Setting up Mail on my cell phone

Syncing email across devices is made possible by a protocol called IMAP. By default, Mail on iPhone will use IMAP with modern email providers like AOL, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and of course iCloud.

However, if you use email from your Internet provider – especially smaller, local providers – or you have email with your own domain, Mail might default to the older POP protocol, which doesn't sync messages. Or, it may be that your iPhone does use IMAP, but your computer was configured longer ago and uses POP (both must use IMAP for sync to work).

It's possible to switch from POP to IMAP by removing and re-adding the account, although:

• You may lose historic messages if you don't take the right steps to keep them.
• You may need to "trick" your iPhone into offering you the choice of POP or IMAP, by entering an invalid address like example@example.com on the first screen.

If you like, I can try to walk you through the process, but it may require us to communicate back and forth a bit. To begin:

• Without revealing your email address, who provides it?
• Which app do you use to access email on your computer?
• Is your iPhone currently using POP or IMAP?

To check whether your iPhone is using POP or IMAP:

1. Tap Settings > Passwords & Accounts.
2. Tap the account in question.
3. Above the green toggle switches, tap "Account yourname@example.com" (it will show your address).

On the next screen, above Name, Email and Description, you should see in small capital letters either "POP account information" or "IMAP account information".

Excellent, well done! 🙂