Using your own email address with MobileMe and your iPhone/iPod Touch

As a follow up to my last blog 'Using your own email address with Mobile and Apple Mail', this blog focuses on how to set up your iPhone/iPod Touch with the same functionality.

When adding a MobileMe account to your device, it will do all the hard work once you've entered the basics. Unfortunately, it locks you out of any changes to mail configuration within the MobileMe settings.

All we need to do to overcome this is to turn off MobileMe mail and set up a new Mail-only account that talks to MobileMe for incoming mail and the server of your external email account for outgoing mail.


Firstly, let's set up your MobileMe account on the iPhone/iPod Touch
(If you have already done this, you can skip this section)

1. Click the Settings icon on your device.
2. Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Click Add Account and select MobileMe.
4. Enter your Name, Address, Password, the description 'MobileMe' and click 'Save'.
5. The device will configure the MobileMe account automatically.

Next, we need to deactivate MobileMe Mail

1. Click the Settings icon on your device.
2. Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Select the MobileMe account and set Mail to 'Off'.

Finally, we need to set up a separate MobileMe Mail Account

1. Click Add Account and select 'Other'.
2. Enter your Name, MobileMe email address, MobileMe password and the Description 'MobileMe Email' and click 'Save'.
3. Your device will source your account information. Once it has, ensure the IMAP tab is selected.
4. Change the Email Address to your external email address.
5. For Incoming Mail Server, enter smtp.me.com as the hostname, your MobileMe account name for the user name and your MobileMe password.
6. For Outgoing Mail Server, enter the outgoing SMTP server, username and password for your domain email account.
7. Click Save.

Incoming email from your external email account

As explained in the prequel to this document relating to Apple Mail, you need to ensure that you are forwarding your incoming email from your external email account to your MobileMe email address to complete the process.


iPhone/iPod Touch with incoming MobileMe and external email account - Done!


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Using your own email address with MobileMe and Apple Mail

Despite hearing some concerns with synchronisation and reliability, I'm delighted with Apple's MobileMe. It's excellent value for money. I get the fundamentals on my iPhone that Hosted Exchange customers enjoy with their Blackberry at a fraction of the price. Synchronised Mail, Contacts and Calendars are seamless, and it's a doddle to configure unlike the woes of setting up Blackberry's Enterprise Server I experienced with my mobile provider.

I have both an iPhone with MobileMe and a Blackberry Storm with Hosted Exchange. The iPhone with MobileMe wins hands down (I must have a blog-like rant sooner or later about the Storm!).

The only disappointing thing about MobileMe was being forced to use dwtechnologies@me.com as my email address. I have a number of email accounts that I filter into my 'david.west@dwtechnologies.net' account and I wanted all the functionality of MobileMe without 'dwtechnologies@me.com'!

Luckily, I found it pretty straightforward to configure for both Apple Mail and iPhone. This blog will concentrate on Apple Mail - keep an eye out for the iPhone version which I promise I will do as soon as I can...


Firstly, we need to ensure we've covered a few basics:

• You have set up your MobileMe account (http://www.apple.com/mobileme)
• MobileMe is configured on your Mac (System Preferences > MobileMe)
• You have the appropriate SMTP settings to hand for the outgoing server relating to your external email account
  

OK, let's configure Apple Mail

1. Open Apple Mail, and select Mail > Preferences > Accounts.

2. Click the + symbol in the bottom left hand corner.

3. Enter your Full Name, Email Address, Password and ensure 'Automatically set up account' is ticked > click Create.


4. Once the account has been created, select the MobileMe account in the left hand column.


5. Change the Email Address to your external email address (you will see I have changed mine to 'david.west@dwtechnologies.net').


6. Next, select 'Edit Server List' from the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) menu.


7. Click the + symbol below the list of outgoing mail servers and edit the server name to the outgoing server for your external email account (you will see that the outgoing server for my external email account is mail.dwtechnologies.net).


8. Select the new outgoing server and enter a description.


9. Click the Advanced tab, and enter the relevant information for the outgoing server for your external email account. If you do not know this, please contact your mail administrator or service provider.


10. Click OK and you will be returned to Account Information. In the outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) menu, select the outgoing server for your external email account and tick 'Use only this server').


11. Close the Accounts window to complete the process.


Incoming Domain Email

Excellent. Apple Mail is now configured to receive mail from your MobileMe account and send via your external email account.

However, what happens to mail sent to your external email account?

Simple. All you need to do is forward the messages sent to your external email account on to your MobileMe email address. Although you could set up another Apple Mail account to send and receive your domain email, it's nice to have one account, one set of signatures, one set of mail rules etc.


Apple Mail with incoming MobileMe and external email account - Done!



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• MobileMe by Apple

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