Anthony Bush’s Blog

I recently purchased an iPhone and decided to switch my PowWeb hosted POP e-mail accounts to Gmail’s free IMAP offerings. Doing this enabled me to read, move, and delete messages on either my iPhone or Laptop and not have to do the same thing again on the other device.

One of my requirements for this change to succeed was that anyone with my existing e-mail address would not have to make any changes. They’d still send to the same address, and e-mail from me would still appear to come from the same address.

I outline the steps I took to accomplish this below.

Enable IMAP in your Gmail account

1. Login to your Gmail account.
2. Go to “Settings,” then “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.”
3. Make sure “Enable IMAP” is selected.

Disable syncing of the “Spam” and “All Mail” folders

1. Login to your Gmail account.
2. Go to “Settings,” then “Labs.”
3. Enable “Advanced IMAP Controls.”
4. Click “Edit Labels” in the left navigation (usually green).
5. Uncheck “Show in IMAP” for the folders you don’t want to sync. I recommend doing this for all the ones that behave like Apple’s “Smart Playlists.” That includes: Starred, All Mail, and Spam. You can always access them through the web interface.

Enable ability to send from any address

1. Login to your Gmail account.
2. Go to “Settings,” then “Accounts.”
3. Click “Add another e-mail address” in the “Send mail as” section.
4. Follow instructions to verify it.
5. Make it default by clicking “make default” on the “Accounts” page.

Using this feature allows you to continue to send e-mail from a pre-existing e-mail address (e.g. from your own domain). Just make sure to change your e-mail hosting settings so that any e-mail sent to your “from” address is forwarded to your gmail account. While doing that, you may also want to stop delivery to wherever it’s currently going so that you don’t get every e-mail twice.

Configure your Apple Mail client

Follow Google’s guide for this on their supported IMAP client list page.

If you’re using Gmail’s ability to send from any address, make sure to use that address in your Apple Mail settings (e.g. in step 3 of the Apple Mail 3.0 (Leopard) Gmail IMAP guide).

Configure your iPhone e-mail settings

Don’t sync the Apple Mail configuration. It gets incorrectly converted from a generic IMAP account to a Gmail account on the iPhone. You’ll still be able to send/receive e-mail, but it won’t send from your custom address.

To make sure syncing of the mail account is turned off:

1. Plug your iPhone into your Mac.
2. Select your iPhone in the iTunes devices list.
3. Select the “Info” tab.
4. Scroll down to “Mail Accounts” and make sure either “Sync selected Mail accounts” is unchecked or that the entry for your Gmail account is unchecked.
5. Click “Apply” if you had to make changes.

To add your IMAP account to your iPhone:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” then “Add Account,” then “Other.”
3. On the first screen use your custom e-mail address for the “Address” field.
4. On the second screen fill in the “Incoming Mail Server” and “Outgoing Mail Server” sections the same as your computer’s mail client.

Optional Finishing Steps

• Move over any messages from your downloaded POP mail to Gmail’s IMAP folders. This could take awhile and eat up lots of space.
• Deactivate the account so that Apple Mail hides it and stops trying to check mail at the address.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Productivity, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.