How do I access mail and customize how it displays in my Inbox on an Android device?

After powering on your device, you can access and search your email messages, and customize how they display.

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You can access your mail messages by choosing the Mail icon Mail in the application launcher.

The default view for Android phones shows your Inbox sorted by date, with the newest messages displaying first. You cannot change the sort order. To view the contents of different folders, select the Home icon to open the navigation drawer. Alternatively, you can swipe in from the left to open the navigation drawer.

Depending on the available space on the screen, you may be presented with a one- or two-column view. In the two-column view, the list of messages displays on the left and the currently selected message displays on the right.

You can search your mail by selecting the search icon Search. You can search the To, From,, Cc, Bcc, and Subject fields.

You can filter your mail by selecting the filter icon filter to show the filter bar:

filter bar

Tapping on a filter enables that filter. You can tap on more than one icon to combine filters. To hide the filter bar and disable filters, tap the filter icon.

Filter icon Action
filter unread messages Show unread messages
filter attachments Show messages with attachments
filter important Show messages from important to me senders
filter urgent Show messages marked urgent
You can further customize how IBM Verse displays by using the Settings menu (Menu > Settings). Some of the more useful options are described in the following tables.
Note: Some Android devices utilize an external hardware menu button, while others an action bar overflow menu on the screen to access menu items. Devices without a hardware menu button can use the over flow menu on the screen instead. Both options access the same menu.
Table 1. Android Verse Settings
Setting Description
Organize mail by thread Group mail messages from the same conversation together as threads, so they can worked with together.
Show remote images Automatically load images located on remote servers and show them in the message. Note that there are security implications to enabling this setting.
Other mail preferences Show additional mail settings for IBM Verse.
The Other mail preferences sub-menu contains the following additional options for viewing your mail:
Table 2. Other mail preferences
Setting Description
Message preview Display the beginning lines of the message body in each mail list item.