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Does iPhone 'sync' you mail with your mac, or are they independant?

chaos86

chaos86

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 11, 2003
1,006
7
127.0.0.1
So I'm looking at getting an iPhone, and I'll use mail a lot, but I've got about 4 years worth of mail on my computer and I don't want to start from scratch, nor do I want to use just one device or the other.

Do iPhones and Macs sync and duplicate your mail the same way they do you music, or do you have to stick to one or the other when it comes to email?
 
I think it depends on what mail account you are planning on using. I have two email accounts on my iPhone - my .mac account, and my work email (which is an exchange account). Your .mac account will automatically sync with your computer as far as your inbox is concerned. If you delete something from your .mac via your iPhone, it will reflect that on your desktop and vice versa. However, it does not work like that with my work email. If I delete something from my iPhone, it will not update that information when I log into my Outlook inbox at the office, rather it just shows the email has been read - not deleted. However, if I change my inbox at the office, it will reflect that on my iPhone. Make sense? Hopefully I explained that clearly enough... Bottom line - get the iPhone. You won't regret it - EVER.
 
What I meant is that iTunes won't sync any mail it self. But, if you use IMAP email, it will sync via the IMAP server.
 
Jayrod said:
I think it depends on what mail account you are planning on using. I have two email accounts on my iPhone - my .mac account, and my work email (which is an exchange account). Your .mac account will automatically sync with your computer as far as your inbox is concerned. If you delete something from your .mac via your iPhone, it will reflect that on your desktop and vice versa. However, it does not work like that with my work email. If I delete something from my iPhone, it will not update that information when I log into my Outlook inbox at the office, rather it just shows the email has been read - not deleted. However, if I change my inbox at the office, it will reflect that on my iPhone. Make sense? Hopefully I explained that clearly enough... Bottom line - get the iPhone. You won't regret it - EVER.
Click to expand...

Jayrod-
Does your work email have imap functionality enabled? If so, am I confirming this correctly- you delete an email on your iphone, it does not delete on your email at work with exchange?
 
I really wish it could sync with the mac. It would get real annoying to have two different "inboxes/sent mail" with the same email account. I don't think it would be that hard either, just make iTunes sync with mail whenever the phone docks.
 
iansilv said:
Jayrod-
Does your work email have imap functionality enabled? If so, am I confirming this correctly- you delete an email on your iphone, it does not delete on your email at work with exchange?
Click to expand...


This is true. I finally setup my iPhone to work with Exchange via IMAP today. I didn't notice until I read this post, but if I delete an email on the phone, it will NOT delete in Outlook. It DOES however, place a copy of the email in your Outlook Deleted items folder.

I've managed to get SSL working outbound to my SMTP server, but can't seem to get SSL inbound via IMAP. I'll have to figure that out later, for now, I'm just glad it works.

What I HAVE noticed though, is the phone doesn't update immediately. I havent pinned down a timeframe yet, but so far I've sent a few "test" emails and they weren't on the phone 5 minutes later. They DID update however, when I opened mail on the phone, so no telling how long it would have taken for the phone to notify me... Anyone else have any experience with IMAP updates?
 
They are independent but the iphone does sync the settings for mail from the MAC.
 
works great....it download the email..but it does not delete the original emails from your server..
 
I will only address syncing with a .mac account which costs about a hundred dollars a year which I subscribed to to keep my G-5 desktop and my MacBookPro laptop synced. .mac syncs the computers mail, bookmarks, contacts, and address book entries. On the computers there is also a backup function. With the iPhone I sync via iTunes to my desktop, which then sync wirelessly via .mac to the laptop. I can sync some photos as well as all the .mac items but there is no backup per se. (.mac also syncs mail accounts which then sync thru iTunes to the iPhone). You read it on one of the three, they all show read. Delete from one, it deletes on the others. If you have more than one mac computer definitely get .mac. If you only have one mac and the iPhone, you can use ITunes. EXCEPT, the .mac account gives you several mail accounts that are not easily spammed. I only use my old account for SMTP on the phone and my .mac account is the only one on the iPhone. I view the old account once a day on it's web based page. I have finally weaned my real mail on the old account down to about one valid messages to about 125 junk mail messages. I delete the junk at the rate of 25 per time without downloading them to my iPhone. This ability alone is worth the eight bucks or so a month that .mac cost. One of these days, I will get tired of it all and Delete all mail on the old account at a time with only two strokes. I have to keep the old account as it is the DSL account. Added: when you delete the .mac mail, it is deleted from the server. With .mac, the mail sync works without the iPhone being in the dock or connected to iTunes. If my two computers and the iPhone are on it happens with the next get mail action or when the individual machines are restarted.
 
alljunks said:
works great....it download the email..but it does not delete the original emails from your server..
Click to expand...

