Unlocking the full mobility of email

If you’re a self-proclaimed important person like me, then email means the world to you. Being able to have access to my email in its entirety is just as critical as having email itself. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to complete this task on our smartphones, so I’ll lend a helping hand.

So you’ve gone ahead and added your email to your phone. All the hello kitty notifications and Aunt Sally emails you can chew on the go! GREAT! But I’ve noticed something very disturbing throughout the years on many a people’s phones! After they’ve added the email account, they go no further. By default, windows mobile is only set to pull down headers and 3 days’ worth of email. So what’s wrong with that? EVERYTHING!

For starters, only 3 days of email? I can understand why this option is set by default; I find a lot of people let their inbox run wild. So 3 days would be a good way of keeping it to a readable amount. But for a neat freak like me (I am lying through my teeth here,) being able to have all available mail on the server for reference at any time is a blessing.

My second issue is with the headers. Back in 1765 (exaggeration) when windows mobile was introduced, data plans where through the roof. So I could understand the thought process of making something like pulling headers default. But here in 2009, data plans are still through the roof, but you can’t own the phone without owning data. So let’s do away with the madness. Where headers really become annoying is the way you view an email. After the email has been downloading, when you go to read it you’ll be prompted by the most annoying message to date. “Click here to download more.” So you’d have to check off the pretty little green arrow, then send and receive a second time. This is a complete waste of time.

So what can we do to get around this? Head on over to MENU, then TOOLS and select OPTIONS.

From here, you’ll need to select the email account you want to modify. In my case, I’d be clicking on “Gmail.” You’ll be confronted with a contents menu showing you three options.

We’re only interested in two of the three options. “send/receive schedule” and “download size settings” is where we will make our changes. So let’s start with “send/receive schedule.”

After you’ve clicked on send/receive schedule, you’ll see an option for “download messages.” Select the drop down and change the option to “all messages.” Hit the done button on the lower left corner and this will bring you back to the contents menu. Next, click on “download size settings” and let’s dig in.

You’ll need to make two changes. First, change the message download limit to “entire message.” This ensures that you never ever have to send and receive to get an email that was downloaded to your phone once before. Second, change download attachments to “all attachments.” Be careful with this one. If I receive attachments, they’re usually pictures, short videos or ringtones. So we’re talking about no larger than 5mb attachments. This is fine for a 3G connection. If you’re a person who receives larger attachments than that, this impacts you a bit. When you’re finished, hit the done button and return to the contents menu. Hit done one more time, and return to the options menu. From here we’ll make the last really important change. Select the “storage” tab on the bottom right.

You’ll need to check the option “when available, use this storage card to store attachment.” This option makes sure all attachments you receive in email are stored on the storage card and not on the phone itself. You can hit the ok button to return back to your mail.

Send and receive your mail to try out your new settings, you should notice you have full copies of the emails including attachments.

So why is this setup important to me? Well, here in NYC I do a great deal of my week day commuting underground where there is no cell phone service. Because I am underground doesn’t mean I should not have access to all my email. This setup allows me to review all my mail and even take a quick look at a picture I’ve received earlier in the day while riding the subway. Hopefully this will serve you the same way!