Apple iPad, Day 3: Setting Up and Using Email

30 Days With the iPad: Day 3

I have always had email set ascending on my iPhone and iPad so I can send and have messages while on the move on. As I embark on the 30 Days With the iPad project, though, I am taking a closer look at how information technology is set up, and learning some new things all but the iOS Mail app.

First, have's look at setting up the email in the first place. Click on the Settings app on the iPad, and tap the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars mount in the odd Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Toward the transcend of the right pane under Accounts, tap Add Account.

POP or IMAP

You can hyperkinetic syndrome a potpourri of email account types to the iPad: Microsoft Central, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo!, Aol, Beaver State the taxonomic category Opposite. I favor using Rally, for reasons I will cover in a small, but generally I have used Other. Other is what you use to launch any generic POP or IMAP account. The question is which: POP or IMAP?

Apple iPad, Day 3: Setting Up and Using Email

There are pros and cons to each. With POP, the messages are downloaded from the remote control server to the iPad. That means that the email messages are stored topically, and you bequeath be able to read them even if your iPad doesn't have a working connection to the Internet at the moment, but it also means that the messages are nary longer along the server, sol they stool't be retrieved or read from other PCs Beaver State devices, and if you lose the iPad the emails construe with information technology.

Thankfully, you ass configure when or if messages are deleted from the remote server within the Advanced settings for a POP netmail account. The options are 'When removed from Inbox', 'Seven Years', and 'Never'–and iOS defaults to 'Ne'er'. The downside to this set up is that all PC or device essentially has its own copy of the messages. If you delete the message on your iPad, IT is still in that location on your PC so you are unnatural to maintain multiple Inboxes.

Another problem for POP accounts on an iPad is that they are limited to a maximum of 200 messages. If you are at a client site and you need critical information that you roll in the hay is in your email…from last calendar week, odds are dependable information technology won't be available anymore on the iPad.

IMAP takes a different attack. With IMAP, the device topically archives messages, but the server is the concrete message deposit. All of your various devices are kept in synchronise because they are all connecting to the same information on the server. When you cancel a message on your iPad, that deletion is reflected on your Personal computer and any other devices launch for that email score.

With IMAP, because the messages are stored on the server rather than connected the iPad, in that location is no 200 substance limitation. More importantly, you lavatory load older messages, so you would be able to get that crucial customer information from the email fourth-year week as long as the message is still in your Inbox folder.

Apple iPad Email — You send away add a variety of email account types on an iPad.

A potential downside of IMAP is that you might have the substance headers, but not the complete messages, so if you try to open and register your email while the iPad isn't connected to the Cyberspace it English hawthorn not work. In my experience, though, I was able to open and read the content of my messages just fine without a Wi-Fi connective. The only issue I had was that linked self-satisfied–like images and such within an email were ineffective to load.

Your mileage whitethorn vary, but for my purposes IMAP offers more benefits and makes managing and maintaining my email accounts simpler.

Commute or Gmail

Some of the account types tender flat more than advantages. For example, Exchange and Gmail accounts tender a good alternative to IMAP with some additional benefits. If you have a Gmail accounting, or a Microsoft Exchange account–like an Place 365 account–you can sync in proper-time with your electronic mail and calendar (and contacts for Exchange).

Victimisation Gmail or Exchange, you can memory access your uncastrated mail account–including sent messages, and all of your folders and subfolders. So, flush if you moved the electronic mail from terminal hebdomad with the crucial client data to a several folder called 'Crucial Client Information', you would still be able to access and retrieve it from the iPad as long as you experience an Internet connection.

Other advantage of using Exchange or Gmail is that your messages are already scanned for malware, spam, and phishing scams, and those messages are filtered out so you don't have to sift through them in your Inbox.

iOS 5 will resolve some of my iPad email pet peaves when it arrives.

iPad Mail Preferent Peaves

Apple has made some probatory improvements to the Post app over sentence. I appreciate that I can have septuple email accounts and view them all simultaneously with All Inboxes, and I like the rib conversations that seduce following a stream of messages more high-octane.

Nonetheless, I am not a fan of the spam. When I set up my email accounts using POP or IMAP, I puzzle all of the electronic mail messages in my Inbox–including spam messages about low gear interest loans, and guaranteed member enlargment. If I go look at those unchanged email accounts in Microsoft Outlook, those messages don't realize information technology to my Inbox because the Outlook Dust Mail filter catches them and filters them to a removed box.

I also wear't appreciate the lack of groups or distribution lists. I have a variety of distribution lists set up in Outlook that I use frequently, but with the iPad Mail client I take to manually add each individual email address every clip I want to mail an email. Information technology would also make up prissy to be able to do oblanceolate things equal make text edition bold operating theatre Italic language, or sneak in links into the subject matter, operating room add file attachments.

The Mail app is decent, and it is way better than information technology was in previous version of iOS, but it still has a long room to go to competition what I am accustomed to with Outlook 2020.

Changes in iOS 5

iOS 5 will be hither in few months, and when it is released there will exist some pretty operative changes to the Mail app. Here is what the Apple iOS 5 site has to say active the updates coming to Chain armour: "Your inbox is about to receive extraordinary nifty new features. Format text using conspicuous, italic, or underlined fonts. Create indents in the text of your subject matter. Drag to rearrange names in address fields. Flag important messages. Even add and delete mailbox folders on the fly. If you'rhenium looking for a specific e-mail, you can now search in the body of messages. And with iCloud, you get a free electronic mail account that stays in the lead to date on entirely your devices."

For my purposes, I am setting up my personal and business netmail accounts as POP accounts within my Gmail, and then using Gmail for sending and receiving messages on my iPad and iPhone. IT gives me more flexibility and is easier to manage, while also providing junk e-mail filtering and phishing protection.

Read the last "30 Days" serial publication: 30 Years With Ubuntu Linux

Day 2: Choosing the Right iPad

Day 4: Hiccups and Deary Peeves

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