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The trick? Poking around a bit in the iOS editing pop-up—you know, the one that appears when you tap and hold to select text.

Tap the BIU button to bold, italicize, or underline text in an email message.

Open the iOS Mail app, tap the Compose button, then tap out some text in the body of the message. Next, tap and hold a word, tap Select, then drag the tiny little blue handles to highlight the words you want to edit.

You should now see a small black pop-up in the Mail app with a series of editing buttons on the top, such as Cut, Copy, and Paste. If you’re using an iPad, you’ll also see a button marked BIU; on an iPhone, you’ll need to tap the arrow on the right side of the pop-up until the BIU button appears.

Once you tap the BIU button, three new buttons will pop up: Bold, Italics, and Underline. Tap one, two, or even all three of the buttons you want, and presto!

Bonus tip

A little bold, italics and underlining can do wonders for your Mail signature. When in the mail app, just tap Setting, Mail, Signature to start experimenting.

Looking for more iOS tips? Click here!

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Hi Lorraine! You’ve touched on a sore point when it comes to the iOS Mail app, which lacks an obvious way to delete all messages without tapping Edit and then selecting each message one by one.

Personally, I’d love it if you could, say, tap, hold and swipe to select a bunch of messages at once (similar to what you can do in the Photos app), but alas, that doesn’t work in iOS Mail.

The “Trash All” button doesn’t appear in the All Mailboxes view of the iOS Mail app.

There is a way…

That said, there is a way to quickly delete all messages in the inbox of an individual mail account, or in a specific mailbox within an account. But if (like me) you’re a fan of the All Mailboxes view in Mail, the Trash All button is easy to miss.

For some odd reason, the Trash All button doesn’t appear in the All Mailboxes screen. Instead, you’ll need to back up (tap the Mailboxes button with the arrow in the top-left corner of the display) and tap on the inbox of a specific mail account.

Once you’ve arrived at an individual account inbox, tap the Edit button to reveal the Trash All button (it’s in the bottom corner of the screen). Tap it, then tap the confirmation button to delete all the messages in the inbox.

Deleting all messages from a specific mailbox

You can also delete all messages with a specific mailbox within a mail account. Go back to the main Mailboxes screen, tap a mail account under the Accounts heading, tap a mailbox, then tap Edit and Trash All to delete all the messages in the mailbox.

No, the Trash All method isn’t as elegant as being able to swipe to select a bunch of messages at once, but it’s better than nothing.

Click here for more iOS tips!

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Nice, but here’s the thing: you can also delete specific email messages directly from Notification Center—or, if you prefer, mark messages as read.

Just swipe a mail message in Notification Center to reveal the Trash and Mark as Read buttons.

Just swipe a message from right to left to reveal a pair of buttons: “Mark as Read” and “Trash.”

Tap Trash, a poof! The email message will be deleted, no Mail app required.

It’s a handy shortcut, sure, but what’s to prevent a stranger from trashing email using Notification Center while your iPhone or iPad is locked?

Well, they can try, but they’ll be prompted to unlock your device first with a PIN or Touch ID. No PIN or fingerprint, no trashing email.

Bonus tip

You can swipe other alerts in Notification Center, too, although doing so usually reveals just an “x” button that’ll clears the alert. You’ll find a “Reply” button if you swipe an iMessage, but you can also just tap the message to reply.

Click here for more iOS tips!

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Not bad, readers said, but is there any way to do something similar on a Mac? Good question.

Want to get email notifications for only your VIPs? You can do it by tweaking a single Mail setting.

The answer: Yes, you can. All you have to do is teach the Mac’s Mail app a few new tricks.

