Downloading email onto smartphones

[VO2Max]

Well, every bugger at work had one and some of the apps seem pretty good fun (the Peter Dickson one is hilarious) - and some are very useful, so I bit the bullet and got meself a smartphone.

I couldn't really justify the cost of an iphone and some of the Androids seemed pretty good, so I plumped for an HTC Desire S with 300txt/200mins/1G download/free phone. £17.40 per month with Virgin, not bad! I'm giving myself 3 weeks to learn how to use it .

Anyways, the question I have is this: I already have a Virgin (ntl) email account and it was very simple (even for me) to set up the phone to send and receive my email. However, what seems to happen is that if my phone receives an email(s), that email(s) doesn't then appear when I open up my Outlook on my home computer when I get home. I guess it's because the phone has already downloaded it.

What I would like to happen is for all my emails to go to both my phone and my home computer.

What would be even better is say, at the weekend when I am near my computer, I can easily temporarily disable the email on my phone to prevent unnecessary duplication.

And where do I change the 'settings' - on my ntl account, on my Outlook, or on my phone...or all 3?!

Any ideas, you IT chaps?

[100th_Idiot]

Go into the mail account set up on the phone and select a box that says "leave mail on server". Should be something like that. Not got my phone in front of me to look precisely at the moment.

[Keithy]

Set up, advanced, delete from server on the fruit-o-phone.

[GhostyDog]

Not withstanding you posted in the wrong lounge

It sounds like your email provider uses POP3, the only thing you can do in this scenario is to leave messages on the server once downloaded so that other clients can also pick them up, you still have a decentralised view of your email though which means you could have different emails in different clients.

A quick google search (below) should give you some clues as to how to set up your phone.

android leave mail on server - Google Search

The alternative is to move your email to an IMAP provider, IMAP works in a different way, all your emails remain on the server and the client handles a cached version of the server mailbox, so you can have multiple clients kept up to date automatically on desktop/smartphone/tablet/web

I've been using a paid for service from fastmail for years and love both the simplicity of the web view and the speed of mobile access.

Hope this helps

Sean

[EddieGTA]

I don't use POP3 mail but trying going to your mail on the phone and then go into the menu (second button on the bottom) and then I think more > settings.

I ended up registering a domain which is only about £8 for two years, and then tied that domain to google mail for email.

[Keithy]

Originally Posted by EddieGTA

I ended up registering a domain which is only about £8 for two years, and then tied that domain to google mail for email.

Eh?? I have a domain registered, what exactly do I need to do?

[braddersR]

My email on the phone is still available to view on pc when I log on ... must have had a large slice of luck

[EddieGTA]

Originally Posted by Keithy

Eh?? I have a domain registered, what exactly do I need to do?

They hide it well away, setup for google is here;

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new

You will also need to modify the DNS settings for your domain, probably via an admin page from who you registered with. I used 123 reg and it was easy enough to do, google gives you all the information you need, but it will basically involve adding/modifying MX records so mail points to google.

This is only free for personal use though. If you try and run a business email off the free version eventually google will close it down, as happened to my other half.

[Keithy]

Eddie, you are a star! Will have a look tonight (or soon) mine is with 123 reg too

[sandys]

Set the phone to just download headers and leave mail on the server, job done, uses less bandwidth as you only download email you want and you can still download to your mail client on your home PC.

[VO2Max]

Thanks for your replies so far, chaps.

Tried talking to Virgin today but the tech support is down .

To clarify things: when an email downloads to my phone during the day at work (and later doesn't download to my Outlook when I get home and fire up my computer) it's still there if I then log on to my 'webmail' in my browser - all the emails that have been sent to my email address are still there - it seems it's just that they won't download to my computer because the phone has already got them. The fact that I can still access them via my webmail means they're still 'on the server', doesn't it?

[VO2Max]

A happy conclusion!

Finally got through to Virgin Media Tech Support and they were based in a far off land and I couldn't understand what the guy was saying

But I'd previously spoken to a very helpful young lady at Virgin Mobile customer services and she'd mentioned that I may have to 'go IMAP'.

So I had a good look at the Virgin Mobile website and had a go meself. Went into the settings of my webmail and found the new port nos., then did the same on my desktop at home and my mobile, and hey presto, it's all-singing and all-dancing!

My email goes to all participating devices and can be deleted from any device, thereby deleting on all devices, including at the server - ie everything is synced. I just have to be careful about what I delete, normally waiting till I get home where I'm less likely to do something by mistake. And I'm getting in the habit of moving important stuff into a separate folder and deleting stuff I don't want, regularly. Which means I'm not left at the end of the year, thinking I need to check all my email for stuff I don't need any more (which takes about 2hrs).

All good!

[GhostyDog]

Well done, knew my way was the bet way

[VO2Max]

...you IT-types...you're so, er, magnanimous .

I didn't know what you meant by 'clients' but of course in my case it means the different devices I have, each with different software to receive and handle email.

I didn't have to move my email account to a different provider, I guess this sort of thing is becoming so popular now that providers like Virgin (having their own mobile phone business) allow both POP and IMAP usage. I didn't want to get into the business of changing email accounts and I wanted to keep everything under the virgin 'umbrella'. So, all good!