Monday, September 14, 2009

Syncing Thunderbird 2.0 mailbox with Blackberry for an Exchange account

My organization uses Microsoft Exchange as the Mail Server and a BES server to sync mails on my blackberry.

The mailbox on server is allowed only 50 MB of space and thus I need to continuously delete mails on the server. Previously I used POP to fetch mails from Exchange to Thunderbird mail client but this had sync issues (mails were downloaded multiple times, the read/unread information was different on mobile and desktop) once I configured my Blackberry using BES.

I recently shifted from POP to IMAP (had to get IMAP enabled from the administrator) and this has solved a number of problems.

I've created filters which automatically shift few mails to the local folders and I manually move emails to local folders whenever required. The move operation does not automatically compact (delete emails on mailbox which were moved/deleted locally) folders but the following will make that happen:

Goto Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor and then make the mail.imap.expunge_after_delete option as 'true'. Restart Thunderbird to use this config.

Secondly, I wanted the sent mails to be saved on the 'Sent Items' folder on the Exchange Server's mailbox. This can be achieved by subscribing to the 'Sent Items' folder and placing a copy of send messages in the 'Sent Items' folder. To achieve this:

1) Right click on the 'Inbox' for the IMAP account and click 'Subscribe'. Select the 'Sent Items' folder. You should now see the folder next to Inbox on the left panel.

2) Goto Edit -> Account Settings -> Copies & Folders and select 'Sent Items' as the Other folder under 'when sending messages, automatically' -> 'Place a copy in'.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Setting up your mail using BIS (Blackberry Internet Service)

Once you've opted for blackberry services, the provider will setup an account on blackberry.com for you. For example, I'm using an Airtel connection and I access my account on http://www.airtel.blackberry.com/.

Once you log in, you'd probably want to add your official and personal e-mail. Setting up the email account is simple if you have a gmail account. Just enter your email address and password, it'll start delivering mails in minutes.

For your official id (for non Blackberry Enterprise Server users), blackberry will first try to automatically get the settings after you enter the e-mail/password and if it succeeds, you won't have to enter any more detail. But this could be troublesome for some, as in my case I wanted to setup using OWA (Outlook Web Access) and it picked the POP settings. A workaround is to enter the right e-mail id and a wrong password, this will throw up the settings page where you can manually select which protocol you want to use.

Lastly, I've noticed that mails sent to my gmail address are delivered instantly (using Push I guess) but mails sent to a POP or OWA account takes a few minutes to reach my phone. I guess if you are using Google for your official mails (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html) then the delivery would be instant.