Outlook email

[jadesse]

I just recent got a Cingular 3125 with the smartphone data connect plan. I had been using a Dell Axim for quite a while but never email because GPRS tethering was extremely slow. I purchased the 3125 through my company & it was basically free.

My job requires me to be out in the field & my company is too cheap to spring for wireless cards for our laptops. I figured the 3125 would suffice just for send & receive the occasional email. This is the problem.

It seems that Outlook email only allows you to sync your outlook email form your PC to the phone. It does not allow you to send & receive via your phone. This is without setting up an additional account. Which to me is pointless. When I purchased the phone I setup an ATT Yahoo sub account, which I want to use for strictly work use. You would think that with MS Outlook configured for that account on my laptop that those setting would then translate to WM5 Outlook as well. This does not appear to be the case.

I did setup an additional account on my phone with the same settings. Therefore I can send & receive emails from that account on my phone. The problem is that I cannot sync those messages to my laptop. Those same messages download again once I connect my laptop to the Internet. Am I just missing something?

Is there a way to save email attachments to the storage card? This seems to yet another dumb move on MS.

Is there an alternative email program that will sync with outlook?

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

[scottb]

Active Sync (PC or Exchange) will only sync with the Active Sync account on your mobile device. Any other accounts must be set up separately. If you want to sync to Outlook on your PC, then you have to use the PC/mobile method as you discovered.

An option is to forward your mail to a hosted Exchange service like Mail2Web and sync wirelessly using Active Sync between the Exchange server and your mobile device. This will sync email, contacts, calendar and tasks wirelessly. Mail2Web has a free service and a $2 per month Personal Exchange service that lets you set the outgoing (reply to) email address.

[jadesse]

Maybe it is just me but I fail to understand. If i have MS Outlook on my laptop set for my ATT acount, which is the account I also want to work with my phone. Why can't I send & receive messages using the standard Outlook Email account on my phone. What is the point? If the message is already on my laptop then I don't need to see it on my phone. I have already read it! If I haven't, its on my laptop & I can boot up & read it.

I don't think that I should have to create a new account on my phone, which is redundant to the one on my laptop. Just to be able to send & receive emails with my phone for that account.

If this was by design & with MS that does not surprise me. I hope the have improved Outlook with WM6.

[scottb]

Perhaps I don't understand your issue. You can send and receive via the Outlook account on your mobile. That account is controlled by Active Sync, either via cable/Bluetooth connection to your PC, or wirelessly to an Exchange server. The implication is if you're using the mobile/PC sync process, you have to connect via the PC to send the messages. If you need wireless capabilities, use the Exchange server method.

If you want independent access to your email, just set up the account as POP or IMAP on your mobile. Not sure if this helps at all, but I think you can do what you want. Again, I could have misunderstood but it sounds like you want to sync your email between your PC and your mobile without connecting them to each other. You can use Exchange for that.

[Sven Johannsen]

I answered this over at PPCThoughts as well. The Outlook client on the phone is designed to work in one of three ways.

1) It is a copy of what is on your desktop. In this case it only makes the copy when you connect to the desktop, whether for getting new e-mails or sending them.

2) It can be set up as a client to an Exchange server account directly. In this case the desktop and PDA Outlook accounts are seperate and distinct, but they are both access the same account, an Exchange account, and so anything done on one would be reflected on the other. The PDA client really has nothing to do with the desktop. It connects directly with the server whether over the air, or over the network if attached to the desktop. This is really the MS prefferred option.

3) It can be set up as a client to other mail systems, such as the ATT one you apparently use. This also has nothing to do with your desktop. It gets mail from the ATT mail server independently of Outlook on your desktop. If you are hooked to your desktop, both the Outlook client on the desktop and the one on the PPC are getting the mail from the server, additionally ActiveSync is copying what the desktop Outlook got from the server to your PDA. Typically though, such mail systems remove the mail from the server once a desktop client has retrieved them, so they may not be available on the server once you have them in your desktop Outlook for the ATT account on the PP to get them. The PPC client is set to leave messages on the server, by default, so you can eventually retreive them at the desk.

Synchronizing this sort of mail system is a server limitation, not really an Outlook/MS one. You could make this work a little better for you if you set your deskktop account for ATT to not delete messages off the server, for a number of days, or until deleted from the trash. and don't set up ActiveSync to sync mail. Then the mail client on your PPC and PC will operated fairly independently. You will see the same e-mail on both and will be able to respond from either, and delete from either. What I don't think you will see is your responses in the sent items of the other device, and you can't sync them. You can mitigate that by just cc'ing yourself on outbound mail.

The other option is to look into the Hosted Exchange service mentioned. It would actually be more proffesional looking for a business account anyway than an ATT/Yahoo mail address.