In This Chapter
Setting up your accounts
Sending e-mail messages
Reading and managing e-mail messages
Searching for e-mail messages
Setting e-mail preferences
On any computing device, e-mails come and go with a variety of emotions. Messages may be amusing or sad, frivolous or serious. Electronic missives on the iPad are almost always touching.
The reason, of course, is that you're touching the display to compose messages and to read them. Okay, so we're having a little fun with the language. But the truth is, the built-in Mail application on the iPad is a modern program designed not only to send and receive text e-mail messages but also to handle rich HTML e-mail messages — formatted with font and type styles and embedded graphics. If someone sends you mail with a picture, it's visible right in the body of the message.
Furthermore, your iPad can read several types of file attachments, including (but not limited to) PDFs, JPG images, Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and Excel spreadsheets, as well as stuff produced through Apple's own iWork software. Better still, all this sending and receiving of text, graphics, and documents can happen in the background so that you can surf the Web or play a game while your iPad quietly and efficiently handles your e-mail behind the scenes.
First things first. To use Mail, you need an e-mail address. If you have broadband Internet access (that is, a cable modem, FIOS, or DSL), you probably received one or more e-mail addresses when you signed up. If you're one of the handful of readers who doesn't already have an e-mail account, you can get one for free from Yahoo! (http://mail.yahoo.com), Google (http://mail.google.com), AOL (http://www.aol.com), or numerous other service providers.
Warning
Many (if not all) free e-mail providers add a small bit of advertising at the end of your outgoing messages. If you'd rather not be a billboard for your e-mail provider, either use the address(es) that came with your broadband Internet access ([email protected] or [email protected], for example) or pay a few dollars a month for a premium e-mail account that doesn't tack advertising (or anything else) onto your messages. You can get a me.com e-mail account as part of Apple's $99-a-year MobileMe service.
Chapter 3 explains the option of automatically syncing the e-mail accounts on your Windows PC or Mac with your iPad. If you chose that option, your e-mail accounts should be configured on your iPad already. You may proceed directly to the later section "Darling, You Send Me (E-Mail)."
If you haven't yet chosen that option but want to set up your account the easy way now, go to Chapter 3 and read that section, sync your iPad, and then you, too, can proceed directly to the section "Darling, You Send Me (E-Mail)," later in this chapter.
If you don't want to sync the e-mail accounts on your PC or Mac, you can set up an e-mail 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 have no e-mail accounts on your iPad, the first time you launch Mail, you'll see the Welcome to Mail screen shown in Figure 5-1. Your choices are Microsoft Exchange (business e-mail), MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, and Other.
Merely tap the account type you want to add to the iPad and follow the steps in the section "Setting up an e-mail account with Yahoo! Mail, Google, AOL, or MobileMe," "Setting up an account with another provider," or "Setting up corporate e-mail," later in this chapter.
If you have one or more e-mail accounts on your iPad already and want to add a new account manually, start by tapping Settings on the Home screen and then tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
You see an Add Account screen, with the same account options that are shown on the Welcome to Mail screen. Proceed to one of the next three sections, depending on the type of e-mail account you selected.
If your account is with Yahoo!, Google (Gmail), AOL, or Apple's own MobileMe service, follow these steps:
Tap the appropriate button on the Add Account screen. (Refer to Figure 5-1.)
Enter your name, e-mail address, and password, as shown in Figure 5-2.
You can describe this account (such as Work or Personal), but the field tends to fill in automatically with the same contents in the Address field unless you tell it differently.
Tap the Save button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
You're finished. That's all there is to setting up your account.
If your e-mail account is with a provider other than Yahoo!, Google, AOL, or MobileMe, you have a bit more work ahead of you. You're going to need a bunch of information about your e-mail account that you may not know or have handy.
We suggest that 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 e-mail account or visit the account provider's Web site and search there.
Here's how you set up an account:
On the Add Account screen, tap the Other button.
Under Mail, tap Add Mail Account.
Fill in the name, address, password, and description in the appropriate fields.
Tap Save.
With any luck, that's all you'll have to do. The iPad will look up and hopefully be able to retrieve your account credentials. Otherwise, continue with Step 5.
