Setting up Gmail on iPhone

[rainmanbk]

I had a genuis idea when I discovered Google's recent: features, which lets you use your mobile devices without worry that they're downloading your desktop POP3 mail. In order to use it, you put recent: in front of your email address. So if your email was joe@gmail.com, it would be recent:joe@gmail.com. However, the problem I've come across, is on iPhone, when you're typing in the field to set your email address, you cannot type the : character. It is not on the extended keyboard. So I'm not sure how to work around that. I want to receive mail on my iPhone, but I want to get that same mail on my computer, to ensure that I have it backed up properly.

My only other solution thought was to use recent: on all my computers, and then put the actual address on the phone, so the phone was the main client downloading the mail, and the others were the ones using recent. But I'd rather it be the other way..

Solutions? Ideas?

 

[billchase2]

i'm having problems with gmail too. when setting it up, it downloads ALL my messages and says they are all new... and they aren't. i even selected (in gmail) to only send messages from now on... and it still did the same thing.

 

[terrrrrible]

try this, i believe it fixed my problem:

make sure you have "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on" selected on your account in gmail, delete the account(s) from your phone, re-add them, make sure "Use Recent Mode" is disabled on the account(s) BEFORE you access the mail. Go ahead and go into the mail. It will pull 25 e-mails (if you have that as your setting) into the inbox, but after you delete them, it shouldn't keep pulling more in.

 

[tho]

it also sends back a copy of your sent e-mail folder as well. the fix i'm gonna do for now is block e-mails from my own address.

 

[terrrrrible]

it also sends back a copy of your sent e-mail folder as well. the fix i'm gonna do for now is block e-mails from my own address.

did you accidentally enable "Always Cc Myself"?

 

[mostman]

did you accidentally enable "Always Cc Myself"?

Nah - I have the same problem. And I ended up on the same solution - delete mails being sent by me. Its because of the way that google does its folder hierarchy - everything is in one folder.

The iPhone will need a fix for this - to be able to filter them out.

-Mike

 

[billchase2]

try this, i believe it fixed my problem:

make sure you have "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on" selected on your account in gmail, delete the account(s) from your phone, re-add them, make sure "Use Recent Mode" is disabled on the account(s) BEFORE you access the mail. Go ahead and go into the mail. It will pull 25 e-mails (if you have that as your setting) into the inbox, but after you delete them, it shouldn't keep pulling more in.

what is "use recent mode"? i mean, i know where it is and how to turn it on... i just don't know what it does exactly.

 

[billchase2]

it also sends back a copy of your sent e-mail folder as well. the fix i'm gonna do for now is block e-mails from my own address.

where did you set it up to block emails from yourself? in the iphone or in gmail? i'm having the same problem.

 

[digitaldave]

Nah - I have the same problem. And I ended up on the same solution - delete mails being sent by me. Its because of the way that google does its folder hierarchy - everything is in one folder.

The iPhone will need a fix for this - to be able to filter them out.

-Mike

Or you could set up a rule in your mail client to move items from yourself to the sent folder - that's what I do, and it works fine .

EDIT - I have no idea if you can set rules in the iPhone mail client, I was referring to Mail.app.

 

[billchase2]

ugh, gmail is a pain on here. i'm just not going to use that account on my phone for now. i can't get it working right.

 

[lord patton]

where did you set it up to block emails from yourself? in the iphone or in gmail? i'm having the same problem.

same problem here, looking for a fix.

Perhaps the "always cc yourself" option doesn't work correctly yet.

 

[mac-er]

Do this....

Instead of setting up your Gmail account on iPhone through the "Gmail" link when you first touch "Mail", click the "Other" category, that lets you put in all the login and server information.
Your email address will still be joe@gmail.com, but under the incoming mail server settings, your user name will be recent:joe@gmail.com. Your user name for outgoing will be joe@gmail.com

I just tested it, and I was able to get a mail off my iPhone (and delete it), and then when I went into Mail.app on my Mac, it was there.

I had a genuis idea when I discovered Google's recent: features, which lets you use your mobile devices without worry that they're downloading your desktop POP3 mail. In order to use it, you put recent: in front of your email address. So if your email was joe@gmail.com, it would be recent:joe@gmail.com. However, the problem I've come across, is on iPhone, when you're typing in the field to set your email address, you cannot type the : character. It is not on the extended keyboard. So I'm not sure how to work around that. I want to receive mail on my iPhone, but I want to get that same mail on my computer, to ensure that I have it backed up properly.

My only other solution thought was to use recent: on all my computers, and then put the actual address on the phone, so the phone was the main client downloading the mail, and the others were the ones using recent. But I'd rather it be the other way..

Solutions? Ideas?

 

[aristobrat]

ugh, gmail is a pain on here. i'm just not going to use that account on my phone for now. i can't get it working right.

POP is a bad when youre trying to use it on multiple devices to keep a mailbox in sync hopefully gmail will implement imap soon!

 

[mac-er]

same problem here, looking for a fix.

Perhaps the "always cc yourself" option doesn't work correctly yet.

Per Google:

Why do messages I send appear in my mail client's inbox?

