iPad Air 2 - Mail Query

Apologies, this is probably down to my ignorance (never having owned an Apple device before), but how do I get Emails to display as "Read"?

Within my PC (using Thunderbird) I'm used to the Email Titles going from Bold to Unbold to indicate that they have been "Read". Also the Email listing showing how many are "Read"/"Unread" - with the ability to also display the "Unread" only.

So far, on the iPad Air 2, I've found a facility where I can manually (one at a time) put a Flag on to indicate "Unread" (although newly arrived "Unread" messages do NOT have this Flag), but I haven't been able to either sort or display the "Unreads".

Many thanks!

With the inbox showing on the left you can see a blue edit button at the top. Tap that. You than then can individually select each message, tap the circle. Then at the bottom you can mark as read, junk or flag, or can move or archive the message.
You can also before tapping any circles by tapping mark all, you can set all messages as read, or flag at the bottom.
Btw if you just want to flag, archive etc an individual message left swipe the messages title to get the options.

Edited by stniuk (Wed 08-Jul-15 12:38:09)

Hi, many thanks.

I've just opened up Mail, when I knew that there are messages that I have NOT Read.

Deliberately not reading the Unread messages I selected the "Edit" function, as you suggest, which adds a small empty circle to the left of each Email - to which I can ONLY mark as "Unread" (either "All" or individually) - this adds a small blue dot next to the message. Once marked, I can obviously then deselect "All" (or individual) messages back to "Read" (effectively deselecting the circle). Interestingly, when I mark individual messages with the small blue dot (i.e. mark them as "Unread"), once I then read them, the blue dot clears!!

In other words, it still will NOT indicate which messages have been actually "Read" - although I can obviously set them into either state regardless - unless I deliberately manually mark the messages first!

Hence, my query now becomes:- How do I get Mail to mark ALL the NEW incoming Messages automatically with the "Unread" blue dot?

Are you sure that it hadn't just switched straight to "read" because it was the email highlighted by default? Because iPad mail has a preview pane it will mark the highlighted mail as read immediately.

Ideally, you want 2 emails in and you should find the one the email program opens as default will be marked read because it has opened it but the other email will still be marked as unread because it hasn't been opened in preview.

Send yourself a few test mails and you should see they come in with the unread flag.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Are you sure that it hadn't just switched straight to "read" because it was the email highlighted by default? Because iPad mail has a preview pane it will mark the highlighted mail as read immediately.

Ideally, you want 2 emails in and you should find the one the email program opens as default will be marked read because it has opened it but the other email will still be marked as unread because it hasn't been opened in preview.

Send yourself a few test mails and you should see they come in with the unread flag.

Thanks for your comments!

Have just forwarded (to myself from an independent/different email address) 5-off separate emails. All of them have arrived WITHOUT an Unread Flag.

However, I then forwarded the "Welcome to iCloud", from my iCloud Email address & that HAS arrived with an "Unread" marker (NB:- since this has Auto-BCC set, a copy also arrived back into the iCloud Inbox - also as "Unread")!

Really don't understand!

That is very odd. Can you log into the iCloud web interface before going into the iPad mail app and see if they are read or unread in there? It sounds like possibly something in iCloud rather than the iPad app.

The iCloud messages (i.e. those based on [email protected]), which are ONLY monitored by my iPad, seem to be OK.

It seems to be the POP/IMAP "normal" messages that seem to have the problem!

Obviously I can monitor my "normal" email accounts via multiple ways (Desktop PC, Mobiles, etc).

As far as I can tell it is (perhaps) a conflict between the way the iPad manages the Emails & these other devices!

It appears that, if these other devices have NOT accessed these "normal" emails, the iPad shows them as "Unread" but once ANY of these other devices accesses these emails (even though I have NOT read them on any device), the iPad immediately regards them as "Read".

Hence, when I forwarded a batch of emails (as per the previous test) from my 2nd Normal A/C to my 1st Normal A/C, they were obviously received by my Desktop at a similar time to being received on my iPad - hence arriving as already "Read"!

Strange on my google account they are not read until they are read.
If you read on one device they are marked read on the other as you would expect. Until then they are still unread, it's an imap account too.
Could be be something in the settings of the email account?

I think I maybe getting to the basis of the problem!

Needless to say, if I'm correct, its down to my own misunderstandings!!

I think that it is because I've been confusing the subtleties of POP & IMAP!

Accordingly I've now created a brand new Email (on my own Domain) solely for testing purposes, defined as an IMAP A/C. That way I can "muck-it-up", to my hearts content, until I've got it fully figured!

Obviously, if this is the solution (& I get it fully sorted), I'll report back to confirm it!

In the mean-time, many thanks to those that have persevered with me!

As I suspected, it is not an Apple issue, but simply because I managed to try to treat my Emails Accounts as BOTH POP3 & IMAP, at the same time!

I now need to spend quite a bit of time re-creating my Email Accounts (on my PC, using Thunderbird) in order that I don't lose any information!

Again, many thanks for those that provided help to me!