I often leave an email marked unread so that I remember to deal with it at a later time. This is sometimes a risky practice because there are a number of ways to access an email by accident such that it becomes marked read, but I admit that I frequently take the risk and do it anyway. After doing so, I sometimes want to see a list of just the emails that are marked unread. Fortunately, there are two easy ways to do that on the iPhone and iPad in the Mail app in iOS 7. Here are the instructions for using both methods.
The built-in Unread mailbox
One approach is to use the iPhone's built-in Unread mail folder, a new feature in iOS 7. To access it, tap the word Mailboxes at the top left of any screen showing a list of emails.
This will bring you to a list of your mailboxes, starting with the iPhone's built-in mailboxes, and then followed by any mailboxes that you have created using Outlook or whatever other program you use on your computer for email. Just tap on Unread to see a list of only unread messages.
If you don't see that Unread mailbox, you can easily add it. Just tap Edit at the top right of the screen and then tap to the left to enable the Unread mailbox. While you are there, you can also choose to display or hide other built-in mailboxes, such as a mailbox with all Flagged messages, a mailbox with all messages that have Attachments, etc.
Note that you may see different options then the ones shown in the above picture depending upon what you use for your email (my law firm uses Microsoft Exchange) and how many email accounts are active on your iPhone (I only have one).
This built-in Unread mailbox is useful, but be aware that it only displays unread emails in your Inbox. If you have created your own mailboxes (folders) to file away emails and some of those contain emails that are marked unread, you won't see them here — so you'll want to use the second method explained below.
The above images show an iPhone screen, but this works almost exactly the same way using the Mail app on an iPad.
Search for unread mail
The second approach is to search for unread mail. When you are looking at a list of emails either in your Inbox or in any other mailbox (folder) of messages, if you touch your screen and slide down, you will see a Search box appear at the top of the screen. Of course, you can use that search bar to search for emails that are from or to a specific person or that contain a certain word, but you can also use the search bar to find unread messages. Simply type "unread" in the box and you will see a list of unread emails.
You can toggle between seeing all unread emails on your iPhone or just unread emails in the current mailbox. To do so, after you search for unread, just put your finger on your screen and slide down again. This will display two more options below the search bar where you can choose to search all mailboxes or just the current mailbox.
The above images show an iPhone screen. You can do the same thing on an iPad, but it is a little eaiser because the search bar is always visible at the top of the list of messages, so you don't have to pull down on the screen to view it. You do, however, need to pull down after you run a search to see the All Mailboxes / Current Mailbox selections, just like on an iPhone.
