Setting up your Gmail account for your iPad.
I’ve recently moved from Office365 to Google Apps you can read why here however i’ve spent a bit of time getting the account working properly with the native iPad mail app. I thought i’d share how.
There are several stages to setup the account once you’re gmail account is up and running:
Get Push Mails from Google.
One of the fist hints i noticed when i added my gmail account to the iPads Mail app using the wizard was it set it up as a gmail account. Nothing wrong with that you may think. Well while the default gmail setup is great and does get you up and running it does so using pull email, that is you set your mail client to check the server using imap every 15, 20, 30, 60 minutes etc.
You may think there is nothing wrong with this, and if it suits you thats great, however there is another way push mail, similar to that on Office365. Every time a mail is received at your gmail inbox it is pushed to your client immediately.
Setting this up means setting your Gmail account up with the Microsoft Exchange Wizard
1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Press Add Account….
4. Select Microsoft Exchange. iOS 4.0+ allows multiple Exchange accounts. However, if you’re on a device that doesn’t let you add a second account, you could also use CalDAV to sync Google Calendar and IMAP to sync Gmail.
Enter Account Info
5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address or your google apps address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.
6. Leave the Domain field blank.
7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
9a. Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.
10. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
11. Press Next at the top of your screen again.
12. Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync. To receive and respond to meeting requests on your device, both Mail and Calendar need to be turned on, and New events needs to be enabled in your Google Calendar settings.
To enable ‘New events’, sign in to your Google Calendar using the web browser on your phone or computer. Go to Calendar Settings > Calendars > Click on the Notifications for the calendar you want to sync. Under Email check ‘New events’ (and any of the other Invitation settings you want enabled e.g. changed events, cancelled events, event responses), and click Save.
13. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.
If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the All Contacts group instead. If there are no contacts on your phone, the latter will happen — the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.
You’ve set up Google Sync! Synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your device. You can also open the Mail, Calendar, or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync.
Your Mail account is now setup as is your calendar and it’s using push email.
Setting up Mail Filtering
I get a lot of mails from different mails on similar domains, @wordpress.com, @facebookmail.com, @linkedin.com and i want to keep these mails sorted in their own folders. However Gmail doesn’t do folders it does labels, the mails are tagged. yet they still come into the mail box.
Labels help you organize your messages into any categories — work, family, to do, read later, jokes, recipes, any category you want. Labels do all the work that folders do, but with an added bonus: you can add more than one to a message.
Only you can see your labels, so whether you mark a message with “Best friend” or “Read later,” the sender will never know.
Create a label
Here’s how to create a label that you can add to any of your messages:
- On the left side of the page, click More at the bottom of your labels list. (If you don’t see “More,” grab the gray dividing line with your cursor and drag it down to show more labels.)
- Click Create new label.
- Type the name of your new label and click Create.
You can also create a new label for a message in your Inbox by selecting the box next to the message, clicking the Label button above your message list, and then clicking Create new.
Apply your label
You can add a label to your messages in several ways:
- When viewing your Inbox, select the checkbox next to those messages, click the Labels
button, and click the label you want. (Or check the boxes next to several labels and click Apply.) - When viewing a message, click the Labels button to add a label to the message. You can also click and drag a label from the left side, and drop it on the message.
- When writing a new message, use that button to add a label before sending your message.
Gmail’s filters allow you to manage the flow of incoming messages. Using filters, you can automatically label, archive, delete, star, or forward your mail, even keep it out of Spam.
To create a filter
- Click the down arrow in your search box. A window that allows you to specify your search criteria will appear.
- Enter your search criteria. If you want to check that your search worked correctly, click the search button.
- Click Create filter with this search at the bottom of the search window. If you need to verify the search results, you can click the x to collapse the filter options. Clicking the down arrow again will bring the window back with the same search criteria you entered.
- Choose the action(s) you want the filter to take.
-
To keep organized, many people like to have incoming messages automatically labeled and removed from their inbox until they can look at them later at a more convenient time. If you want to do this, make sure to select Skip the Inbox (Archive it) and Apply the label: when you create your filter.
- Click the Create filter button.
Please note: When you create a filter to forward messages, only new messages will be affected. Any existing messages that the filter applies to will not be forwarded.
To use a particular message to create a filter
- Select the message in your message list.
- Click the More button, then Filter messages like these.
- Enter your filter criteria in the appropriate field(s).
To edit or delete existing filters
- Click the gear icon
and select Settings. - Click the Filters tab.
- Find the filter you’d like to change and click edit or delete to remove the filter.
- If you’re editing the filter, enter the updated criteria for the filter in the appropriate fields, and click Edit filter actions.
- Update any actions and click the Update filter button.
You can create an unlimited number of filters, but only 20 filters can forward to other addresses. You can maximize your filtered forwarding by combining filters that send to the same address.
Setup Folder Checking
We have done well so far, we have our mail organised and push mail enabled, however you will notice that the mails going into your mailbox folders via the filters are not being shown as arrived.By default the iPad mail client only push checks the inbox. We can however sort this out very quickly.
- On the iPad open Settings
- Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars
- Select your mail Exchange Account
- Select Mail folders to Push
- Then tick the folders you wish to push output to//
- You’re Done
Summary
The iPad mail app has its issues, and yes there is a gmail app from Google, however when you click on a mailto link in the web browser the mail app not the gmail app is opened by default. Until apple changes this behaviour the default mail app is your best proposition.
Hopefully these settings are able to get you on your way to managing your mailbox better.
Is there a reason why I can’t access my email that I have labeled? I’ve got gmail through Exchange and it works just fine except for this. Anything that I have labeled on my computer does not show up on my phone or ipad. The label is there, but the email is not. Any solutions out there?
I have to be honest I have found gmail so user unfriendly and pulling so many features unless you have an android I switched to outlook.com it works better on the iPad