Mail on Ipad Opens to Last Viewed Message

By sb, 14 May, 2016

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi everyone

On an Ipad Mini 4 the mail app opens in the last viewed message instead of the inbox or the list of accounts. Any work-arounds? Anyone having this issue?

Big Thanks!

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Comments

By dvdmth on Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - 23:34

The iPad version of the Mail app is designed for use in landscape mode. In this mode, the left side of the screen has your inbox, or list of mailboxes, etc., while the right side of the screen has the current message being viewed. This is similar to the Mail app on the Mac when you are using the current interface (that is, not the classic view).

When the iPad is in portrait mode, which I presume you are using it in, the left side of the screen, with the list of messages or mailboxes, is removed from view, thus giving you only the current message. You can either hit the mailbox back button in the upper left corner, or use the two-finger scrub gesture, to bring up the list of messages. This appears visually as a popover on the left side of the screen, with the current message still being partially visible on the right side of the screen.

Whenever you leave the Mail app, the popover with the message list is dismissed, so when you go back into the app, you will be back on the screen with the last message you were viewing, and you must again use the scrub gesture to bring up the message list. This happens regardless of whether or not you leave the Mail app running in the app switcher.

If you want to see the list of messages right away, you can turn your iPad into landscape mode so that the message list will always be on screen. However, if you do this, VoiceOver will not automatically go to the start of a message after you select it, so you will have to navigate to the right side of the screen and find the message manually.

Personally, I stay in portrait mode and simply do a scrub immediately after opening the Mail app, so that I am in the list of messages as quickly as possible.

Thanks for the extremely informative reply. I checked the Ipad User guide and found no info about the app being designed for Landscape.
This explains a lot!
Thanks Again