Sending, Receiving, and Managing Email - My iPhone for Seniors, Second Edition (2016)

My iPhone for Seniors, Second Edition (2016)

9. Sending, Receiving, and Managing Email

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In this chapter, you explore all the email functionality that your iPhone has to offer. Topics include the following:

Image Getting started

Image Setting Mail app preferences

Image Working with email

Image Managing email

For most of us, email is an important way we communicate with others. Fortunately, your iPhone has great email tools so you can work with email no matter where you are. Of course, you need to be connected to the Internet through a Wi-Fi or cellular data connection to send or receive email—although you can still read downloaded messages, reply to messages, and compose messages when you aren’t connected.

Getting Started

You send and receive email through an email account. There are many sources for email accounts, such as your Internet service provider, iCloud, and Google (Gmail). One thing to keep in mind is that email isn’t sent between devices, such as a computer to an iPhone. Rather, all email flows through an email server. It moves from the server onto each device, such as an iPhone or a computer. This means you can have the same email messages on more than one device at a time. You can determine how often email is moved from the server onto your iPhone.

Before you can start using an iPhone for email, 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 others. Setting up the most common types of email accounts is covered in Chapter 3, “Setting Up and Using 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.

You can have multiple email accounts configured on your iPhone at the same time, such as an iCloud account and a Google account. If you only have one email account on your iPhone, some of the screens you see on your iPhone might look a bit different than those in this chapter. The information contained in this chapter still applies; it’s just that some of the screens you see are slightly different than those shown here.

Setting Mail App Preferences

There are a number of Mail-specific options you can configure using the Settings app. Following is an example showing how to configure an automatic signature that is added to the end of new emails you create so that you don’t have to type it. You can configure other Mail settings using similar steps and the descriptions of the Mail settings in the table that follows these steps.

To configure your automatic email signature, perform the following steps:

Image Tap Settings on the Home screen.

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Image Swipe up the screen.

Image Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

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Image Swipe up the screen until you see the Signature option.

Image Tap Signature. A signature is just any text that you want to automatically appear at the end of every email that you send.

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Image To use the same signature for email you send from any account, tap All Accounts; to use a different signature for each account, tap Per Account. If you selected All Accounts, you see one signature box. If you selected Per Account, you see a signature box for each account.

Image Tap in the signature box you want to change.

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Image Replace the current text with the signature you want to use.

Image If you selected the Per Account option in step 6, repeat steps 7 and 8 to create a signature for each account.

Image Tap Mail. When you create a new email message (how to do this is covered later in “Sending Email”), the signature is automatically added to the end of new messages. You can change the other Mail settings using a similar pattern and the description of the options in the following table.

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No Signatures, Please

If you don’t want any text automatically appended to your messages, choose the All Accounts option and then delete all the text in the signature box.


Mail and Related Settings

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More on Marking Addresses

When you configure at least one address on the Mark Addresses screen, all addresses except those from domains listed on the Mark Addresses screen are in red text on the New Message screen. This is useful to prevent accidental email going to places where you don’t want it to go. For example, you might want to leave domains associated with a club off this list so that whenever you send email to addresses associated with that club, the addresses appear in red to remind you to pay close attention to the messages you are sending.



Email Notifications and Sounds

If you want to be alerted whenever new email is received and when email you create is sent, be sure to configure notifications for the Mail app. These include whether unread messages are shown in the Notification Center, the type of alerts, whether the badge appears on the Mail icon, whether the preview is shown, the alert sound, and whether new messages are shown on the Lock screen. For a detailed explanation of configuring notifications, refer to Chapter 5, “Customizing How Your iPhone Looks and Sounds.”


Working with Email

The iPhone’s Mail app offers lots of great features and is ideally suited for working with email on your iPhone. The Mail app offers a consolidated Inbox, so you can view email from all your accounts at the same time. Also, the Mail app organizes your email into threads, which makes following a conversation convenient.

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When you move to a Home screen, you see the number of new email messages you have in the badge on the Mail app’s icon (assuming you haven’t disabled this); 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 alerts and the new mail sound. (You determine which of these options is used for each email account by configuring its notifications as explained in the “Email Notifications and Sounds” note.)

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New! If you are using an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can press on the Mail icon to open the Quick Actions menu and choose an action you want to perform. For example, you can start a new email message by selecting New Message or move directly to your VIP email by selecting VIP.


