Group Mail on iPad?

Have group(s) addresses set up on my Mac. Highlight Select All and send email message to all in that Group.
Would like to do that on the iPad. Any ideas on how to? Is there an App. out there? Am I missing something in Mail on iPad?
Clueless in Fla.

Get the app groups, you have to set it up but it's not bad.

It's 'sort of' possible to do it using iPad mail. Any Groups in your iPad Contacts list (sync'd using iTunes or MobileMe etc) will appear when you go to the iPad Contacts app. You can't creat new groups in the iPad app, though.

In iPad mail, when you create a new email, you'll see a '+' symbol at the right hand side of the 'To:', 'cc' etc address box. If you click that symbol, it pops up your Contacts list - and Groups can be selected (if you're not already seeing them) by selecting the small 'Groups' button at the top left-hand corner of the pop-up window. OK - that was the good news!!

Trouble is, you can only select addresses from a Group entry one at a time. So, suppose you had a Group called 'Family', in which were 'Mum', 'Dad', 'Sister' etc. In the Groups window that appeared after you pressed the '+' in iPad mail, you'll see those entries, but you can't select them all (at least, I've been unable to do this!). So you can touch 'Mum', and Mum's email address gets entered into the 'To' field of your new email. Then you have to touch the '+' symbol again and then touch 'Dad' and Dad's email address gets entered - and so on. It's not too bad for small groups, like Family perhaps, but if it was a class list this clearly wouldn't work.

It does have some advantages - perhaps you want to send to most - but not all - members of a Group. The iPad 'way' let's you select Group members one at a time and miss out those that you don't want to receive your email. But, generally speaking, you *don't* want to do that and I can't (yet) find a way of selecting all Group members.

As the other respondant pointed out, there are numerous third-party apps out there that address this problem in one way or another, but it would be nice to be able to do this from *within* iPad mail.

Tim
Scotland

" it would be nice to be able to do this from *within* iPad mail."

A new app called MailShot (available on the App Store) is the first to do this within ipad mail, as Tim requested.

Its free at the moment to try, but with an upgrade will let you email anything up to 50 groups of 50 people at once.

I've just downloaded and installed the MailShot app. It's absolutely great - Apple should supply this with the iPad. It does exactly what it says 'on the box'. Allows you to edit your Contacts list and set up groups - but groups that appear as a single entry in the list of contacts. This means that, from within, say, the native iPad mail app you can select this single-entry group and all group members are then included in the To, cc or bcc address fields of the email.

Once the email is sent, if you look at your sent mail, you'll see the expanded address list in the to, cc, or bcc field.

If you use the iPads native Contacts app, the groups that MailShot has put in appear as single entries (i.e. not in the Contacts group category for obvious reasons), but (a) there's a nice icon there to show you it's a MailShot Group (great idea, guys) and (b) you can see all the email addresses in the contact.

The great thing about this app is that (a) it uses the existing iPad Contacts database - i.e. does not need to create its own separate list of contacts and (b) you can access the groups it creates from any iPad app that utilises the iPad's Contacts list - i.e. does not need a third party email app, for example.

A brilliant piece of work.

You can download a free version to 'Try before you buy' that is limited to 5 groups of 5 members each group before purchasing an in-app upgrade (very reasonably priced) to the full version.

(Just to say, I have no contact whatsoever with the company that is marketing this app)

Tim
Scotland

Thanks Tim,

Nice review. I took the liberty of reposting to this forums reviews section.

Peter

THIS IS JUST SILLY RUBBISH.

All these suggestions are good, but sending group email should be EASY, and although I LOVE my Apple devices and the way they work together, sending group emails from an Android phone has been a simple, integrated, one-button operation (requiring NO special entries or third party software) for YEARS. YEARS.

Shame on Apple, who are generally fantastic about making things simple, for this awful inconvenience.