iphone and gmail

This is a "feature" of GMail. When you send emails using the GMail web interface, this is the ONLY way for you to get copies of your sent messages down to your mail client.

If you send messages from an email client (like Outlook, or the iPhone) through GMail, this does not happen.

You can create a filter in GMail to take messages sent from you and do something else with them (archive them or delete them) so they don't download onto your iPhone.

Setting a Gmail filter to archive messages from yourself was the first thing I tried...unfortunately it does not solve the problem (it turns out that in Gmail, messages are essentially created in the inbox, so you cannot archive them before they get there).

Setting a filter to delete messages from yourself does work, but if you are like me and enjoy the fact that Gmail keeps your messages and allows you to search them at any time, this is not a good option. You will need to keep going into your Gmail trash and undeleting threads to keep from losing them after 30 days.

There is a simple and elegant solution to this problem, however. I can't claim credit for it...though I can't find the place on the internet where I found it published to give them credit. Anyway, this works perfectly:

1. Go to http://mail.aol.com/ and sign up for a free AOL email account (which will be youraolusername@aol.com)

2. Log on to your AOL email, go into Settings, and turn the spam filters off

3. Log on to your Gmail account, go into Settings > Forwarding and POP

4. Set your Gmail to "Forward a copy of incoming mail to:" youraolusername@aol.com (also choose whether you want the original to stay in your gmail inbox or get archived)

5. Set up the email account on your iPhone as follows:
- Type of account: Other > IMAP
- Incoming email server: imap.aol.com
- Incoming email account: youraolusername
- Incoming email password: your AOL email password
- Outgoing email server: smtp.gmail.com:587
- Outgoing email account: yourgmailusername@gmail.com
- Outgoing email password: your Gmail password

Voila! You get:
1. IMAP access to your Gmail inbox (thru the AOL proxy...don't worry, the emails won't look any different than if you got them straight from gmail, since AOL IMAP email doesn't add any tags or ads)

2. Outgoing emails from your iPhone will be sent through Gmail (nobody has to know the AOL account even exists)

3. Messages sent from your gmail account (either from your iPhone or from your other computers) will no longer be downloaded onto your iPhone (that's a quirk that's particular to POP and will not occur with IMAP)

4. Sent emails will remain with their threads in Gmail and do not need to be recsued from the Trash

Thanks so much for all the help with the iphone. I had the same problem several people did with Gmail and the way it kept sending copies of "sent" mail to my iphone.

I followed the AOL technique described here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4959730

This fixed the redundant "sent" emails from showing up on the iphone minutes after sending them.

I was wondering if there is any way to have my gmail account (accessed online on my home computer) to show an email as "read" once I have read it on the iphone. Even better would be to have an email downloaded to the iphone showing "read" if I had already accessed it on my home computer.

I set up the gmail account to "archive" the email after it was accessed by the iphone - but it seems to act the same.

Any help is much appreciated!

Hey 4n6doc

I followed the instructions you had listed and it works GREAT! Thank you for posting the info. One thing hopefully you'd be able to help me with; when I go into mailboxes on my iPhone, there are additional folders labeled: Saved, Sent Items, Spam, VOICEMAIL(in addition to the 3 standard folders). Is there anyway to delete these?

I don't think so. Those folders appear to be standard to AOL IMAP email. I have them too. One time, I went onto the webmail access and deleted them, but they just came back. I just ignore them.

Small price to pay to be rid of that sent-emails issue.

Oh well. I agree, it is a small price to pay to get rid of that evil issue 🙂. Thanks again!

One question, now that I am receiving my gmail through the aol account (with out the spam blocker) will I be getting a bunch of spam?

You should still have the spam blocker within Gmail active. From my understanding the purpose of turning it off in AOL is to keep AOL from filtering the emails you already filtered through Gmail.

DaBearsxx, you are exactly right. The spam filtering on your Gmail account will still work normally. If you don't use that AOL address for anything other than as a conduit for your Gmails, you will not get any spam from it.

4n6doc

Thanks for the post. Have set things up and it seems to work fine. This may seem like an obvious question (or answer) but: I assume that I would now delete my gmail account in Mail on the iPhone. Otherwise I get duplicates there-- one through pop in the gmail acct and one through the IMAP aol acct proxy-- correct?
I will also need to change my default account to the IMAP acct, no?-- or does the iPhone ask me for that or do it itself? (I have an account from my internet provider on the phone in addition to the IMAP and old gmail accts.)

Seems obvious, but I just wanted to be sure I didn't mess something up-- I understand a lot more about POP and IMAP than I did a day or so ago but still not a lot.

Thanks again,

Steve

Thanks 4n6doc for this "workaround" -

but has anyone used *Yahoo Email* +(instead of AOL email)+ to forward the Gmail account? (Since Yahoo supposedly has a "pseudo"-PUSH feature to iPhone)
THANKS

I think it would be worth a try...I don't use Yahoo mail, so I've never tried it.

I do know that a lot of people report problems getting Yahoo to push mail properly.

Thanks for the info! I used your method and its working for the incoming mail. the outgoing mail from the iphone is not working. sometimes it does but mostly not. I setup everything like you said and I am still getting the message on the iphone "cannot send mail, check the account setting for the outgoing server smtp.gmail.com"
Any thoughts, I will appreciate it!
Thanks

Do you have the proper "SERVER PORT NUMBERS" setup?
Incoming Server (POP3) - 995
Outgoing Server (SMTP) - 465

Gunny

I guess with the new Gmail IMAP this issue will be fixed.
I'm still one of the last people to get IMAP added to my GMAIL.... waiting...