Yeah, in your mail configuration, on most e-mail apps, there is usually a toggle to keep a copy of the message on the server. I don't have an iPhone yet, but it would seem that on your iPhone you could toggle keep a copy on the server, then on your desktop / office machine, set it to remove the message from the server.

In addition, you could set up your pop mail on the server side to forward a copy of any new messages to a secondary e-mail address set up on the iPhone.
 
I have a Shaw mail account (Shaw is an internet, cable and home phone provider here in Vancouver Canada) and they allow email access through a POP service... so I have set up my iPhone mail to access my Shaw mail as a POP account. It works great, but to answer the original syncing question, with this type of account and set-up... no my mac and iPhone do not sync actual messages... only account settings. Which is kinda stupid if you ask me, once my account was set-up I turned off mail syncing in iTunes because it does nothing but sync settings which once you've set them up, don't ever change.

So, if I receive and email on my iPhone, read it, reply to it and delete it, then sync to my mac, that email still shows up as unread in my inbox on my mac and no deleted or sent messages from my phone end up in my sent or deleted folders on my mac. Hope that helps. But again, after saying that... I think it is still awesome to have the ability to receive, read, and reply to my personal emails on the go and am willing to forgive the non-syncing for the great access and the other amazing features of the iPhone. Hopefully in a future update they'll add syncing for POP accounts.
 
juice831 said:
I use gmail and I always get a copy of every email on the mail app of my macbook and iPhone
Click to expand...


Yes so do I... new emails right? But if you send an email from your iPhone, it puts that sent email into your sent folder on your iPhone, but, good luck getting that sent email from your iPhone into your sent folder on your macbook... and that's the issue.
 
wish said:
Yes so do I... new emails right? But if you send an email from your iPhone, it puts that sent email into your sent folder on your iPhone, but, good luck getting that sent email from your iPhone into your sent folder on your macbook... and that's the issue.
Click to expand...

You can map the iPhone sent folder to the [GMAIL]/Sent Items folder and it works perfectly. Didnt they make this the default in 1.1.3?
 
What if I am working away from an internet connection for my MacBook, will the iPhone sync the emails received to the MacBook by iTunes or will I have to wait until I have get home for my MacBook to update?
 
wish said:
I have a Shaw mail account (Shaw is an internet, cable and home phone provider here in Vancouver Canada) and they allow email access through a POP service... so I have set up my iPhone mail to access my Shaw mail as a POP account. It works great, but to answer the original syncing question, with this type of account and set-up... no my mac and iPhone do not sync actual messages... only account settings. Which is kinda stupid if you ask me, once my account was set-up I turned off mail syncing in iTunes because it does nothing but sync settings which once you've set them up, don't ever change.

So, if I receive and email on my iPhone, read it, reply to it and delete it, then sync to my mac, that email still shows up as unread in my inbox on my mac and no deleted or sent messages from my phone end up in my sent or deleted folders on my mac. Hope that helps. But again, after saying that... I think it is still awesome to have the ability to receive, read, and reply to my personal emails on the go and am willing to forgive the non-syncing for the great access and the other amazing features of the iPhone. Hopefully in a future update they'll add syncing for POP accounts.
Click to expand...

Could you please post full instructions on how to set up the iphone for shaw mail users so that I am able to receive and send messages from my shaw account on my iphone? I'm totally new to all this. Thank you!
 
If your email account is an IMAP email (which is the standard these days) everything stays in sync via the server. If I'm out and about and get an email on my phone, and read it, than when I get home the email is in my inbox already marked as read. Same if I reply to it, forward it, etc, everything is synced.

<3 IMAP. I don't even bother setting up my Comcast POP account on my phone, its a pain keeping track of two separate inboxes.
 
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