Use MobileMe push on iPhone with alternate From address

Jul 24, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: imcquill

This hint is for those who have a primary email address, say a@default.com, and would like to use this email address, but would like the 'push' aspects of their MobileMe account, say a@me.com. It would be useful to be able to send email from a MobileMe account, but have a@default.com show up by default as the From address. This hint is similar to this previously-posted hint, in that one can set their primary email address to forward a copy to their MobileMe account. However, this previous hint does this, but only by subscribing to their MobileMe account as a standard IMAP account, which would not use push.

For this hint, one also needs an additional Gmail account (which may or may not be the primary email address) -- assume this account is a@gmail.com. and one would need to subscribe to that within the iPhone as well. Under the Mail settings for the MobileMe account, change the sent mail server to use smpt.gmail.com instead of the MobileMe sent mail server.

Then, in the Gmail settings page on the web, on the Accounts tab, configure it so that your Gmail account can send mail as a@default.com. (This involves gmail sending an email to a@default.com, confirming that it can send mail as that address). Then after that is added, click on Default next to a@default.com to make that your default sent mail address.

In this way, when one sends mail from the MobileMe account on the iPhone, even though it displays a@me.com as the From address, Gmail's mail server will replace a@me.com with a@default.com, and the receiver will see that in the From address. When replying, the recipient will reply to that email address as well.

If you would rather not change your Gmail settings to use a default alternate From address, you could get an additional Gmail account that only is used for this purpose. This would also be useful, in that you would not get new mail to this alternate Gmail address, which would affect the unread message count of mail on the iPhone. It would obviously be good to set this Gmail account to refresh manually on the iPhone as well, to save battery life.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080720093316215