Disappearing folders…

By | October 28, 2024

Have you ever been looking at your emails on a tablet or computer, and realised that you can’t see the folders on the left any more?  It’s a pretty common thing on smartphones, since the screen is too small to fit an extra column in, but on most tablets and computers, you should still be able to see them on the left.

The first thing I’d suggest if you can’t see your email folders would be to try clicking or tapping on the Back button, if you have one.  If that doesn’t fix it, or if you don’t have a Back button, then there’s something else you need to look for.

In the top left corner of the screen, look for an icon of three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other.  Click or tap on that, and your folders will appear in a column down the left hand side.

The only exception to this is using Apple’s built-in Mail app on an iPad – you’re still looking in the top left corner, but the icon looks a little different.  It’s a square with a few lines and dots in it, which is meant to look like a screen with a side panel (funnily enough).

Now in some apps, this column isn’t supposed to be there all the time.  For example in the Gmail app on my tablet, you tap on the three lines icon to bring it up, so that you can choose a different folder of emails, but it disappears as soon as you tap on that folder.

On other apps such as Outlook, or on the webmail versions of Gmail and Outlook, it’s up to you whether you want to keep it on screen the whole time, or if you’d rather have more space to read your emails.  For Macs, the folders are always there on the left, so you don’t really get a choice on that one I’m afraid!

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