Nifty Time-Saving iPhone Tip

Updated April 13th, 2020.

Ever get an email on your iPhone, and for whatever reason you would rather call the person than email him back? You can do it in a couple of taps. For example, let’s say you get this email on your iPhone.

If the email contains a phone number, like this one does, just touch it. A little window will pop up:

Touch “Call” and you’re done. That’s pretty easy: the phone number is in the email, you touch it and tap Call. A touch and a tap.

(So… if you want to make it easy for people to call you, add your phone number to your email signature. On an iPhone, you do it in Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars/Signature. On a Mac using Mail, it’s the Mail menu, then Preferences…, then Signatures. Gmail people: click Settings at the top and look around.)

But… what if the phone number isn’t in the email? Do you have to look it up? Of course the answer is “no, not if you finish reading this blog entry.” All you have to do is touch the sender’s name, up at the top of the message. It’s outlined in red here so you know what I’m talking about.

If the sender is in your address book you’ll be taken to his contact information, and from there you can touch whichever phone number you want to call him at.

Touch any phone number and it dials. Nice. So that’s just a touch and a tap too.

You can scroll down a bit and see the rest of the sender’s information, like so:

Touch an address and you’ll see it on a map. Touch the web page address and it opens in Safari.

Scroll to the bottom and you find some handy buttons:

All in all, pretty handy stuff, especially if you’re using your phone while driving, even though you would never do that. (A great place to never do that is San Jose, CA but if you do you might get to meet my brother, State Traffic Officer Spencer Boyce of the California Highway Patrol.)

Note: if you don’t have the sender in your address book, touching the sender’s name will take you to a screen where you can put him into it. It sounds like a lot of work but a good address book on the iPhone will pay off over and over for you. So don’t cut corners on the address book. Make it as complete as you can.

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