Q: can i change my primary smtp server in iCloud?

Wanting answers to the same thing.  Worked with MobileMe but not letting me toggle off the iCloud primary smtp so I can use my google smtp. 

Same issue here.

I have just noticed this problem also. It has to be a bug of some sort since if it was intended to be DISabled, the button(s) should be greyed out. So either they made a mistake and forgot to enable them (even though they're a nice blue 'tap me to toggle' colour) or the mistake is they haven't greyed out those buttons (the SSL button exhibits the same problem).

But the latter doesn't make any sense. If the Primary server cannot be turned off and it always works (as we must assume it will), then the other servers will never be used, so what's the point in having any other servers or displaying the list. None.

My assumption therefore is that these buttons should be enabled. We can only hope for a quick update to fix this. Perhaps some feedback about this issue would help.

+1

I was hoping iCloud could replace my hosted Exchange server, but since I can't edit the SMTP server settings, iCloud mail is useless to me.

Hopefully this will be addressed shortly, as I see this as a major flaw. Most people already have their own email address (their own domain, Gmail, Comcast, etc...) we don't need another email address...

What we do want is an economical push email solution.

IMO, this was one of the major drawbacks to MobileMe. If you set up a MM account in iOS, the sending address (i.e. From) was set to the MM address and couldn't be changed. Worse, if you used their SMTP server(s) to send your emails (from other mail clients that allowed you to set a different From address), the message would actually be edited so that the From address was the MM address. IOW, you could NOT use any other sending (From) address, which as pointed out above, if you already have your own domain and address is just not acceptable. In fact, IMO I think there ought to be a law against this type of tampering with a user/customer's private information in their messages. I know every server an email message passes through adds on its own Recieved header, but to meddle with the information that was put there specifically by the sender is totally out of order. But Apple are not the only ones to indulge in this heinous practice.

Sadly, iCloud is no different in this respect.

So, the answer is, don't set up your email accounts on your iOS device as type MobileMe or iCLoud. Set them up as basic IMAP accounts. This will allow you to use your actual MM or iCloud account(s) for email, but you can use whatever sending (From) address you like and pick a different SMTP server that will not meddle with your email data. This latter can be tricky, but I (like many others) can use my ISP for that. Otherwise you could try Google or Yahoo, but they can impose restrictions so be careful who you choose.

So, for each actual iCLoud account you have, set up an iCloud account on your device, take note of the incoming email server it automatically picks (probably p??-imap.mail.me.com), then turn mail OFF for that account. I also turn off Notes since that's tied into email so it makes sense. Then create another account, but choose Other, then IMAP and use the incoming server address you noted from the iCLoud account. At the end of the setup, ensure Mail and Notes are ON and you should be good to go.

What this means is you still use iCLoud for eveything that it provides (and that you want), but you use a local IMAP account for Mail and Notes and the local iCloud account for everything else. Using this approach allows you to use whatever addressing you want to send from and your iCloud (or MM) address is simply not listed so you cannot pick it by mistake. Plus you can use any SMTP server you want, so DON'T use Apple's and your chosen From address will remain intact in all your emails.

Regarding configuring the SMTP server(s), this is still an utter mess on iOS, even iOS 5. If you configure a second account with the same server as the first one, you get 2 identical servers in the list and you cannot really get around this. With a lot of messing about you can sometimes get to delete a server, but you need to exploit another bug in this part of the system to do so. It really is a crock of **** and Apple should be ashamed of themselves. On the Mac it's perfect. You can edit the list, adding, editing and deleting servers at will and picking which you want for each account, but on iOS it's an appalling **** up. However, after much messing about, I have been able to get 4 accounts all using the correct 3 servers in the required order, but it shouldn't and doesn't need to be this hard.

Apart from that last issue, the above setup is the best way I've found for using Apple's MobileMe and now iCLoud service, while avoiding the onerous restrictions placed on the use of their service by which you would otherwise be hamstrung. Some of you will quickly see that this method means 2 accounts on your device for each actual iCloud account, but this is not a major deal once they're set up. I use 4 iCLoud accounts and so I have to have 8 actual accounts, but the only place I see this in iOS is in 'Settings/Mail, Contacts and Calendars' where I set them all up. In Mail I can only see 4, because there's only 4 email accounts. Likewise in Contacts, I can only see 4 accounts, because there's only 4 accounts that are set to handle Contacts. In fact, if I only wanted 1 Contacts and 1 iCal account I could just have a total of 6 accounts. So you have complete flexibility over the setup. The only thing to ensure is you only use IMAP accounts to handle email.

Hope this helps some people.

There is a way.

In your iCloud-account on your iDevice, disable 'Email'

Create another account by choosing 'other' from the list. In this account 'Email' must be enabled. 'Notes' must be disabled.

Fill in your me.account address as your mailaddress

as your incoming mail-server choose: p99-imap.mail.me.com (i copied that from Mail from my iMac)

as your smtp server choose: smtp.gmail.com and use your gmail credentials.

Works like a charm form me!

Great this works. Although the emails don't seem to push?

It appears that there are problems with push and iOS5 in general. Push isn't working when using the default situation either.

For example this is one of the questions I found about it in the community:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16397097#16397097

So that p99-imap.mail.me.com should normally Push? That would be great! Thanks for your help.

in stead of using p99-imap.mail.me.com,  you should try p02-imap.mail.me.com (or p04-imap.mail.me.com)

Push is working for me now

so the complete story is:

In your iCloud-account on your iDevice, disable 'Email'

Create another account by choosing 'other' from the list. In this account 'Email' must be enabled. 'Notes' must be disabled.

