Android email question
June 5, 2012 8:16 AM Subscribe
Android email question...
Phone is Samsung Galaxy S II. Computer is OS X.
I seem to be very confused with how to set up email on my phone/computer. I can set them up, but then weird things happen. For instance, my computer is always on so I find that when it checks for email and finds it, then my phone doesn't get that email... or, my phone gets that email and marks it as "read", even though I'm not home and it's not read.
Or, my phone gets an email, I read it, and then the email never shows up on my computer, read or unread.
Is there a way to set up my email so that:
1. All emails are received by phone and computer.
2. Emails aren't marked read on the "other" device until they're read on that device?
If so, what are the settings? POP / IMAP, etc? I've tried K-9, the built in email program, and a few others. All with mixed results.
Same issue with my Gmail.
Thanks!
Phone is Samsung Galaxy S II. Computer is OS X.
I seem to be very confused with how to set up email on my phone/computer. I can set them up, but then weird things happen. For instance, my computer is always on so I find that when it checks for email and finds it, then my phone doesn't get that email... or, my phone gets that email and marks it as "read", even though I'm not home and it's not read.
Or, my phone gets an email, I read it, and then the email never shows up on my computer, read or unread.
Is there a way to set up my email so that:
1. All emails are received by phone and computer.
2. Emails aren't marked read on the "other" device until they're read on that device?
If so, what are the settings? POP / IMAP, etc? I've tried K-9, the built in email program, and a few others. All with mixed results.
Same issue with my Gmail.
Thanks!
For the Gmail settings, use the built-in Gmail app for Android, and make sure your settings for your home account match those listed here. That will make sure it's set up as an IMAP account and should keep your Gmail account synced up correctly between computer and phone.
For your other email, what type of account is it? It sounds like you're using a POP setup. With that arrangement, your desktop or phone typically downloads your messages off the server and then erases them (from the server), so your other device never knows they exist.
An IMAP setup should sync the current statuses for messages between any devices accessing the account. So instead of pulling the messages off the server, it will copy them to each device and relate their status (read/unread/deleted) back. This sounds like what you're looking to accomplish.
If there's an IMAP setup for your other email account, I'd try implementing that and see what results you get.
posted by BevosAngryGhost at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2012
For your other email, what type of account is it? It sounds like you're using a POP setup. With that arrangement, your desktop or phone typically downloads your messages off the server and then erases them (from the server), so your other device never knows they exist.
An IMAP setup should sync the current statuses for messages between any devices accessing the account. So instead of pulling the messages off the server, it will copy them to each device and relate their status (read/unread/deleted) back. This sounds like what you're looking to accomplish.
If there's an IMAP setup for your other email account, I'd try implementing that and see what results you get.
posted by BevosAngryGhost at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2012
As said earlier, it sounds like you are using a POP server, which does not sync mail read status and clients will remove the mail from the server unless you specifically tell it not to.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:42 PM on June 5, 2012
posted by wongcorgi at 1:42 PM on June 5, 2012
Essentially you need be using IMAP (rather than POP) but I'm not sure whether even with IMAP you'll be able to do the "only mark as read if it's been read on this device" thing. That's not something I've ever tried to do.
And when you say ... "Same issue with my Gmail" I'm not quite sure whether you mean you have multiple email accounts one of which is Gmail ? If that's so you might consider using MailDroid on the phone as, obviously, the built-in Gmail app for Android will only work with Gmail but MailDroid will work with any IMAP providing email provider (... possibly it will do POP too not that that's relevant here)
posted by southof40 at 4:53 PM on June 5, 2012
And when you say ... "Same issue with my Gmail" I'm not quite sure whether you mean you have multiple email accounts one of which is Gmail ? If that's so you might consider using MailDroid on the phone as, obviously, the built-in Gmail app for Android will only work with Gmail but MailDroid will work with any IMAP providing email provider (... possibly it will do POP too not that that's relevant here)
posted by southof40 at 4:53 PM on June 5, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by london302 at 12:08 PM on June 5, 2012 [1 favorite]