Synchronize your emails on iPhone using IMAP
IMAP (also known as Push email) is one of the two mail standards supported by the iPhone. Let me first tell you what is IMAP , before we learn how to set up your mail accounts on iPhone. If you setup your account using IMAP, you will receive email as soon as your email server receives it, just like a SMS. To use this you will need IMAP access to your mail server and also your mail server must support it. Of course, You can download the emails to your iPhone using POP too, but then your mailbox and phone will not be in sync. For eg : if you delete a mail on your phone, it will still remain on server. IMAP is more advanced which syncs both mail boxes. Whatever you do at one place, gets reflected everywhere. So, if you change something in Outlook (client) or via Outlook Web Access (browser), within moments your iPhone will show the exact same changes (and vice versa).
I will show you how to set up accounts on your iPhone for two famous email services, Gmail and Microsoft Exchange.
IMAP Gmail on iPhone
To set up your Gmail account on iPhone, just go through the following steps:
- Enable IMAP support in settings for Gmail.
- Sign in to Gmail
- Click settings at the top of the page.
- Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
- Select enable IMAP
- Save Changes
and you are done.
- On your iPhone home screen, tap Settings
- Tap Mail, Contacts , Calenders
- Tap Add Account
- Tap Other
- Enter the following settings:
- Make sure IMAP tab is highlighted.
- Incoming mail server
Host Name
is imap.gmail.com
User Name is your full Gmail address, including @gmail.com.
- Outgoing mail server:
Host Name
is smtp.gmail.com
User Name is your full Gmail address, including @gmail.com.
- Tap Save
.
.
Note: If you are using software update 1.1.3 or later, tapping the Gmail icon will automatically configure IMAP. However archiving and deleting will work differently.Tapping Thrash button on any message will move the message to the Gmail thrash folder, where it will be permanently removed in 30 days.
Warning: If a message has any other labels, the message will also be deleted from its corresponding IMAP folders on your iPhone.If you’re running version 1.1.2 or earlier, tapping the Gmail icon will configure POP.
and You are done. That was pretty straight forward, or was it not!! You can check your Advanced settings by tapping Settings > [your IMAP Gmail Account] > Advanced. You can also change your IMAP folder preferences here. Go back to Mail to check out your new Gmail Account. You can add any number of Gmail Accounts following the same procedure.
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync on iPhone
As mentioned above, ActiveSync also pushes data from Microsoft Exchange server to your iPhone. So, you don’t have to poll the server every 5 minutes (say) to check for new messages. As soon as something changes on the server, it will automatically send out an update on your lovely iPhone. Moreover, ActiveSync can also synchronize your contacts as well as calender events.
How can you set up your iPhone for Exchange? Read on to find out!!
Here’s the quick how-to for getting Exchange up and running on your iPhone. Note that this works on any iPhone with the version 2.0 software - the iPhone 3G comes with this out of the box, but original phones will need to be upgraded.
Note: You can have only one Exchange account on your iPhone. So disable any current Exchange IMAP account before you continue.
- Upgrade your phone to iPhone OS 2.0 if necessary.
- Follow Steps 2, 3 and 4 above to reach the Add Account Menu.
- Tap Microsoft Exchange
- You will get the Exchange form as shown below.
- Enter your email address (e.g. nkg@mail2web.com) in the Email box.
- Enter your Exchange username in the Username box.
- Enter your password in the Password box.
- Ask your Exchange server administrator if you are unsure of the domain. If you are unable to view your folder list, or unable to send or receive email, leave the domain field blank.
- Tap Next.
- The iPhone will now try to automatically discover your Exchange server using Microsoft’s Autodiscovery service. If it fails, it will warn you that it couldn’t validate your account and the following screen is shown. Then, you will have to manually enter your server name in the window. Contact your administrator if you are not sure of the server name.
- Tap Next.
- Here you can select what all you want to sync.
- Tap Save.
After successfully making a connection to the Exchange server, you may be prompted to change your device passcode to match whatever policies may have been set on your server.
Remember you can not sync Contacts and Calendars from both Exchange and iTunes! You must choose one or the other! And the iPhone will overwrite your old entries when you enable this! But the good news is that you can still sync your iPhone wirelessly with MobileMe services.
Note: By default email for last 3 days is synchronized. To synchronize more, go into Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select your Exchange account, and tap on Mail days to sync.
Now go back to your Mail. You should see your new exchange account appear, and it will show up your email messages in a few moments. Bingo!! You are done.