About Assumptions

The steps and figures in this section assume you have more than one email account configured and are actively receiving email from those accounts on your iPhone. If you have only one email account active, your Mailboxes screen contains that account’s folders instead of mailboxes from multiple accounts and the Accounts sections that appear in these figures and steps. Similarly, if you disable the Organize by Thread setting, you won’t see messages in threads as these figures show. Instead, you work with each message individually.


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.

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The Inboxes section shows the Inbox for each account along with folders for email from people designated as VIPs (more on this later), your unread messages, and your draft messages (you’ve started but haven’t sent yet). Next to each Inbox or folder the number of new emails in that Inbox or folder is shown. (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 shows each email account with another counter for new messages. The difference between these sections is that the Inbox options take you to just the Inbox for one or all of your accounts, whereas the Account options take you to all the folders under each account.

Receiving and Reading Email

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

Image On the Home screen, tap Mail. Mail opens. (If the Mailboxes screen isn’t showing, tap the back button in the upper-left corner of the screen until you reach the Mailboxes screen.)

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Image 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 is part of a thread, if it has attachments, if it is from a VIP, etc.

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Image 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.

Image If a message you are interested in is in a thread, tap it. You can tell a message is part of a thread by double right-facing arrows along the right side of the screen—single messages have only one arrow. (If the message you want to read isn’t part of a thread, skip to step 6.) A thread is a group of emails that are related to the same subject. For example, if someone sends an email to you saying how wonderful the My iPhone book is, and you reply with a message saying how much you agree, those two messages are grouped into one thread. Other messages with the same subject are also placed in the thread.

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Image Swipe up or down the screen to browse the messages in the thread.

Image To read a message (whether in a thread or not), tap it. 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. Under that the message’s subject along with time and date it was sent are displayed. 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.

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

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Image If the message contains an attachment, swipe up the screen to get to the end of the message. If an attachment hasn’t been downloaded yet, it starts to download automatically unless it is a large file. If the attachment hasn’t been downloaded yet, which is indicated by the text “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 would need to open it on a computer or other device.

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Image Tap the attachment icon to view it.

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

Image Unpinch or double-tap to zoom in.

Image Pinch or double-tap to zoom out.

Image To see the available actions for the attachment, tap the Share button.

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Standard Motions Apply

You can use the standard finger motions on email messages, such as unpinching or tapping to zoom, swiping directions to scroll, and so on. You can also rotate the phone to change the orientation of messages from vertical to horizontal; this makes it easier to type.


Image Swipe to the left or right to see all the available options.

Image Tap the action you want to take, such as opening the attachment in a different app, printing it, or sharing it with a text message. Tap Cancel to return to the attachment if you don’t want to do any of these. If you open the attachment in a different app, work with the attachment in that app. To return to the email, tap the Back to Mail link in the top-left corner of the screen.

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Image Tap Done (depending on the type of attachment you were viewing, you might tap the back button instead).

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Image To view information for an email address, such as who sent the message, tap it. The Info screen appears. You see the person’s email address along with actions you might want to perform, such as placing a call or FaceTime invitation.

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Image Tap Message to return to the message.

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Image To read the next message in the current Inbox, tap the down arrow.

Image To move to a previous message in the current Inbox, tap the up arrow.

Image To move back to see the entire Inbox, tap Inbox.

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Two Other Ways to Open New Email

You can view a preview of email messages in notifications you receive and tap the notification to get to the full message. You can also use Siri to get and read new email.


Receiving and Reading Email on an iPhone 6 Plus or 6s Plus

The iPhone 6 Plus’ and 6s Plus’ larger screen provides some additional functionality that is unique to those models. You can access this functionality by holding the iPhone 6 Plus or 6s Plus horizontally when you use the Mail app.

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Image Open the Mail app and hold the iPhone so it is oriented horizontally. The mail window splits into two panes. On the left is the Navigation pane, where you can move to and select items you want to view. When you select something in the left pane, it appears in the Content pane on the right, which shows the email message you were most recently reading.

Image In the left pane, navigate to the Mailboxes screen by tapping the back button located in the upper-left corner of the pane until the button disappears.