Tap the button at the top of the screen that denotes the type of e-mail server this account uses: IMAP or POP, as shown in Figure 5-3.
Fill in the Internet host name for your incoming mail server, which should look something like mail.
providername.com.Fill in your username and password.
Enter the Internet host name for your outgoing mail server, which should look something like smtp.
providername.com.Enter your username and password in the appropriate fields.
Tap the Save button in the upper-right corner to create the account.
Tip
Some outgoing mail servers don't need your username and password. The fields for these items on your iPad note that they're optional. Still, we suggest that you fill them in anyway. It saves you from having to add them later if your outgoing mail server does require an account name and password, which many do these days.
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 something known as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, you can exploit push e-mail so that 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, your company must be simpatico with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync 2003 (Service Pack 2) or 2007 (Service Pack 1). Ask your company's IT or tech department if you run into an issue.
Setting up Exchange e-mail isn't particularly taxing, and the iPad connects to Exchange right out of the box. You still might have to consult your employer's techie-types for certain settings.
Start setting up your corporate e-mail on your iPad by following these steps:
Tap the Microsoft Exchange icon on the Add Account screen. (Refer to Figure 5-1.)
Fill in what you can: your e-mail address, domain, username (sometimes domainuser), and password. Or, call on your IT staff for assistance. Tap Next when you're done.
On the next screen, shown in Figure 5-4, enter the Server address, assuming that the Microsoft Autodiscovery service didn't already find it. Tap Next when you're done.
That server address may begin with
exchange.company.com.Choose which information you want to synchronize through Exchange by tapping each item you want.
You can choose Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. After you choose an item, you see the blue On button next to it, as shown in Figure 5-5.
Tap Save.
Warning
The company you work for doesn't want just anybody having access to your e-mail — heaven forbid if your iPad is lost or stolen. So your bosses may insist that you change the passcode lock inside Settings on your iPad. (This is different from the password for your e-mail account.) Skip over to Chapter 13 to find instructions for adding or changing a passcode. (We'll wait for you.) And, if your iPad ends up in the wrong hands, your company can remotely wipe the contents clean.
Tip
By default, the iPad keeps e-mail synchronized for three days. To sync for a longer period, head to Settings and tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then tap the Mail account using ActiveSync. Tap Mail Days to Sync and tap No Limit or pick another time frame (1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, or 1 month).
Note
Sorry, but if you're moonlighting at a second job, you can configure only one Exchange ActiveSync account per iPad. If you tap Microsoft Exchange on the Add Account screen of an iPad that already has an ActiveSync account set up, you get no further.
Now that your account or accounts are set up, we look at how to use your iPad to send e-mail. You see several subspecies of messages: pure text, text with a photo, a partially finished message (a draft) that you want to save and complete later, a reply to an incoming message, and forwarding an incoming message to someone else, for example. The following sections examine these subsets one at a time. You also find a final section that explains handy settings for sending e-mail messages.
To compose a new e-mail message, tap Mail on the Home screen. What you see next depends on how you're holding your iPad. In landscape mode (Figure 5-6), your e-mail accounts or e-mail folders are listed in a panel along the left side of screen, with the actual message filling the larger window on the right.
Note
Depending on the last time the mail application was open, you may alternatively see previews of the actual messages in your inbox in the left panel mentioned previously. Previews show the name of the sender, the subject header, and the first two lines of the message. (In Settings, you can change the number of lines shown in the preview from 1 line to 5. Or, you can show no preview lines.)
When you hold the iPad in portrait mode, the last incoming message fills the entire screen. Figure 5-7 shows this view. You have to tap an Inbox button (in the upper-left corner of the screen) to summon a panel that shows other accounts or message previews. These overlay the message that otherwise fills the screen.
Now, to create a new message, follow these steps:
Tap the Compose New Message button (refer to Figure 5-6).
A screen like the one shown in Figure 5-8 appears.
Type the names or e-mail addresses of the recipients in the To field, or tap the + button to the right of the To field to choose a contact or contacts from your iPad's contacts list.
