Previously I had several separate mail accounts on my mail.app plus a couple of gmail accounts plus I have a .mac/mobileMe account. In preparation for my first iphone I plan on getting this week I wanted a way to make my mail management easier to use and be the same on both of my Mac and my iPhone. I knew IMAP was going to be the solution but had to figure out how I was going to do it.
Listening to this episode of Mac Roundtable, Don McAllister had what I felt might be the solution.
I tweeted @DonMcAllister and asked if he had any more detailed instructions on how he set this up. It just so happened he did a screencast on this awhile back. Episode SCO0119. This is one of his free screencasts so non members are welcome to subscribe.
Here is the run down of how I have it set up.
Using Gmails Mail Fetcher all my POP mail is being accessed within GMail. I have GMail forward all the mail to my .mac/mobileme account and set to archive GMails version. Being that my .mac/mobileme account uses IMAP all mail is now stored on the server as well as any IMAP folder structures I create. What ever changes I make to mail on one device should be reflected on the other. I created a few folders for mail sorting.
I wanted to test how this works with synching between two devices. Since I have to wait for the new iPhone to be released this week, I went with testing it between my ipod touch.
Connected via wifi to my ipod touch all my IMAP folders I created on my mac were displaying also in my ipod touch. All emails were coming into my single inbox on both my mac and ipod touch. Using my ipod touch I dragged an email into one of my IMAP created folders. After a few minutes that email was automatically displayed as read and moved into my folder on my mac as well. Worked beautifully for me.
Another benefit of this system is that your mail gets filtered by GMails powerful spam filtering before it reaches your inbox.
I think this system is going to work for me.
Do you have a similar method? Share how you manage your mail between multiple devices.
How about replies?
If you reply within .Mac/MobileMe, won't that cause the reply to be sent with your .Mac/MobileMe address rather than the one the email you're replying to was sent to?
Yes, that is the case. This
Yes, that is the case. This doesn't in particular bother me, but I understand how this could be a factor for others. Not sure if there is a way around this or not.
Any thoughts on this?
I know Gmail can be set to
I know Gmail can be set to reply with the same address that the email was sent to. Maybe you could set your outgoing server to use Gmail's outgoing server. You might have to setup the .mac account to get mail from gmail using pop instead of forwarding.
I actually do have gmail
I actually do have gmail getting all incoming mail from my pop addresses using the Mail Fetcher. Im wondering if Mobileme will have any additional functionality when released. Only a few more days left to find out :)
I mean from gmail to .mac
I mean from gmail to .mac using pop so the "to" field will be what the person sent the email to instead of yourname@mac.com. Unless the "to" address stays the same already.
Then in Gmail click on accounts and under "send mail as" add all your email accounts.
Select "Reply from the same address the message was sent to"
Then on the iphone -
set the incoming mail server to your dot mac settings
set the outgoing mail server to gmail's address smtp.gmail.com with your username and password
The problem with that solution, though, is that the sent mail would be stored on the Gmail server.
I haven't tested it since I do not have a .mac account. :)
I will definitely look into
I will definitely look into that. Thanks Nicholi for the steps on it.
Gmail has IMAP. So why is
Gmail has IMAP. So why is there a need to forward it to .Mac?
Your correct Nicholi. Now
Your correct Nicholi. Now that GMail has IMAP you can leave .Mac out of the equation. For me I prefer to use the whole .mac interface via the web and hopefully when mobileme launches they will have some new features which will make the service even better.
Cool. I don't have .Mac so I
Cool. I don't have .Mac so I didn't know if it had a feature that Gmail didn't have. Does .Mac have push email?
I mentioned earlier on twitter that I have to use Thunderbird instead of mail.app. I use Thunderbird because I couldn't figure out how to stop gmail from downloading all of my email. I have some directories on Gmail that I don't want to always download, things like subscriptions.
When MobileMe launches this
When MobileMe launches this week one of the features is going to be Push Email. Im really excited about the launch. I think a membership is actually going to be worth the money now.