your iPad, they’re always available, even if you don’t have Internet access. In certain circumstances, you also get to determine whether to delete or archive discarded messages.

  We strongly recommend you don’t change the next two items unless you know exactly what you’re doing and why. If you’re having problems with sending or receiving mail, start by contacting your ISP (Internet service provider), email provider, or corporate IT person or tech department. Then change these settings only if they tell you to. Again, these settings and exactly where and how they appear vary by account.

• Reconfigure mail server settings: In the Incoming Mail Server or Outgoing Mail Server section of the account settings screen, tap Host Name, User Name, or Password and make your changes.
• Adjust SSL, authentication, or IMAP path settings, or the server port: Tap Advanced and then tap the appropriate item and make the necessary changes.

And that, as they say in baseball, retires the side. You’re now fully qualified to set up email accounts and send and receive email on your iPad.