(Optional) Tap the field labeled Cc/Bcc, From.
Doing so breaks them out into separate Cc, Bcc, and From fields.
The Cc/Bcc label stands for carbon copy/blind carbon copy. Carbon copy 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. It's great for those secret agent e-mails! Tap the respective Cc or Bcc field to type names. Or, tap the + symbol that appears in those fields to add a contact.
(Optional) If you tap From, you can choose to send the message from any of your e-mail accounts on the fly, assuming, of course, that you have more than one account set up on the iPad.
Tip
If you start typing an e-mail address, e-mail 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.
Type a subject in the Subject field.
The subject is optional, but it's considered poor form to send an e-mail message without one.
Type your message in the message area.
The message area is immediately below the Subject field. You have ample space to get your message across.
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 the AT&T EDGE or 3G data network when you tap Send, the message is sent the next time you're in range of one of these networks.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. When that's the case, here's how to send an e-mail message with a photo enclosed:
Tap the Photos icon on the Home screen.
Find the photo you want to send.
Tap the button that looks like a little rectangle with a curved arrow springing out of it in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Tap the Email button.
An e-mail message appears on-screen with the photo already attached. In fact, the image appears to be embedded in the body of the message, but the recipient receives it as a regular e-mail attachment.
Address the message and type whatever text you like, as you did for an all-text message in the preceding section, and then tap the Send button.
Sometimes you start an e-mail 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:
Start an e-mail message as described in one of the two previous sections.
When you're ready to save the message as a draft, tap the Cancel button in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Tap the Save button if you want to save this message as a draft and complete it another time.
Warning
If you tap the Don't Save button, the message disappears immediately without a second chance. Don't tap Don't Save 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.
When you receive a message and want to reply to it, open the message and then tap the Reply/Reply All/Forward button, which looks like a curved arrow at the upper-right corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 5-9. Then tap the Reply, Reply All, or Forward button.
The Reply button creates a blank e-mail message addressed to the sender of the original message. The Reply All button creates a blank e-mail message addressed to the sender and all other recipients of the original message, plus CCs. (The Reply All option only appears if more than one recipient was on the original e-mail.) 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.
Tapping the Forward button creates an unaddressed e-mail message that contains the text of the original message. Add the e-mail 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.
Tip
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 would edit any other text. It's usually considered good form to leave the subject lines alone (with the Re: or Fwd: prefix intact), but you may want to change them sometimes. Now you know that you can.
To send your reply or forwarded message, tap the Send button as usual.
You can customize the mail you send and receive in lots of different ways. In this section, we explore settings for sending e-mail. Later in this chapter, we show you settings that impact the way you receive and read messages. In each instance, you start by tapping Settings on the Home screen. Then:
To hear an alert when you successfully send a message: From the main Settings screen, tap General
Note
The preceding paragraph is similar for all the settings we discuss in this section and later sections, so we don't repeat them again. To summarize, if you want to continue using settings, you tap whichever left-pointing button appears at the top of the screen — sometimes it's named General, sometimes Mail, sometimes Contacts, or sometimes something else. The point is that the button always returns you to the previous screen so that you can change other settings. The same concept applies to tapping the Home button on the front of your iPad when you're finished setting a setting. That action always saves the change you just made and returns you to the Home screen.
To add a signature line, phrase, or block of text to every e-mail message you send: Tap Settings
To have your iPad send you a copy of every message you send: Tap Settings
To set the default e-mail account for sending e-mail from outside the Mail application: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen, and then tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
That's what you need to know about the settings that apply to sending e-mail.
The first half of the mail equation is sending mail, of course. Now it's time for the second half — receiving and reading the stuff. Fortunately, you've already done most of the heavy lifting when you set up your e-mail accounts. Getting and reading your mail is a piece of cake.
You can tell when you have unread mail by looking at the Mail icon at the bottom of your Home screen. The cumulative number of unread messages appears in a little red circle in the upper-right area of the icon.
In the following sections, you find out how to read messages and attached files and send messages to the trash or maybe a folder when you're done reading them. Or, if you can't a find a message, check out the section on searching your e-mail messages. You can read your e-mail just like you can on a desktop or notebook computer; the way you do so just works a little differently on the iPad's touchscreen.
