Another way to set up a 'unified' iPhone email inbox

Aug 25, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: tommy!

With no unified Inbox (for good or bad), people have come up with lots (and lots) of ways of combining their email accounts into one. And with MobileMe offering push, I'm guessing some people have tried this configuration: having all their emails forward to their mac/me.com address.

However, then the problem is with replying ... when you do so, you'll expose your mac/me.com address. So, there's always the option of setting up extra SMTP servers (which has already been documented). But that doesn't allow you to truly reply from a different account (let's say your email address is for a business, and the name is different).

At least for Google (and other IMAP accounts?), there's a way to create a "send-only" account -- which has already been documented as using the "manual" checking of that account only. But that could leave you with more emails unread than you expect (as your phone may check the non-MobileMe account).

So is there a way to:

Yes! (I know, it took a long time to get here.) Read on for the how-to...

First, set up the Gmail account you want. Make sure to enter all the correct details: name, password, etc. Do not go into Mail to sync it for the first time. Instead, go back into Settings, and to that email account. Delete the password so that it's blank (says "Required" in a gray font). Go into SMTP settings. Turn the SMTP server (which should be defaulted to the appropriate Gmail server) off. Go back one page, and back to the SMTP page (not sure if this is truly necessary, but it's a good idea to "save" turning the SMTP server off).

Add a new SMTP server, but use the exact same details as the one you just disabled (same account name, server name) but this time, do put the correct password in. Instead of creating a "new" server entry (which you would assume it would do), it instead turns the default SMTP server on. However, you'll see that it has your password. Going back one page to the Mail email settings, you'll see that the password is still missing here. So in effect, you have set a password for the SMTP part of the account, but not for checking email.

How does this work? At least with Gmail, you're able to send emails but never receive them. And if by mistake, you do go into your Gmail account and wander into the Inbox, it'll be empty. So no more wrong unread message count.

This sadly takes away your ability to save Drafts to the IMAP account. But it's another method to simplify (and I mean add complexity) to consolidating email accounts on the iPhone.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]

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