• The first step is to mark some of your contacts as VIPs. You can do it on your iPhone by following the steps in this tip. On a Mac, just open a message in Mail and click the little star next to the sender’s name in the “To:” field.
• Want to get email notifications for only your VIPs? Click the Mail menu (it’s in the top-left corner of the screen, provided the Mail app is running and active), select Preferences, click the General tab, then select “VIPs” in the “New Mail Notifications” setting. You can manage how Mail notifications work in general (for instance, whether they appear as banners that come and go or alerts that must be manually dismissed) by clicking the Apple menu and selecting System Preferences, Notifications, then clicking Mail.

Want notifications for all your new email messages, plus special alerts for VIP email? All you have to do is create a new Mail rule.

OK, but what if you want notifications for all your new email messages, plus special alerts for VIP email? If so, try this…

• Click the Mail menu, select Preferences, and click the Rules tab. From here, you can see and manage all the various rules that Mail follows when it comes to your messages—everything from mail filters and color-coding to automated replies and marking messages as “read” or “unread,” all based on the sender, the recipient, the subject line, and other factors.
• Let’s go ahead and create a new rule for VIPs. Click the Add Rule button, then label the rule in the “Description” field—say, “VIPs.” In the next line—the one that reads “If [any or all] of the following conditions are met,” make sure “any” is selected.
• Time to set a condition. Click the “Any recipient” drop-down menu and select “Sender is VIP.”
• Now, let’s create an action for Mail to perform once the condition is met. Under “Perform the following actions,” click the menu marked “Move Message” and select, say, “Play Sound,” then pick a new beep, ping, or buzz to sound off whenever you get an email from a VIP.
• Want something else to happen when a VIP message hits your inbox? Click the “+” button to the right of your “Play Sound” action to create a new action. For example, you could click the first pull-down menu and select “Bounce Icon in Dock” to make the Mail icon bounce whenever a VIP email arrives. You could also select “Set Color of Message” to make VIP messages stand out in your inbox, or “Mark as Flagged” to automatically flag emails from your inner circle. You can even set Mail to automatically forward VIP messages or reply with a pre-written response.
• All set? Then click OK.

You’ll get a prompt asking if you want to apply your new rule to existing messages. You can click Apply if you like, but keep in mind that if you set an action like “Reply to message,” Mail will start replying to all the VIP messages sitting in your inbox. Since the idea here is to alert you to new VIP messages, I’d suggest click the “Don’t Apply” button.

Want to edit or delete your new VIP rule? Just retrace your steps (Click Mail, Preferences, Rules), select the rule you just created, then click Edit, Duplicate, or Remove. You can also deactivate a rule without deleting it by unchecking its box in the “Active” column.

Bonus tip

Among many other possibilities, you can also set Mail to notify you of replies to an specific email thread, similar to this recent iOS tip.

Just create a new rule, select “Subject” and “contains” as the first condition of the rule, then enter a subject line. Mail will automatically fill in the subject of the message that’s currently selected.

Then, for the action, you can set up an alert like the one we just created for VIPs, or you can create your own custom action—anything you like.

Click here for more Mac tips!

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The trick: when you’re composing either a new email or a reply to an existing message, just tap the subject line.

When you tap the subject line, a little alert button will appear; tap it to set up a notification whenever someone replies to this particular thread.

When you do, a little alert bell will appear to the right of the subject. Go ahead and tap it, then tap the “Notify Me” confirmation button.

Want an alert for an email thread that you haven’t replied to yet? Just swipe it from right to left, tap the More button, then tap the “Notify Me” button.

Now, whenever someone replies to that particular thread, you’ll get an iOS notification on your iPhone or iPad. To manage the type of notification you get (a banner or an alert, with or without sound), tap Settings, Notifications, Mail, then Thread Notifications.

Want to turn the thread alert off? Go to your inbox, swipe the message thread from right to left, tap the More button, then tap “Stop Notifying.”

Click here for more iOS tips!

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Hi Charles! Well, the answer to that question depends on the type of email account you’re using—and yes, things may get a bit technical here, so bear with me.

While email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook have their own features, user interfaces, and other bells and whistles, they all use (for the most part) the same types of email “protocols” when it comes to delivering messages to external mail clients—you know, like the Mail program on your Mac, or your iPad’s Mail app.