To read your mail, tap the Mail icon on the Home screen. Remember that what appears on the screen depends on whether you're holding the iPad in portrait or landscape mode, and what was on the screen the last time you opened the Mail application. Follow these steps to read your e-mail:
Tip
If the e-mail mailbox you want to see isn't front and center, tap the Accounts button in the upper-left corner of the screen to summon the appropriate one.
Again this button may say Inbox or some other folder name, and it may say the name of the e-mail account that is currently open. Within an e-mail account, you can see the number of unread messages in each mailbox.
(Optional) Tap the Check for New Messages icon (refer to Figure 5-6) to summon new messages.
Tap a mailbox or the Inbox to check for any new messages within those mailboxes.
If a blue dot appears next to a message, it means that the message has not been read. When you open a mailbox by tapping it, the iPad displays the number of "recent" messages that you specify in Settings — 50 by default, though you can display up to 200. To see more than the number you specified, tap Load Additional Messages.
Tap a message to read it.
When a message is on the screen, the buttons for managing incoming messages appear at the top of the screen, most of which you're already familiar with. If you're holding the iPad in portrait mode, you'll see up/down arrows that correspond to the next or previous message. These are shown in Figure 5-9.
In landscape mode, tap a preview listing to the left of a message to read the next or previous message or any other visible message on the list. Scroll up or down to find other messages you may want to read.
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, you'll have to manage your mail account on your PC or Mac. You can't create a Mail folder on the iPad.
To file a message in another folder, tap the File Message icon. When the list of folders appears, tap the folder where you want to file the message.
To move messages to another folder in bulk, tap Edit. In both portrait and landscape, Edit appears at the top of your inbox or another mailbox when those mail folders are selected. After tapping Edit, it becomes a Cancel button and buttons labeled Delete (in red) and Move (in blue) appear at the bottom of the screen. Tap the circle to the left of each message you want to move so that a check mark appears. Tap Move (see Figure 5-10), and tap the new folder in which you want those messages to hang out.
To read a message that you've filed away, tap the folder where the message now resides, and tap the header or preview for the message in question.
Delete a message by tapping the Delete Message icon. You have a chance to cancel in case you tap the Delete Message icon by mistake. You can delete e-mail messages without opening them in two ways:
Swipe left or right across the message in its preview pane, and then tap the red Delete button that appears to the right of the message.
Tap the Edit button, and tap the little circle to the left of each message you want to remove. Tapping that circle puts a check mark in it and brightens the red Delete button at the bottom of the screen. Tap that Delete button to erase all messages you checked off, as shown in Figure 5-10. Deleted messages are moved to the Trash folder.
With Spotlight search, you can easily search through a bunch of messages to find the one you want to read fast — such as that can't-miss stock tip from your broker. You can type stock or whichever search term seems relevant in the search box at the top of a mailbox preview pane. All matching e-mails that have already been downloaded appear. When you tap the search box in Mail, tabs appear that let you narrow the search to the From, To, or Subject fields. It's too bad that (at press time, anyway) you can't run a search to find words within the body of an e-mail message.
Tip
If you're using Exchange, MobileMe, or certain IMAP-type e-mail accounts, you may even be able to search messages that are stored out on the server. When available, tap Continue Search on Server.
Your iPad can even receive e-mail messages with attachments in a wide variety of file formats. Which file formats does the iPad support? Glad you asked.
Here's the list of file formats that your iPad can receive as attachments, care of Apple:
Images:
.jpg, .tiff, .gifMicrosoft Word:
.doc, .docxMicrosoft PowerPoint:
.ppt, .pptxMicrosoft Excel:
.xls, .xlsxWeb pages:
.htm, .htmlApple Keynote:
.keyApple Numbers:
.numbersApple Pages:
.pagesPreview and Adobe Acrobat:
.pdfRich Text:
.rtfText:
.txtContact information:
.vcf
Warning
If the attachment is a file format not supported by the iPad (for example, a Photoshop .psd file), you see the name of the file but you can't open it on your iPad.