Image Swipe up or down the Navigation pane to browse the mailboxes and accounts available to you. Notice that the two panes are independent. When you browse the left pane, the right pane doesn’t change.

Image Tap the mailbox or account whose contents you want to view.

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Image Tap the message or thread that you want to read. If you tap a message, its content appears in the right pane and you can skip to step 8.

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Image Swipe up and down the messages to browse all of them in the thread.

Image Tap the message you want to read. It appears in the Content pane.

Image Read the message.

Image Use the other tools to work with it; these work just like they do on other models and when you hold the iPhone 6 Plus or 6s Plus vertically. For example, tap the up arrow to move to the previous message in the current Inbox.

Image To read the message in full screen, tap the Full Screen View button. The Content pane uses the entire screen.

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Image Work with the message.

Image When you’re done, tap the back button, which is labeled with the name of the mailbox or folder containing the message you are reading. The screen splits into two panes again.

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Image Select and read other messages.

Image When you’re done, tap the back button, which is labeled with the name of the mailbox or folder whose contents you are browsing.

Using 3D Touch for Email (iPhone 6s and 6s Plus)

New! You can use the 3D Touch feature on an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus for email as follows:

Image Browse a list of email messages.

Image Tap and hold on an email in which you are interested. A Peek of that email appears.

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Image Review the preview of the email that appears in the Peek.

Image To open the email so you can read all of it, press down slightly harder until it pops open and use the steps in the earlier task to read it (skip the rest of these steps).

Image To see actions you can perform on the email, swipe up on the Peek.

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Image Tap the action you want to perform, such as Reply, to reply to the email.

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>>>Go Further: More on Receiving and Reading Email

Check out these additional pointers for working with email you receive:

• If more messages are available than are downloaded, tap the Load More Messages link. The additional messages download to the inbox you are viewing.

• You can change the amount of detail you see at the top of the message screen by tapping More to show all of the detail, such as the entire list of recipients, or Hide to collapse that information.

• If a message includes a photo, Mail displays the photo in the body of the email message if it can. You can zoom in or out and scroll to view it just as you can for photos in other apps.

• If you tap a PDF attachment in a message and the iBooks app is installed on your iPhone, you might be prompted to select Quick Look or Open in iBooks. If you select Open in iBooks, the document opens in the iBooks app where you can read it using the powerful features it offers for reading ebooks and other documents.

• Some emails, especially HTML messages, are large and don’t immediately download in their entirety. When you open a message that hasn’t been fully downloaded, you see a message stating that this is the case. Tap the link to download the rest of the message.

• If you have other apps with which an attachment is compatible, you can open the attachment in that app. For example, if you have Pages installed on your iPhone and are viewing a Word document attachment, you can tap the Share button and tap Open in Pages to open the document in the Pages app. You can get the same options by tapping and holding down on the attachment’s icon in the body of a message until the Action menu appears.


Sending Email

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

Image Tap the Compose button at the bottom of any Mail screen (if you are using an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can press down on the Mail app’s icon and choose New Message to create a new email from a Home page). A new email message containing your signature is created.

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Image Tap the To field and type in 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. To select one of those addresses, tap it. Mail enters the rest of the address for you. Or, just keep typing information until the address is complete.

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Image To address the email using your Contacts app, tap the Add button.

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Have Multiple Email Accounts?

If you have more than one email account, it’s important to know from which account you are sending a new message. If you tap the Compose button while you are on the Mailboxes screen or the Inboxes screen, the From address is the one for the account you set as your default; otherwise, the From address is the email account associated with the Inbox you are in.


Image Use the Contacts app to find and select the contact to whom you want to address the message. (Refer to Chapter 7 for the details about working with contacts.) 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 the Info screen, which shows all available addresses; tap the address to which you want to send the message.

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

Image Tap the Cc/Bcc, From line. The Cc and Bcc lines expand.

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Image Follow the same procedures from steps 2–4 to add recipients to the Cc field.

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Removing Addresses

To remove an address, tap it so it is highlighted in a darker shade of blue; then tap the Delete button on the iPhone’s keyboard.


Image Follow the same procedures from steps 2–4 to add recipients to the Bcc field. (The difference is that other recipients do not see those listed on the Bcc line.)

Image If the correct account is shown, 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.

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Image Swipe up or down the wheel until the From address you want to use is shown between the lines.