Once you've enabled POP access, Gmail will download all messages in your account, except for spam and trash. If your mail client isn't configured to categorize your mail, all of your Gmail messages will appear in your mail client's inbox. You may want to contact your mail client's customer service department for instructions on how to categorize downloaded messages.

It's how Google stores mail on their servers. Somehow, we need to be able to create a sent folder on iPhone to categorize the mail. Haven't figured that one out yet...

EDIT: iPhone mail will create a sent folder the first time you send a message and a drafts folder the first time you save mail to send.

However, creating those folders did not fix the issue of the iPhone mail not categorizing the mail (so mail I sent was still being downloaded into the inbox). And, you still want to keep copies of mail you send on your client.

I did find a workaround:
1. Go to Gmail.com and create a filter that says that mail with from your email is to be deleted. Sent mail will go to the trash on the Gmail servers (which stays there for like 30 days).
2. iPhone Mail will not pull from the Gmail trash, so you will not get copies of the email you sent in your iPhone mailbox.
3. Copies of mail you send will still be on the iPhone "Sent" folder, and more importantly, Mail.app on your Mac will also keep a copy, so filtering through Gmail shouldn't impact your archiving of sent mail.

 

[lord patton]

thanks, mac-er. Perfect!

 

[billchase2]

great advice... but what happens with the email you said from within gmail itself from a computer? it would all go to the trash, right? i'd like to keep my sent emails in the sent folder and not have them be deleted.

 

[mac-er]

great advice... but what happens with the email you said from within gmail itself from a computer? it would all go to the trash, right? i'd like to keep my sent emails in the sent folder and not have them be deleted.

If you are using a mail client, like Mail.app, it will keep them for you.
If you are using Gmail.com, they will go to the trash, where Gmail keeps them for a period of time.

 

[Diode]

try this, i believe it fixed my problem:

make sure you have "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on" selected on your account in gmail, delete the account(s) from your phone, re-add them, make sure "Use Recent Mode" is disabled on the account(s) BEFORE you access the mail. Go ahead and go into the mail. It will pull 25 e-mails (if you have that as your setting) into the inbox, but after you delete them, it shouldn't keep pulling more in.

Thanks for this!

 

[rainmanbk]

Great.. it looks like mac-er's idea will and does work.. I have yet to try it but I am almost positive that this is the answer. Thanks all for helping solve this!

 

[sunnywala]

I wish there was an awesome gmail app, like I had for my blackberry...maybe soon
I set mails sent from me to archive(skip inbox) it seems to work

 

[Pine-Tree]

I was also having issues with gmail. I used that tip of creating a filter, and it works!! thanks! If google does come out with a fix, we'll have to go back and take it out right??

 

[technicolor]

I am very frustrated.

I have archived all the email in my inbox, and some how my phone still says I have 25 new messages.

I used both the gmail and other link in the account setup.

There is absolutely nothing in my inbox!

 

[Pine-Tree]

custom gmail accounts

I have a regular gmail account, which is working fine so far on my iphone. I also have a custom e-mail (google apps) that I have after getting a domain name from them, basically xxx@azsunnyside.com. It seems to work for sending e-mail but it doesn't receive any e-mails even though there's some there currently. I checked by sending an e-mail to my address and it went through my mail.app on my laptop, but not on iphone, am I doing something wrong?? Is there a different way to configure an e-mail that is through google apps? Any help will be much appreciated.

Abe

 

[mogema]

Recent mode is a lifesaver!!

I was PISSED when I saw the iPhone downloading all my archived mail.. mostly because I have over 20k messages archived.

Recent mode syncs all mail from the last 30 days, which brought my total to under 500 messages. This was still frightening, so I just went and deleted most of the unnecessary mail from the past 30 days in gmail BEFORE re-creating the gmail account on the iPhone. Now I'm down to 32 messages ( I should really learn to use that delete button in gmail )

 

[mogema]

I have a regular gmail account, which is working fine so far on my iphone. I also have a custom e-mail (google apps) that I have after getting a domain name from them, basically xxx@azsunnyside.com. It seems to work for sending e-mail but it doesn't receive any e-mails even though there's some there currently. I checked by sending an e-mail to my address and it went through my mail.app on my laptop, but not on iphone, am I doing something wrong?? Is there a different way to configure an e-mail that is through google apps? Any help will be much appreciated.

Abe

Hey Abe - I also have a google apps address and don't know how many times I've caught myself using mail.myapp.com or pop.myapp.com instead of pop.gmail.com. You might also want to try pop.googlemail.com port 995.

Double check that you're logging in with the full email address as well - xyz@myapp.com

Otherwise... *shrugs*

I'm actually using gmail's accounts feature to fetch my google apps mail into my gmail account (there, you HAVE to use pop.googlemail.com because pop.gmail.com won't let you fetch from other gmail accounts, but googlemail.com will).

Replying from gmail's webapp will send as the google apps address if it was the recipient.. I dunno about the iPhone... hmm

[UPDATE]: Mail fetched into Gmail from other POP3 account via Gmail's accounts feature won't retain the correct sender address when being sent from the iPhone... bummer.