Here's how to read an attachment:
Open the mail message that contains the attachment.
Tap the attachment (it appears at the bottom of the message, so you probably need to scroll down to see it).
The attachment downloads to your iPad and opens automatically.
Read the attachment.
Tap the document you're reading (in the case of a document) and tap Done to return to the message text.
Or, you have the option (again for a document) to open the Pages word processor if you have purchased that application for your iPad. See Chapter 12 for more on Pages.
Wait! You can do even more with your incoming e-mail messages:
To see all recipients of a message, tap the word Details (displayed in blue) to the right of the sender's name.
Tip
If all recipients are displayed, the word in blue is Hide rather than Details. Tap it to hide all names except the sender's.
To add an e-mail recipient or sender to your contacts, tap the name or e-mail address at the top of the message and then tap either Create New Contact or Add to Existing Contact.
To mark a message as unread, tap Mark as Unread, which appears in the subject line of an open message. When you do, 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 zoom in 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 other colors and sometimes underlined. 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. If the link is a map, Maps opens and displays the location. And, last but not least, if the link is an e-mail address, a new preaddressed blank e-mail message is created.
This final discussion of Mail involves more settings that deal with your various e-mail accounts. (If you're looking for settings that let you apply a signature and other settings related to sending e-mail, see the section "Settings for sending e-mail," earlier in this chapter.)
Several settings affect the way you can check and view e-mail. 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; tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
Tap Advanced to determine these push and fetch settings for each individual account. Tap the account in question. Push is shown as an option only if the e-mail account you tapped supports the feature.
As of this writing, Yahoo!, MobileMe (
Me.com), and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync accounts were awfully pushy (but only in a good way).To hear an alert sound when you receive a new message: Tap General on the main Settings screen, tap Sounds, and then turn on the New Mail setting.
To set the number of recent messages that appear in your Inbox: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
To set the number of lines of each message to be displayed in the message list: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
To set the font size for messages: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
To specify whether the iPad shows the To and Cc labels in message lists: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars and turn the Show To/Cc Label setting on or off.
To turn the Ask before Deleting warning on or off: From the main Settings screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars; then turn the Ask before Deleting setting on or off. If this setting is turned on, you need to tap the trash can icon at the bottom of the screen and then tap the red Delete button to confirm the deletion. When the setting is turned off, tapping the trash can icon deletes the message and you never see a red Delete button.
To specify whether the iPad will automatically load remote images: Tap Load Remote Images so that the On button is showing. If it's off, you can still manually load remote images.
The last group of settings we explore in this chapter deals with your e-mail 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 e-mail account: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen; tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars; and then tap the account name. Tap Delete Account and then tap Keep on My iPad to turn off the account.
Tip
This setting doesn't delete the account; it only hides it from view and stops it from sending or checking e-mail until you turn it on again.
To delete an e-mail account: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen, tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars; and then tap the account name. Tap the red button that says Delete Account; and then tap Delete from My iPad. Tap Cancel if you change your mind and don't want your account blown away.
You can find still more advanced Mail settings, reached the same way: Tap the Settings icon on the Home screen; tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars; and then tap the name of the account you want to work with. The settings you see under Advanced and how they appear vary a little by account. This list describes some of the ones you see:
To specify how long until deleted messages are removed permanently from your iPad: Tap Advanced and then tap Remove. Your choices are Never, After One Day, After One Week, and After One Month. Tap the choice you prefer.
To choose whether drafts, sent messages, and deleted messages are stored on your iPad or on your mail server: Tap Advanced, and then choose the setting under Mailbox Behaviors stored On My iPad or stored On the Server. 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, EDGE, or 3G). If you choose to store them on your iPad, they're always available, even if you don't have Internet access.
Warning
We strongly recommend that you don't change these 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), e-mail 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:
To reconfigure mail server settings: Tap Host Name, User Name, or Password in the Incoming Mail Server or Outgoing Mail Server section of the account settings screen and make your changes.
To adjust Use SSL, Authentication, IMAP Path Settings, or 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 e-mail accounts and send and receive e-mail on your iPad.