4.2. Decide Which Account(s) to Use

As I type this paragraph, I have eleven email accounts on my iPhone (including iCloud, a POP account, an Exchange ActiveSync account, several Gmail accounts, AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts, and a couple of IMAP accounts), although some of these are inactive. When I’m not writing about iOS email, I have only two or three active accounts, one of which receives mail forwarded from several different domains, but the point is, it’s easy to throw lots of different accounts at an iOS device, and then get lost trying to navigate among them.

The unified Inbox in iOS 5 makes it far easier than it once was to work with multiple accounts on your iOS device. Even so, if you must frequently navigate the mailbox hierarchy of more than one email account, it still requires a great deal of tedious tapping. In general, therefore, Mail in iOS works best with fewer distinct accounts set up. So rather than configuring Mail separately for every account you may use, give some careful thought to how you might limit the number of accounts you check on your mobile device. In so doing, you may find that having fewer email accounts also improves your email experience on your computer or other devices.

Time to Rethink Your Accounts? I’ve been assuming that you intend to use your iOS device with one or more of your existing accounts, but as you read this section, you may realize that your needs will be better served by switching to a new email provider. If you do, my opinion is that either an Exchange account or a standard IMAP account (or, in the case of Gmail, a nonstandard IMAP account) is generally the way to go, as it will give the best results on both your mobile device and desktop computer(s). Although I have nothing against the likes of iCloud, AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts (I use all of these myself), I prefer to have my default email account supplied by a service that lets me use a domain I own.

Here are some points to ponder when deciding which accounts will end up on your mobile device:

• If you want to use your device to access an email account over which you have no personal control—I’m thinking mainly of a corporate Exchange account or other business account—set that up first.

• Some accounts can be accessed using more than one protocol—IMAP, POP, or Exchange—whereas others are tied to just one (ask your provider to see which protocols your account supports). All things being equal, IMAP and Exchange ActiveSync are a better fit for your iOS device than POP, because they’re more conducive to checking your email from multiple devices.

  IMAP is offered by many more providers than ActiveSync, but ActiveSync is more likely to offer push. (iCloud and Yahoo Mail offer both IMAP and push, but most IMAP accounts are fetch-only.) So, if you’re thinking about redirecting multiple accounts to a central location, make that location an IMAP or Exchange account.

• If you have multiple personal POP or IMAP accounts, you can choose one as your primary account—that’s the one you’ll actively check from your mobile device—and then redirect email from your other (secondary) accounts to this primary account.

  There are two ways to do so:

  • Set your secondary account(s) to forward all incoming mail to your primary account. Or…

  • Set the primary account to fetch mail from the secondary account (s) using POP (a feature commonly offered by larger email providers) or IMAP (much less common).

  Either way, one account ends up with all the incoming mail sent to multiple addresses.

  Before deciding which account will be your primary account, research the capabilities of your mail server—for example, some email providers let you fetch mail from only a single external POP account. Gmail, however, can check multiple POP accounts, and can do so automatically and continuously, making it a good choice to serve as a primary account.

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  Note:

  Gimme a G: For more details about using Gmail as a central clearing house for other email accounts, read my Macworld article “Streamline e-mail with Gmail,” at http://www.macworld.com/article/138836/.

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• The fact that you receive email from multiple accounts in a central location doesn’t automatically mean you can send mail from all those secondary accounts. Although MobileMe once let you use external From addresses, that capability went away with the switch to iCloud (although you can still use aliases, which are always in the me.com or mac.com domains). Luckily, Gmail still has a mechanism whereby you can authorize external addresses as valid From addresses. Here’s how to set up this feature:

  1. Log in to your Gmail account on the Web.

  2. Click the gear icon at the top of the Gmail page and choose Mail Settings from the pop-up menu. Then click Accounts.

  3. Under Send Mail As, click the Add Another Email Address You Own link, and follow the instructions to enter and verify another address. For each address, you can choose whether to send outgoing messages using Gmail’s SMTP server or the one associated with the other account.

     You can repeat this with as many addresses as needed.

  Then, follow the instructions in Change Your From Address to add those alternative addresses to Mail on your iOS device.

If you can devise a scheme whereby you have just one account (iCloud, Gmail, IMAP, or Exchange) on your device, do so. To the extent that you can’t achieve this ideal, set up as few accounts as you can, avoiding POP if possible. For complete instructions on setting up accounts, flip ahead a few pages to Configure Email Accounts.