Two of the most common protocols are POP (short for “Post Office Protocol”) and IMAP (“Internet Message Access Protocol”), and there’s an important difference between the two.

IMAP lets you sync messages and mail folders between your email provider and your desktop and mobile clients, while POP merely lets your email client “fetch” new messages from a mail server—no syncing allowed.

For example: with an IMAP email provider, if you read a message on your Mac and then move it into your “archive” folder, the message will also be neatly filed away on your iPad. With a POP provider, though, the messages you read and archive on your Mac will still show up as “new” messages in your iPad’s email inbox.

Now, as long as your email provider supports IMAP—and most big email services do, including Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook—the messages in your desktop client should sync up with your iPad.

As long as your email provider supports IMAP, you should be able to sync your email between multiple devices.

All you have to do is look up the right IMAP settings for your mobile and/or desktop email client. Just search your provider’s “help” pages, or go here for Gmail, here for Outlook.com, or here for Yahoo Mail.

OK, but what if your email service only supports POP email? (And yes, that’s still the case for some providers, particularly the smaller ones.)

If so, bad news: you won’t be able to sync email between your Mac and iPad (or between, say, your PC and an Android phone).

So if email syncing is important to you (and it sounds like it is), it might be time to consider jumping ship for a new email service.

Hope that helps, Charles. Still have questions? Let me know!

Bonus tip

Most modern email clients should configure your mail accounts automatically, no advanced settings required.

For example, both the Mac Mail client and your iPhone or iPad should be able to connect to a Gmail account—IMAP settings and all—once you enter your Google username and password.

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What does the folder icon with the down-arrow do, for example—and how is it different from the other folder icon with an arrow?

(Hint: The first folder button sends a selected message to your Gmail archive, while the second lets you move a message to a specific folder.)

What’s up with the stop-sign button? (Report spam.)

Last but not least, why isn’t there an option to turn those icons into good, old-fashioned text labels, like on the old Gmail?

Well, here’s the thing: you can turn those icons into text. All you have to do is find and tweak a key setting.

Here’s what you do:

• Click the big gear icon (yes, another icon) in the top-right corner of the screen, then select Settings.


Just select "Text" to replace the icons on Gmail buttons with text labels.

• Click the General tab at the top of the page (it should already be selected), scroll down to the “Button labels” section, then switch the setting from “Icons” to “Text.”
• Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, then click the “Save Changes” button. You’re done!

Now, when you return to your inbox or click on a message, those confounding icons will be replaced by clear, concise labels, similar to the old Gmail.

Change your mind? Just change the “Button labels” setting back to “Icons.”

Looking for more Gmail tips? Click here!

Thanks to Diana for the tip!

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While the “Revert to the old look temporarily” option hasn’t returned to the Gmail settings menu, a Google representative has posted a Web address that will—sort of—turn the clock back on your Gmail inbox.

Here’s the URL:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Before you get too excited, though, keep in mind that this link takes you to the bare-bones, HTML-only version of Gmail, not the true “classic” version. Among the missing features: drag-and-drop messages, chat, and customizable inbox themes.

Still, at least you’ll be able to use a version of Gmail that’s strikingly similar to the “old” look.

Meanwhile, in a post on a Google Groups support thread, Gmail Community Manager Sarah Price wrote that Google remains “committed” to its new, modern-looking Gmail makeover.

“It has been almost a year since we began the transition: the preview theme was released last June, and the full interface has been available since November,” Price wrote. “We’re committed to the current interface for Gmail and will be retiring the old look.”

Thanks to one of our readers for the tip!

Note: In the original version of this article, I wrote that the URL posted by Google would take you back to the original, “classic” version of Gmail; as a few readers have pointed out, though, the URL only takes you to the HTML version of Gmail. Thanks so much to my readers for pointing out the error, and apologies for any confusion.

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