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

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Image Type the subject of the message.

Image If you want to be notified when someone replies to the message you are creating, tap the bell; if not, skip to step 16.

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

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

Image Tap in the body of the message, and type the message above your signature. Mail uses the iOS’s text tools, attempts to correct spelling, provides Predictive Text, and makes suggestions to complete words. (Refer to Chapter 1, “Getting Started with Your iPhone,” for the details of working with text.)

Image To make the keyboard larger, rotate the iPhone so that it is horizontal.

Image 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 send mail sound you configured, which confirms that the message has been sent.

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Write Now, Send Later

If you want to save a message you are creating without sending it, tap Cancel. A prompt appears; select Save Draft to save the message; if you don’t want the message, tap Delete Draft instead. When you want to work on a draft message again, tap and hold down the Compose button. After a moment, you see your most recent draft messages; select the draft message you want to work on. You can make changes to the message and then send it or save it as a draft again. (You can also move into the Drafts folder to select and work with draft messages; moving to this folder is covered later in this chapter.)


Using Mail’s Suggested Recipients

New! As you create messages, Mail suggests recipients based on the new message’s current recipients. For example, if you regularly send emails to the same group of people, when you add two or more people from that group, Mail suggests others you may want to include. As you add others to the message, Mail continues suggesting recipients based on the current recipient list. You can use these suggestions to quickly add more recipients to a new message.

Image Create a new message.

Image Add at least two recipients. Just below the To line, Mail suggests additional recipients for the new message based on other messages you have created.

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Image Tap the additional recipients you want to add to the new message. As you select these recipients, Mail keeps making suggestions and new people appear in the gray bars.

Image When you’re done adding To recipients, tap in the next field you want to complete and continue creating the new message.

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Replying to Email

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

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Image Open the message you want to reply to.

Image Tap the Share button.

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Image 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. 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.

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Image Use the message tools to add or change the To, Cc, or Bcc recipients.

Image Write your response.

Image Tap Send. Mail sends your reply.


Including a Photo or Video in a Message

To add a photo or video to a message, tap twice in the body. Swipe to the left on the resulting toolbar (if you don’t see it immediately) until you see the Insert Photo or Video command, and then tap it. Use the Photos app (see Chapter 14, “Working with Photos and Video You Take with Your iPhone,” for information about this app) to move to and select the photo or video you want to attach. Tap Choose. The photo or video you selected is attached to the message.



Sending Email from All the Right Places

You can send email from a number of places on your iPhone. For example, you can share a photo with someone by viewing the photo, tapping the Share button, and then tapping Mail. Or you can tap a contact’s email address to send an email from your contacts list. For yet another example, you can share a YouTube video. In all cases, the iPhone uses Mail to create a new message that includes the appropriate content, such as a photo or link; you use Mail’s tools to complete and send the email.



Print from Your iPhone

If you need to print a message, tap the Share button and tap Print. To learn about printing from your iPhone, refer to Chapter 1.


Forwarding Email

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

Image Read the message you want to forward.

Image 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 content, skip to step 4.

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

Image Tap the Share button.

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Image Tap Forward.

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Image 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. 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. It you included attachments, they are added to the new message as well.

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

Image Type your commentary about the message above your signature.

Image Tap Send. Mail forwards the message.

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Large Messages

Some emails, especially HTML messages, are so large that they don’t immediately download in their entirety. When you forward a message whose content or attachments haven’t fully downloaded, Mail prompts you to download the “missing” content before forwarding. If you choose not to download the content or attachments, Mail forwards only the downloaded part of the message.


Managing Email

Following are some ways you can manage your email. 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

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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 Fetch New Data option you selected (refer to Chapter 3).

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The bottom of the Mailboxes or 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 to indicate its status (except for messages that you’ve read but not done anything else with, which aren’t marked with any icon).

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Managing Email from the Message Screen

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To delete a message while reading it, tap the Trash button. If you enabled the warning preference, confirm the deletion and the message is deleted. If you disabled the confirmation prompt, the message is deleted immediately.


Dumpster Diving

As long as an account’s trash hasn’t been emptied, you can work with a message you’ve deleted by moving to the account’s screen and opening its Trash folder.


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To take other action on a message you are reading, tap the Flag icon. On the menu that opens, you can do the following:

• Tap Flag to flag the message or Unflag to unflag it.

