The Mail app is one of the most commonly used apps on the iPhone and iPad. Although there are many third-party e-mail apps out there, many ifolks still prefer to use the default Apple Mail app on their Apple devices. Apple has been working to make its e-mail application smarter and simpler. As with anything else, when there are changes it takes time to adjust to the new way of doing things. The iOS Mail app saw a lot of changes in iOS 10 and a few interesting changes in iOS 11.
In this article, we explore some of the changes that have been added to the iOS Mail app. We also highlight some tips that make it easy and convenient to use the app on your favorite iDevice.
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Using Microsoft Exchange, Office365, or Outlook?
There’s a known error causing some users to see an error message saying “Cannot Send Mail. The message was rejected by the server.” Apple and Microsoft worked to resolve this issue and released a fix in with the latest iOS 11.xx minor version software update. 
If you don’t see that update or don’t want to update, Microsoft’s recommended workaround is to use the free Outlook for iOS client from the App Store. This app works on iOS 11 and supports these email services, including Outlook.com, Office 365, and Exchange Server 2016.
For more info, please see Apple’s Documentation and Microsoft’s Documentation.
The Case for Collapsed Messages in iOS 11
One of the new changes that you find in iOS 11 is the inclusion of ‘collapsed messages’ in the Mail settings. Tap on Settings > Mail and scroll down to the section titled ‘THREADING’.
The new ‘Collapse Read Messages’ in threading makes it easy to review your e-mails. When you turn on this option in the setting, any emails in the thread that you have already read will automatically be closed.
Other Changes to Mail
Apple decided to do away with scheduled fetch and notifications for favorited folders other than your Mail’s Inbox folder. So third-party mail account (like Yahoo) that do not support Push mode no longer work and are disabled in your iDevice’s Mail app in iOS 11.
Note that your Mail account’s settings for third-party services (like Yahoo) still has a Fetch New Data feature. However, that option is now only for fetching the main Inbox. It does not work on any other folder on IMAP mail accounts which do not support Push.
Unsubscribe from Junk Mail with a Single Tap
It is not uncommon to find junk mail taking up a lot of your e-mail space if you do not manage them. Starting with iOS 10, Apple made it easier to unsubscribe from junk with a single tap.
This is helpful if you cannot remember signing up for something and are now noticing newsletters clogging up your inbox.
In order to unsubscribe from these e-mails, simply tap on an email from the provider and then choose ‘Unsubscribe’ at the top.
Use 3D Touch or Siri to Quickly Open New Draft e-mail
You don’t have to go through all the various steps in order to create an e-mail draft. Give your 3D Touch or your Siri a chance to open a new draft with a single tap. Using 3D Touch, press long on the mail app on the home screen and choose ‘Create New mail” or invoke Siri and say something like “New e-mail to John Doe” to get going.
Use 3D Touch to Quickly React to e-mails
Press a message to peek at it, and then swipe up, left, or right to use quick actions. Press a little deeper to pop the message open. When you swipe left, you can send the message to trash. Similarly swiping right, lets you tag it as ‘read’/’unread’ . When you swipe up while on 3D touch you can choose the various actions to respond to that e-mail.
Filtering e-mails that only have attachments
Have you ever been in a situation where you are searching for a particular attachment that came to you in an e-mail? Instead of browsing through all the e-mails you can set up your Filter quickly in the Mail app, so that it only shows you the emails that have attachments.
Tap on the Filter button at the bottom of the Mail app screen. Tap on the ‘Filtered by’ dialog at the bottom to change your filter setting.
Scroll down and set the ‘Only Mail with attachments’ option to ON and tap on Done. Once you have reviewed the emails with attachments to locate the attachment, you can change this filter back.
This worked on iOS 10 and continues to exist in the filtering options for iOS 11.
Don’t want to Type your e-mail? No Problem with iOS 11
While drafting a new e-mail, you can now use the ‘Speak sentence’ feature to get the dictation going. Double tap on the email window while in the draft mode and choose the new ‘Speak Sentence’ feature to complete your e-mail.
How to Insert a Drawing Directly into your iOS e-mail
Double tapping on the e-mail draft allows you to choose ‘Insert Drawing’ now. This is an inline feature and when you select it, it opens up a window for you to draw out your idea. This works pretty well on an iPad Pro and you can use the Apple pencil to scribble out your idea and it automatically adds it to the e-mail.
Managing e-mail drafts Effectively on your iPhone
Many of us prefer to work on a large number of email drafts at any given point. This is especially true if you are using iOS Mail at work.
While working on an e-mail, if you prefer to leave it as a draft and check a different e-mail on your inbox, you can swipe down from the title bar of the drafted email.
When you are ready to return to the email, simply tap the bar at the bottom of the screen.
For those iFolks that use many draft e-mails using several email accounts, you can set up an All draft Mailbox to make it easier to manage.
While viewing the Mailboxes list, tap Edit > Add Mailbox, and then turn on the All Drafts mailbox.
iOS 11 Mail App Not Responding on iPhone
Several users find that occasionally their Mail app just freezes up. It doesn’t respond at all on the home screen. We have seen this happen right after an IOS upgrade. The best thing you can do when facing this issue after an upgrade is to delete the Mail app and then re-install it after a quick restart.
On the home screen, press and hold the Mail icon and you will find the familiar ‘X’ next to it. Choose it to remove the Mail app from your device. Restart your iPhone or iPad and then re-install the Mail App.
The easiest way to locate the Apple Mail app is to use Siri. Say something like ‘Siri show me the Apple Mail app on the appstore and it will take you directly there. Tap on Open to start re-installing the app.
The good news in iOS 11 is you don’t have to setup your e-mail accounts again after re-installing the Mail app. Due to the new app offloading feature, your credentials are stored on your device and it automatically gets setup when you re-install the app. We love this new feature in iOS 11.
Where are my e-mail Account Settings in iOS 11?
The familiar ‘Accounts’ setting has now been moved out from Mail Settings. iOS 11 starts with Message List grouping as opposed to the old Accounts. In order to review your e-mail accounts on iOS 11, tap on Settings > Accounts and Password. This is a brand new function that has been added in iOS 11. Using this section, you can set up and administer your Gmail, Yahoo mail or Outlook accounts.
Take some time to explore this new setting as you can manage various website credentials from here.
How To Delete All emails at once in iOS 11
There are always moments when you would like to select all the emails in a Mailbox at once. Typically you try to do this when you are trying to move all these emails into Trash or another mailbox. Rather then moving one email or a group of emails one by one, you can collect all the emails in your inbox and move them to trash in one go. Here’s how you can do this on your iPhone using iOS 11 and later versions.
Open the inbox and then tap on “Edit” at the top right corner of your screen. Tap on any message on screen so the checkbox appears next to it within the circle.
Now press and hold the “Move” button with one finger, and while holding the “Move” button, uncheck the message you previously checked.
Release the “Move” button once you have unchecked the email.
You’ll now be at the Inbox selection screen, at the top of the screen will show how many emails are selected, choose the “Trash” icon to move them all to trash and permanently delete them or you can move them to another folder of your choice.
Printing e-mails from your iPhone or iPad, Stay Sustainable
How many of us fire our emails, newsletters or WebPages to the printer only to realize that it has printed out 10 pages when we only needed a certain section of the content.
Instead of having to waste your printer ink and paper, you can preview the printer content and choose the pages that you want to send to the printer. Tap on Print from your email.
Use the Range feature to limit the pages or manually choose the pages by swiping and selecting and then choose Print at the top of your screen.
We hope that you found some of these tips helpful. Please feel free to share it with your friends and well-wishers.