[markw10]

I bought a iPhone last Friday and am very happy with it. The only problem I've run into is with syncing it with my Mac. I use Apple's Mail program under OS X.

I've downloaded the .pdf manual off of Apple's website for the iPhone and it seems that when syncing it syncs all the email accounts for setup and I assume changes but never actually syncs email between the two devices.

What happens is often I'm on the road during the day. I try to close Mail before I leave but if I leave it open on my laptop at home I know sometimes I get errors when trying to connect to check email. I assume this is because my laptop is trying to do this at the same time. That isn't a big deal.

The problem is I'm wondering what others on here do to keep track of email between their computer and their iPhone. I know with standard pop email like I use I can choose to keep it on the server or erase it. I'm scared to use the erase option on either since if I'm on the go and leave it open at home I won't get emails and same vice versa since I would then get it on the iPhone and not at home and I deal with most email at home.

Is it possible to turn email off? I have it set to manual checking but even without going into email is still seems to get emails.

Is it possible also in addition to having a default email to create a certain order by email address (I have 9 because of business) that it checks each address in a certain order?

Last, I get many emails daily so that's one reason I'm concerned with this. It's a lot of email to erase off my iphone daily since I can easily get 100 emails or more. It just seems there would be an easier way with dealing with email to sync the actual email itself between two machines.

[besson3c]

Your solution: access your mail via IMAP rather than POP.

[MacTheKnife]

Originally Posted by markw10 

The problem is I'm wondering what others on here do to keep track of email between their computer and their iPhone. I know with standard pop email like I use I can choose to keep it on the server or erase it. I'm scared to use the erase option on either since if I'm on the go and leave it open at home I won't get emails and same vice versa since I would then get it on the iPhone and not at home and I deal with most email at home.

Is it possible to turn email off? I have it set to manual checking but even without going into email is still seems to get emails.

I'm looking for a similar answer. I would love to hear from others what the ideal e-mail strategy is. I have two POP3 e-mail accounts. Both are set to delete e-mail from server. Unfortunately, I seem to be getting a lot of e-mail on the iPhone that says 'This message has not been downloaded from the server."

I thought it was because I had deleted the original messages from the server when I permanently deleted it in Outlook, but that appears not to be the case.

I would love to hear more about the IMAP strategy outlined above. Is that using Exchange? How about simply forwarding all e-mails to my Yahoo! account and then getting them "pushed" automatically?

Feedback would be enjoyed!

[dawho9]

Using IMAP only requires two things:

1. Whomever is hosting your e-mail allows IMAP
2. Have a decent amount of space on the server

Since IMAP simply stores all mail on the server (client computers will typically cache copies of messages locally) but the real copy is always on the server. So in the past I had always done POP3 but left messages on the server until I deleted them. The problem with that solution now was that I had to delete mail twice if both devices had received it. So this weekend, I changed all of my POP3 accounts in Mail.app to IMAP and re-synced my phone. Now everything is perfect.

dw9

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacTheKnife 

I'm looking for a similar answer. I would love to hear from others what the ideal e-mail strategy is. I have two POP3 e-mail accounts. Both are set to delete e-mail from server. Unfortunately, I seem to be getting a lot of e-mail on the iPhone that says 'This message has not been downloaded from the server."

I thought it was because I had deleted the original messages from the server when I permanently deleted it in Outlook, but that appears not to be the case.

I would love to hear more about the IMAP strategy outlined above. Is that using Exchange? How about simply forwarding all e-mails to my Yahoo! account and then getting them "pushed" automatically?

Feedback would be enjoyed!

1) Set your email account to connect using IMAP (Exchange has nothing to do with this)

2) Set your sent mail/drafts/trash/junk to be folders on the server, if not the default

[MacTheKnife]

Thanks for the IMAP tips!

But to make things really simple for people who have my situation but don't want to bother with hassling with servers and IMAP, here's what I recommend doing:

Forward all your e-mail to a Yahoo! mail account. It will put e-mail in three places, but at least you get:

1. push on both e-mail accounts without having to hassle with checking two separate e-mail accounts on the iPhone, a hassle the way Apple designed it (separate inbox and trash for each account; plus the fact it autochecks anyway after you click on the Mail icon).

2. no more "phantom" e-mails (I hope), which is caused by the way Apple apparently handles e-mail to the iPhone (the actual message is not downloaded until you click on it, which causes it to become "empty" when your client deletes it from the server after you check it there).

3. did I mention "push?"

[ph0ust]

messing with "servers and IMAP"???? dude, if you ever created an email account on your mac, then you have seen these simple settings. setting up a forward is just as complicated as changing an email account to an IMAP account. Besides the fact you still have to manage email in multiple places.

the benefit of IMAP is that you can have a million computers/devices that you use in different places or whatever... but they are always the in sync because they connect to the email server and read what is there. so if you changed something (e.g. deleted an email) on one device, the next device that connects sees this and reflects the change. it is really the way to do it if you have multiple devices.

regarding the exchange questions. exchange uses a protocol similar to IMAP called MAPI. yes, it sounds almost the same. normally though, and this is true in macs, it goes by "exchange mail" or something instead of the acronym.

[MacTheKnife]

Originally Posted by ph0ust 

messing with "servers and IMAP"???? dude, if you ever created an email account on your mac, then you have seen these simple settings. setting up a forward is just as complicated as changing an email account to an IMAP account. Besides the fact you still have to manage email in multiple places.

Yes, well unfortunately I've been a POP3 user since the dawning of Internetkind, so not familiar with the IMAP thing. In fact, there's precious little documentation at my ISP about how to set up my accounts for IMAP, so I gather it's all done in the e-mail client as you describe above.

Anyway, I'm working on it and will report back soon.

[ph0ust]

check this little macnn article out. apparently, there is a guide or something: MacNN | Briefly: Photo book review; POP to IMAP

ultimately, setting up an imap account is exactly the same as a pop account, just a different check box (essentially). good luck.