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The misconception of MobileMe and push email (1 Viewer)

Ronald Epstein

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As MobileMe begins to become more stable and operable,
I began investigating its push email functions.

After reading other message boards I realized I faced the same
frustration that many other people are having with MobileMe ---
the fact that it is designed to only work with your .me or .mac
email account.

All of us have main email accounts that we use outside of our
Mac address. None of those accounts can be simply added to
MobileMe.

I think there may be a solution which is why I am posting this
message, hoping that as the rest of you come aboard, you will
help figure this out.

The solution COULD be Google Mail (GMail).

Currently, my Home Theater Forum email account is filtered through
GMAIL as it gets all the spam stripped before forwarding to my iPhone.

What if I set GMAIL to forward all my mail to my .me/.mac account?

The only thing I am worried is about is replying to the mail. I want
my Home Theater Forum emails to be replied through that address,
NOT the .me/.mac address.

I am hoping someone here gets it all figured out over the next few days.

BTW, I am reading that Apple is delaying the software download
that updates the preference pane on Leopard to go from .MAC to
.ME. It should be made available through software update as soon
as the company gets the service stabilized.
 

ErichH

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Ron
I'd look for something to come along via the app store or howard forum guys to solve this routing problem. For now, the apps are mostly 10 ways to do the same thing in utility or games, but would imagine the utility side will flow with useful tools in short order.
I could be wrong
 

Andrew Pratt

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It would be nice if MobileMe would automatically check external accounts but it doesn't appear to work that way so yes it would seem that you'd need to forward your gmail to MobileMe
 

Ronald Epstein

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Andrew and all,

Is it possible to do this......

hometheaterforum.com (email) -> GMAIL (to filter spam) -> Mobile Me?
 

Darren Lewis

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Ron, it should be possible to do this.

I assume you're either forwarding htf email to gmail, or getting gmail to regularly poll you htf mailbox via POP3?

The only issue will be replying to emails. GMail tends to send "[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]". I'm not sure whether mobileme will let you setup a different "from" address when replying to emails.

Does anyone know if mobileme can pickup mail from other accounts eg polling a pop3 mailbox at regular intervals?
 

Ronald Epstein

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Darren,

Actually, I got things to work beautifully.

I forwarded 2 email accounts of mine through GMAIL to my
MobileMe account.

Amazingly, I have all 3 accounts (including MobileME) pushing
mail through my iPhone, my desktop and laptop.

It works great, and GMAIL removes SPAM as it always has so the
iPhone doesn't get mail you don't want.
 

Andrew Pratt

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Glad you got it working. I have my own emails being pushed in a similar fashion to my Mac account.
 

Yumbo

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So similarly could I instruct my iFiji.com email to forward to Gmail, and then Gmail can then forward back to me filtered?
 

Ronald Epstein

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Chris,

Yes.

I posted my instructions in another thread but I'll repeat them here.

Andrew can confirm if he did this the same way.

Create a GMAIL account

1. Go to Google Mail and create a personal account

2. After you have successfully registered, log into your GMAIL
account and click on SETTINGS in top right corner

3. Go to Accounts and scroll down to Get Mail From Other
Accounts. Fill out the information pertaining to the POP3 account
you wish GMAIL to retrieve mail from.

4. Go to Forwarding and POP and select the option Enable POP
only for mail that arrives from now on

5. Repeat above steps for additional POP addresses you wish to push.


Set up .MAC to push on your iPhone


1. On your iPhone go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Add
An Account -> Mobile ME

2. Use your .Mac/MobileMe address and password. SAVE

3. Go back into MobileMe configuration in mail settings, click account
info and where it says smtp.me.com scroll down till you find smtp.gmail.com and use it.


This has worked for most, but not all for some reason or another.
Also, in Leopard Mail you will lose the ability to send mail from your
default POP3 address.

I can no longer use "[email protected]"

I had to create a new alias: "[email protected]"

This is not by any means perfect, but with a little time and
tweaking you can pretty much get this to work quite well.
 

Darren Lewis

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Ron, I think you can tweak things a bit to get Apple Mail App to send as "[email protected]"

There are some instructions at macosxhints.com - Use MobileMe push email with any email address

The only error I see there, is for the outgoing SMTP server. MobileMe won't let you use their SMTP server with a different FROM address. You should be able to use the HTF SMTP server though.

I haven't tried this yet though, but in theory it should work. All mail you send would be done via the HTF server with correct headers and from address. It's only incoming mail that gets routed via Gmail to MobileMe.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Darren,

Thanks for the instructions.