Fill in your me.account address as your mailaddress

as your incoming mail-server choose: p02-imap.mail.me.com (or p04-imap.mail.me.com)

as your smtp server choose: smtp.gmail.com and use your gmail credentials.

Don't know what issue you ran into but I could easily change my outgoing smtp for my mobileme account.  It always stated it was coming from my gmail even though I only had the mobile me account on my idevice.  where as iCloud won't let me change the smtp.  and I'm sorry but the work around given here is a pain.  I have to set up two accounts on my iDevice when under Mobileme I only had to have a single account?  Mobileme had its issues but I could assign it a different smtp server. 

Still looking for a real answer and NOT a workaround that just creates more work.  I've also submitted feedback to Apple.  If the functionality was capable under Mobileme it should be available under iCloud.  It is a simple thing.  Even the toggle are colored to be turned off but they won't let you.  Feels more like a bug to me... or incomplete.

PuNkEnStEiN wrote:

 

In your iCloud-account on your iDevice, disable 'Email'

 

Create another account by choosing 'other' from the list. In this account 'Email' must be enabled. 'Notes' must be disabled.

 

Fill in your me.account address as your mailaddress

 

as your incoming mail-server choose: p99-imap.mail.me.com (i copied that from Mail from my iMac)

 

as your smtp server choose: smtp.gmail.com and use your gmail credentials.

 

Er, that's exactly what I said.

Well apart from your suggestion to disable Notes in the IMAP account. You do NOT need to do that, in fact, I'd suggest you leave that ON. In the iCloud account Notes and Mail are together, so you can only disable (or enable) 'Mail & Notes', so if you don't enable Notes in the IMAP account, you get NO Notes.

So, as I said above, use the iCloud account for everything except 'Mail & Notes' and then use the IMAP account for Mail and Notes. In this way they dovetail together nicely.

You can do this for multiple accounts.

anevilweasel wrote:

 

Don't know what issue you ran into but I could easily change my outgoing smtp for my mobileme account.  It always stated it was coming from my gmail even though I only had the mobile me account on my idevice.  where as iCloud won't let me change the smtp.  and I'm sorry but the work around given here is a pain.  I have to set up two accounts on my iDevice when under Mobileme I only had to have a single account?  Mobileme had its issues but I could assign it a different smtp server. 

 

Still looking for a real answer and NOT a workaround that just creates more work.  I've also submitted feedback to Apple.  If the functionality was capable under Mobileme it should be available under iCloud.  It is a simple thing.  Even the toggle are colored to be turned off but they won't let you.  Feels more like a bug to me... or incomplete.

You seem to be mistaken. There is no basic difference between Mobile Me and iCLoud, apart from an apparent bug that prevents you from changing the outgoing server of an iCloud account. But even when that is fixed, you are still stuck with the fact that when you have a MM or iCloud account set up for mail, the default From address for every message will be the MM or iCloud account address and for those of use who have our own domain name that we use for our email address this is no good at all. Even if you have the opportunity to change it on a new message, it is too easy to forget and then you are sending from an address you NEVER want to use. Of course, if you send through Apple's SMTP server, then it gets changed anyway, so the solution is to NOT use the iCLoud account on the iOS device for email. Set up an IMAP account instead to do that, as explained above.

You can call it a workaround if you like, but it is a permanent fix to something that Apple will never change. They are not going to re-configure their servers tomorow or anytime in the future to NOT change the From address and they're not going to change the iOS email client to allow the user to change the outgoing email address of an iCloud type account. What we are saying here is that you CAN set up your iOS device to avoid the undesirable behaviour.

It is not a huge amount of work and you only do it ONCE. Setting up the iCloud type account takes a few minutes and the equivalent IMAP account something similar and realistically, compared to the lifetime of your use of this device, that's trivial when it provides for you exactly what you want.

As I have also said, it doesn't add any additional complexity to everyday use of the device. In each actual client app that can use multiple accounts (i.e. Mail, Contacts, iCal, Reminders) you will NOT see these 'double' accounts. So if you have a single iCloud account, you would only see a single account in each client app - it's not at all complicated in use. The only place you would see ALL the accounts is in Settings/ 'Mail, Contact and Calendars'. But you only need to go there in order to set them up and once that's done, you never need to go back there.

Of course, if you only want to use your iCloud email address and Apple's SMTP servers, then you don't need to take this route, but for those of use who specifically need to NOT use those ...@me.com addresses, this is THE solution. Don't knock it, it works and there is NO other.

One more thing.

Mobile Me accounts would only automatically sync the 'Primary' account, so if, like me you have several MM accounts, one would have to be set as the primary account and only that one would sync emails. The solution to this was again, to set them up as IMAP because Apple's IMAP servers support IMAP IDLE which means the mail would be pushed to the Mac - for ALL accounts.

Even worse, iOS 4 didn't support IMAP IDLE so there was no way to get push email for more than one account (ignoring Google, Yahoo and Exchange). I've seen no official confirmation of this yet, but my initial tests indicate that iCLoud DOES sync ALL accounts and also, iOS 5 seems to support IMAP IDLE. At least, my iOS 5 devices have 4 IMAP type email accounts (accessing iCloud accounts) and email is definitely pushed to all accounts. I cannot think it can be doing this by any other means, so my conclusion is iOS 5 must support IMAP IDLE. All of which is good news.

Nope, no mistake.  Used it for over a year by only changing only the outgoing smtp for mm to my gmail.  Tested with a few close friends.  Showed as my gmail account not my mm.