• Tap Mark as Unread or Mark as Read to change its read status.

• Tap Move to Junk to mark the message as junk and move it to the Junk folder.

• Tap Notify Me to receive a notification when there is a reply to the message or Stop Notifying to remove the notification.


Where Has My Email Gone?

When you send an email to the Archive folder, it isn’t deleted. To access messages you’ve archived, tap the back button in the upper-left corner of the screen until you get to the Mailboxes screen. Tap the account to which email you’ve archived was sent. Then tap the Archive folder.


Managing Email from an Inbox

Previously in this chapter, you saw the settings options for swipe actions for email. You can use those to configure how right and left swipes affect your email from an Inbox screen, such as flagging a message with a left swipe. (Depending on the choices you set for the swipe preferences, the results you see when you swipe might be different than shown here.)

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Swipe to the right on a message to change its read status. If the message has been read, you can reset its status to unread or if it hasn’t been read, you can mark it as read.

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Swipe to the left on a message to see several options. Tap Trash to delete the message or messages, if you swiped on a thread (the number of messages that will be deleted is shown in parentheses). Tap Flag to flag the message or Unflag to remove the flag. Tap More to open a menu of additional commands.

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When you tap More, you see other commands for actions you can take on the message. These include:

• Tap Reply to reply to a message.

• Tap Forward to forward a message.

• Tap Mark as Unread or Mark as Read to change its read status.

• Tap Show Related Messages to show messages related to the one on which you swiped.

• Tap Notify Me to receive a notification when there is a reply to the message or Stop Notifying to remove the notification.

• Tap Move Messages to move one or more messages to a different folder.


No Stop Swiping to Delete

If you quickly swipe all the way to the left on a message on an Inbox screen, the message is deleted in one fell swipe.


Managing Multiple Emails at the Same Time

You can also 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.

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

Image Tap Edit. A selection circle appears next to each message, and actions appear at the bottom of the screen.

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Image Select the message(s) you want to manage by tapping their selection circles. As you select each message, its selection circle is marked with a check mark. At the top of the screen, you see how many messages you have selected.

When you use an iPhone 6 Plus or 6s Plus in the horizontal orientation, you see the selection screen on the left and a preview of what you have selected in the right pane. Even though it looks a bit different, it works in the same way.

Image To delete the selected messages, tap Trash. Mail deletes the selected messages and exits Edit mode. (If you enabled the warning prompt, you have to confirm the deletion.)

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

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Image Tap the action you want to take on the selected messages. You return to the Inbox screen and exit Edit mode.

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Organizing Email from the Message Screen

You can have various folders to organize email, and you can move messages among these folders. For example, you can recover a message from the Trash by moving it from the Trash folder back to the Inbox.

Image Open a message you want to move to a different folder.

Image Tap the Mailboxes button. The Mailboxes screen appears. At the top of this screen is the message you are moving. Under that are the mailboxes available under the current account.

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

Image Tap the mailbox to which you want to move the message. The message moves to that mailbox, and you move to the next message in the list you were viewing.

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Makin’ Mailboxes

You can create a new mailbox to organize your email. Move to the Mailboxes screen and tap the account under which you want to create a new mailbox. Tap Edit, and then tap New Mailbox. Type the name of the new mailbox. Tap the Mailbox Location and then choose where you want the new mailbox located (for example, you can place the new mailbox inside an existing one). Tap Save. You can then store messages in the new mailbox.


Organizing Email from the Inbox

Like deleting messages, organizing email from the Inbox can be made more efficient because you can move multiple messages at the same time.

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

Image Tap Edit. A selection circle appears next to each message. Actions appear at the bottom of the screen.

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Image Select the messages you want to move by tapping their selection circles. As you select each message, its selection circle is marked with a check mark.

Image Tap Move.

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

Image 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.

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Picking at Threads

When you select a thread, you select all the messages in that thread. Whatever action you select is taken on all the thread’s messages at the same time.


Viewing Messages in a Mailbox

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

Image Move to the Mailboxes screen.

Image If necessary, swipe up the screen to see the ACCOUNTS section.

Image Tap the account containing the folders and messages you want to view. You see all of that account’s mailboxes and folders.

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Image Tap the folder or mailbox containing the messages you want to view. You see the messages it contains.