The only problem I see is that it shows how to do workarounds
in iPhone.

No clear instructions how to send mail on my default .Mac/MobileMe
account on Apple Mail through my HTF server so my HTF account
information (name and return address) shows up in sent email.

If you can figure it out and translate I would be grateful.
 

Andrew Pratt

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In Mail.app you have the abilty to send out email though any of the accounts you have setup. So as not to confuse things I'd likely set the non mobileme accounts up so that they aren't included in the receive and tell it to leave email on the server so that all emails from those accounts (HTF) will get sent to GMail and forwarded to MobileMe. Once you're on your home machine in Mail you should be able to respond to that email and choose the outgoing account to be the HTF account by chooseing it from the "From" drop down option in a new email message. It automatically chooses the account that email was sent to but you can change it if you want.
 

Ronald Epstein

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Andrew,

I think I understand what you are saying.

The problem is, I can't add my HTF account to mail.app without
it receiving mail automatically.

You mention setting up the non MAC accounts so that they
don't receive. That's where my confusion lies.

I hate to keep bugging you, but if you can simplify the process
further it would be appreciated. Thanks so much for taking the
time to help. It really is appreciated!
 

Yumbo

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Ron,

I've figured mine out.
Gmail is retrieving my POP mail (filtering spam), and forwarding to my other POP account, which I then read in MAIL or on the iTouch as 1 inbox.
Reply to is automatic based on address or mailbox used.

Go to Mail Prefs. Accounts. Advanced. UNCHECK "Include when automatically checking for new mail"
 

Ronald Epstein

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Yumbo,

Just so I am clear on this (before trying it)...

In Leopard mail.app open back up my HTF account.

Usually it will check for new mail which is what I am trying
to avoid. However, if under that account in preferences I
follow your instructions, I can use my HTF address/server when
replying to mail?

Can I write new messages using the HTF server and email address
as well?

Thanks so much. BTW, were the directions I gave you for forwarding
and pushing your email accurate? I need to know as I want to post
a single thread with precise instructions for all newbies to easily follow.
If you instructions here work I will certainly include them.
 

Yumbo

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Yes and yes?

It's just like using Mail by itself, except Gmail is doing the routing (to Inbox).
SMTP is separate of your choice.
 

Ronald Epstein

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So I can just reactivate my HTF account in Mail.app.

I don't need to change any incoming or outgoing settings.

All I need to do is Go to Mail Prefs. Accounts. Advanced.
UNCHECK "Include when automatically checking for new mail"

GMAIL will still forward mail through MobileMe to my mailbox
under my MobileMe Mail.app account. However, those emails
sent to [email protected] can be replied to using
the HTF server with my HTF username and email address.

All check and go?

I will try this later today as I am off to work. Thanks again!
 

Yumbo

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Yes.
So long as Gmail is retrieving for you (archive mode), and forwarding (and you're not polling from MAIL). You need to forward to a secondary address obviously such as [email protected], which you also retrieve from or pushing from.

Sending is separate anyway.

GMAIL is the middle man who doesn't take a cut, just spam.

Just to recap - in my scenario:

I have IFIJI.COM and CONNECT.COM.FJ (Gmail is a given).
Connect is my ISP.

Connect is active and pushes to my Ipod.
Gmail forwards to Connect.
IFIJI is retrieved by Gmail.

I receive from all 3 servers under 1 inbox.
I can reply to any of the 3 addresses of my choosing either:

1. Message sent to IFIJI will be replied from IFIJI etc.

2. I manually choose from drop down active accounts where to send from.

This is from MAIL.

Now I don't send messages from the iPod (nor Iphone), so the IMAP functions or push does not apply for me - JUST FETCH.
 

Andrew Pratt

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Yes that's the correct work flow.

In my case I have my ISP's email, work and my own forum's email to contend with.

I have my ISP's email system automatically forwarding all email to my new MobileMe account as is my forums email. These are then pushed to by MobileMe to my various devices. On my Mac in Mail I then have each of the accounts set up so that only MobileMe and my seperate work account to fetch new email while the other accounts sit idle waiting for me to send a new message. If I want to reply or to send a new email the email dialog box has a drop down menu that allows me to choose which account I want to send the message though. Works slick and is easy enough to set up.

The only other wrinkle in my situation is I have a BlackBerry not the iPhone so I'm using RIM's push servers as well but we'll keep that out of the loop as it doesn't apply to you :)
 

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