The TRUE fix for the Gmail problem on the iPhone
So…there is a little problem with sending email from your iPhone with your Gmail account. It always sends you a copy of the email you sent back into your inbox. It’s annoying. So this morning when I read the “solution” to this problem on TUAW I was eager to try it.
The only problem is that TUAW’s solution is completely wrong. Once I did what they said, I suddenly had my gmail account trying to download over 1,000 messages to my phone.
Not cool.
So I had to delete the account off my phone. Then I had an idea. What if I set it up as a Pop 3 account instead of using the Gmail pre sets. Note – the only problem with this, is that you’ll be getting a copy of every email you send when you use Gmail in your browser. So you have to decide, do you use it more on the phone or in the browser? I use the phone more, so it works for me…just something to keep in mind.
To do this go into your iPhone settings.
Mail>Add Account > Other
select POP
Then enter your name, address, and the description you want for the email address
under Incoming Mail Server insert the following:
Host Name: pop.gmail.com
User Name: yourname@gmail.com
Password: YourPassword
Outgoing Mail:
Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
User Name: yourname@gmail.com
Password: YourPassword
That should do it. You’ll stop getting that copy of all your outgoing email and after you check your mail on your phone Gmail will start obeying your POP 3 settings. So if you have it set to archive those emails like I do, it’ll actually start doing that.
Comments
e
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:09 am
Brilliant, worked perfect for me. Though not at first. I tried leaving the Gmail account I initially set up on my iPhone and tested with that, and under the account set up as outlined in this article and still got sent mail copies under both accounts.
I then deleted both accounts from my iPhone and tried setting it up as you stated (and as the only Gmail account on my phone) and it worked perfect! Thanks for a solution to an aggravating POP bug in gmail.
Note: I also have a filter set up in Gmail to archive anything “sent” by my address.
e
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Well, almost worked perfect, i tested it some more today.
I won’t get the copy if I reply from my iPhone, or even if I send a new message. But I will get a copy if I reply to the email via my computer in the gmail web interface. As soon as I hit send from my regular computer, a sent copy appears in my iPhone’s inbox.
So I would say this is an 80% fix. Any replying done outside of the iPhone seems to send a copy of the message to the iPhone’s inbox.
Lou
December 29th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Hi there,
thanks for putting your comments above as once i read them i tried what was said BUT b4 i deleted anything off my iphone and started again with gmail i added the filter in g mail putting in from:username@googlemail.com and then chose the skip inbox and also delete it and that has worked…thank god i sent a few emails and did not get one copy back.
Hope this helps someone else
Lou
Lou
December 29th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Forgot to test to see if this filter worked even though i sent emails from my pc….Well have just sent an email from my pc, and have checked the phone and it has not sent a copy to the phone.
This i would call a success…yee ha