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Image Tap a message or thread to view it. (If you want to move messages, such as to recover messages that are in the Trash, see “Organizing Email from the Inbox.”)

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Changing Mailboxes

You can change the mailboxes that appear on the Mailboxes screen. Move to the Mailboxes screen and tap Edit. To cause a mailbox to appear, tap it so that it has a check mark in its circle. To hide a mailbox, tap its check mark so that it just shows an empty circle. For example, you can show the Attachments mailbox to make messages with attachments easier to get to. Drag the Order button for mailboxes up or down the screen to change the order in which mailboxes appear. Tap Add Mailbox to add a mailbox not shown to the list. Tap Done to save your changes.


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.

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

Image Tap the Share button.

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Image Tap Save X Images, where X is the number of images attached to the message. (If there is only one image, the command is just Save Image.) The images are saved in the Photos app on your iPhone.

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Searching Your Email

As you accumulate email, you might want to find specific messages. For example, suppose you want to retrieve an email message that was sent to a specific person, but you can’t remember where you stored it. Mail’s Search tool can help you find messages like this quite easily.

Image Move to the screen you want to search, such as an account’s Inbox or a folder’s screen.

Image Swipe down to move to the top of the screen.

Image Tap in the Search tool.

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Image Enter the text for which you want to search. As you type, Mail makes suggestions about what you might be searching for. These appear in different sections based on the type of search Mail thinks you are doing, such as People, Subjects, and more.

Image 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.

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Image Work with the messages you found, such as tapping a message to read it. Tap the back button in the upper-left corner of the screen to return to the search results.

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

Image To clear a search but remain in Search mode, tap the Clear button.

When you use an iPhone 6 Plus or 6s Plus horizontally, searching is even better, because you can select a found message in the search results in the right pane and read it in the right pane.

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Working with VIPs

The VIP feature enables you to indicate specific people as your VIPs. When a VIP sends you email, it is marked with a star icon and goes into the special VIP mailbox so you can access these important messages easily. You can also create specific notifications for your VIPs, such as a unique sound when you receive email from a VIP (see Chapter 5).

Designating VIPs

To designate someone as a VIP, perform the following steps:

Image View information about the person you want to be a VIP by tapping his name in the From or Cc fields as you learned earlier in the chapter.

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Image On the Info screen, tap Add to VIP. The person is designated as a VIP and any email from that person receives the VIP treatment.

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Accessing VIP Email

To work with VIP email, do the following:

Image Move to the Mailboxes screen.

Image Tap VIP.

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Image Work with the VIP messages you see.

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>>>Go Further: More on VIPs

Here are a few more tidbits on VIPs:

• Messages from VIPs are marked with the star icon no matter in which mailbox you see the messages. If you haven’t read a VIP message, the star is blue. If you have read it, the star is gray.

• To see the list of your current VIPs, move to the Mailboxes screen and tap the Info button (i) for the VIP mailbox. You see everyone currently designated as a VIP. Tap Add VIP to add more people to the list. Tap VIP Alerts to create special notifications for VIPs.

• To return a VIP to normal status, view his information and tap Remove from VIP.

• If you use an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, you can jump directly to the VIP folder from the Home screen by tapping and holding the Mail icon and choosing VIP on the resulting menu.


Managing Junk Email

Junk email, also known as spam, is an unfortunate reality of email. No matter what precautions you take, you are going to receive some spam emails. Of course, it is 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, and in the other places where you’re likely to get spammed. 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. If you have an iCloud account, you can set up and use email aliases for this purpose.

The Mail app on the iPhone doesn’t include any spam or filtering tools. 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 by changing how an email app on a computer deals with junk mail. The results of these changes are reflected in the Mail app on your iPhone.

Many email accounts, including iCloud and Google, 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. As you saw earlier, you can also move a message to the Junk folder by swiping to the left on it, tapping More, and then tapping Move to Junk.


It’s Not All Good

Unfortunately, while you can move email to a Junk folder in the Mail app, this really doesn’t do any good, because the Mail app doesn’t use that action to be able to mark similar future emails as junk like email apps on computers do. On an iPhone, there’s really no difference between moving a message to a Junk folder and deleting it. Because it is faster to delete a message, that is a better way to get rid of junk email than moving it to a Junk folder.