I want the app to do the following.
1.)I'm in email
2.)I click to field
3.)I access group from there
Going into contact or contact app is doing email backwards. It doesn't work in things like doodle etc.
You can 'sort of' do this, but probably not what you really want.
If you're in iPad mail and you, say, start a new email, you'll see - in the 'To' field a '+' sign at the far right hand side of the box. If you tap that sign it brings up your contacts list. If you have Groups in your contact list then, depending on what you did last time you were in Contacts, you'll either be in the Groups section of Contacts or, if you're not, you'll see a box at the top left hand side with 'Groups' on it. Click that and you're in the Groups section of your Contact list.
If you *were* already in the Groups section, you'll see all your Groups listed as well as an 'All Contacts' option, that takes you back out of Groups.
So, at this point, you're feeling really excited because you think 'Great', the Groups problem has been solved. Here I am with all my Groups listed, what more could I want? OK - so say you have a Group called Family. You select family and, yes, it's still looking good because it takes you through to your Family group and there are all the members of your family listed and......and....
Now comes the bad part, because you have to select the members of your Family group *one at a time* (at least I've not found a way to select them all at once). So you select, say 'Mum' and it enters Mum's email address into the 'To' field. Then you have to press that '+' sign again and up pops your Contacts list and, well, at least you're still in Groups and in the Family Group too and then you select 'Dad', and Dad's email address gets entered into the 'To' field, and then you press that '+' sign again and....well, you get the picture.
Not sure why you can't simply select all the members of the group at once. It's not *too* bad if the group is relatively small - say Family - but if it's a big mailing list for a Club or similar this would never work.
Plus, again as far as I'm aware, there's no way to *create* Groups in the iPad Contacts book. It imports Groups OK from your PC via iTunes or MobileMe and it displays them, but I know of no way to create a new Group.
So, we seem to be tantalisingly close but just not quite there. As other Forum members have pointed out, there are a number of third-party apps out there that fix this problem but, as other members have responded, they don't really offer the solution that many people are really looking for - i.e. the ability to select a Group from within the iPad's built-in Mail app without having to leave the Mail app and go to a third party app. OK - I'm probably being picky and, I guess, if I really *did* have a big group that I needed to email (rather than just my family) I'd give up my objections to using a third party app pretty quickly.
So, what we need (I think) is (a) the ability to create, edit and save Groups from within the iPad Contacts app (it's a pain to have to return to the PC and create a Group there and then sync it with your iPad) and (b) the ability to select all members of a group at once when you're in Mail and in Contacts.
Sorry to have rambled on so much....
Tim
Scotland