Day 1: Diary of an iPhone User Gone Treo Pro - Gmail

Posted by: Brandon Steili on Nov 06 2008

So, simple enough task it would seem to just do something as simple as setup your gmail account to sync with Windows Mobile 6.1 which runs on the Treo. However it turns out that since Gmail went to an IMAP setup instead of the POP3 setup it had for a loooooong time, WinMo needs a little fooling before you can use IMAP.

When you first setup your account if you put in your gmail account address (example@gmail.com) WinMo is smart enough to have all the settings it thinks it needs to make the connection work. Now in truth it does have all the settings… for POP3. Problem is if you want to use IMAP there’s no way around the wizard that configures things for you. Unless you play a trick on WinMo which is what I had to do. So for those of you who have Windows Mobile 6.1 and want to use IMAP for your Gmail account - here’s the information to make that happen. For those of you who aren’t sure why this matters - here’s a bit more information on the subject.

Play this trick: when you are first prompted to enter your email address, just type in some garbage like aaa@bbb.com. Then you will not be forced to use that automatic setup wizard (POP3); instead, select IMAP as the account type, then manually type in IMAP server and SMTP server addresses as described here. After that, go back to the account settings, change your email address to the real one you use with Gmail.

Well, yes, there should be a better way of bypassing that wizard.

Update: It turns out on Windows Mobile 6, there is a box you can uncheck to disable ‘Get Settings automatically from the Internet”. On 6.1, however, no such option exisit.

(via Pei’s Tech Blog)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!