4 replies to this topic

[masri]

Hello,

One of my clients just got an iPhone. She wants to use A Small Orange's IMAP email so she can read her same email messages at home, at work, and on the go. She has a Mac at work, a Windows PC at home, and the iPhone.

I've been reading up on configuring the iPhone for email service. According to this thread at Apple's support forums,

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4832605

the proper format is to use server:port . Some users appear to have this working, while some say this format does not work properly.

When in cPanel, if you go to Mail and click the "Configure Mail Client" link, ASO lists the proper port #s to use for SMTP w/SSL. Has anyone actually got this to work with an iPhone yet? I will be testing this when I get back to my client later today, and I'll post my findings here, but if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions they are welcome.

- Adam

[AndrewB]

First, test the configuration and connection without SSL.
Once you have that working, then add the extra complexity of SSL.

Ports:
IMAP: 143
POP3: 110
SMTP: 25

IMAP/SSL: 993
POP3/SSL: 995
SMTP/SSL: 465

A typical email client like Mail.app or Thunderbird will change the port automatically when you select the SSL option. The iPhone may not do that (I ran into this with my Helio...set port 143 for IMAP, then checked the box "secure imap" and it wouldn't work until I manually changed the port to 993 or unchecked the "secure IMAP").

Be sure she isn't downloading/deleting email via POP3 on a computer elsewhere. This is common cause of support tickets regarding "my email won't show up on my phone".

Other than that, there shouldn't be anything special necessary.

[masri]

Ok, it works!

Thanks for the notes on port numbers, that was very helpful. For those trying to do this...

First off, on your Mac, PC, or UNIX box, setup IMAP email, and test. SSL connections work fine with the iPhone, so test those & make sure you know what you're doing on a computer.

As noted in the Mail Client Configuration document (within cPanel), make sure to set the IMAP path prefix to  INBOX  . No slashes, all caps.

Find the section in your email software where you have the choice to save messages for specific folders (Sent, Inbox, Trash [Deleted], Drafts), and set your email software to store mail in those folders.

Make sure there's at least one message in each of those folders. If you have to, create a new email & save as a Draft. Send an email to yourself, then trash it. That way all folders will be created and you can choose them on the iPhone.

On the iPhone, I setup SSL access for IMAP & SMTP. Fortunately no change in port numbers was necessary from defaults, everything seems to work properly w/o listing any port numbers so I really don't know if the server:port format works, it wasn't necessary.

On the iPhone, make sure to set the IMAP path prefix to  INBOX .

Go to Mail. At this point you should see your IMAP Inbox, and you should see a message or two in there from your computer test.

Return to iPhone Settings. In Advanced, set Drafts, Sent, and Deleted to the new folders created on the server. These should be selectable now.

Ta da! You've now got the same email on your computer & your iPhone. This is very cool.

- Adam

[jebryan]

I'm having difficulties with this. I have my account set up and working fine in Mail.app on my laptop, but for some reason those settings don't work on the iPhone. The message "Unable to verify SSL server lindsey.asmallorange.com" pops up everytime I try to check for mail. I've tried without SSL but it just times out or still pops up an SSL error, which doesn't make any sense. I would appreciate it if someone who has gotten this to work could post their exact iPhone settings so that I can compare. Thanks.

[eortegadesign.com]

I'm having difficulties with this. I have my account set up and working fine in Mail.app on my laptop, but for some reason those settings don't work on the iPhone. The message "Unable to verify SSL server lindsey.asmallorange.com" pops up everytime I try to check for mail. I've tried without SSL but it just times out or still pops up an SSL error, which doesn't make any sense. I would appreciate it if someone who has gotten this to work could post their exact iPhone settings so that I can compare. Thanks.

all your settings will be normal until you get to host name for outgoing mail. so it would look like mail.servername.com:465

465 is so that it uses the right port for ssl

then under advanced use ssl only on outgoing and make sure its set to server port 465 authentication should also be set to password.

hope that helps.