[cdysthe]

HOWTO:

Yahoo! Mail Plus with BIS 2.x handling two external e-mail accounts.


Background:

I wanted to be able to handle multiple external e-mail accounts on my Blackberry in the same way I was used to on my desktop computer: All mail from both accounts comes in to one Inbox where I then can reply having the correct From address set based on the To or CC field for the incoming e-mail. This without any manual intervention (like BBReply etc). It is not trivial to achieve this on a Blackberry.

It is also important that it can be done using Yahoo! Mail since Yahoo! offers instant pushed delivery to Blackberry through BIS 2.x, and even for sent mail to be stored in the Yahoo! Mail Outbox. See here:

Yahoo! for Blackberry

If you only deal with one external e-mail account on your Blackberry none of this would be of importance to you.


For the purpose of this HOWTO the following needs to be in place:

1) Two external e-mail accounts, let's call them "external_1@someisp.com" and "external_2@someisp.com" forwarded to two Yahoo! Mail e-mail addresses within _one_ Yahoo! Mail Plus account. Let's call the two Yahoo! Mail Plus addresses "myself@yahoo.com" and "my_alias@yahoo.com". We have "external_1@someisp.com" forwarded to "myself@yahoo.com" and "external_2@someisp.com" to "my_alias@yahoo.com". These names are only chosen to illustrate how it's done. You would have to use the e-mail addresses you are currently operating, and add the new e-mail address to your existing Yahoo! Mail Plus with a name that suit your purpose.

The Yahoo! Mail account needs to be the paid "Plus" account type ($20 per year) since we will need two Yahoo! e-mail addresses to "trick” BIS 2.x to handle mail from one Yahoo! account as two separate accounts on your Blackberry device.

Please note that if your are using Yahoo! Mail as your main e-mail provider you do not need to forward anything and just use the Yahoo! Mail e-mail addresses in the setup outlined below.

Also note that I assume that your Yahoo! Mail Plus account doesn’t have e-mail stored since this could cause a lot of mail to be pushed to your BB. You could probably move all your existing mail to a folder in your Yahoo! Mail Plus account, but I have not tested if this prevents existing e-mail from being pushed to your Blackberry device.

2) A Blackberry device connected to BIS 2.x


Setup:

After you have forwarded your two external accounts to the two Yahoo! Mail Plus addresses within your existing Yahoo! Mail Plus account we can move over to BIS 2.x and set it up as follows:

First set up one account in BIS with "E-mail Address" = "myself@yahoo.com". Fill in password and BIS will do the rest and confirm that the account is set up correctly.

Then open the account settings by clicking the "Edit" link. Change "E-mail Account" to "external_1" (you can choose whatever name you want here though), set "E-mail" to "external_1@someisp.com" and a signature if you want. The "User ID" is of course "myself@yahoo.com" and can not be changed in this view.

Then go back to the account overview and hit ths "Filters" link. Create four filters (you can name them whatever you like):

1)
Apply Filter when "To" Field Contains "external_1@someisp.com"
Check "Forward messages to handheld"

2)
Apply Filter when "CC" Field Contains "external_1@someisp.com"
Check "Forward messages to handheld"

3)
Apply Filter when "To" Field Contains "external_2@someisp.com"
Check "Do not forward messages to handheld"

4)
Apply Filter when "CC" Field Contains "external_2@someisp.com"
Check "Do not forward messages to handheld"

Now set up the second account in BIS with "Email Address" = "my_alias@yahoo.com".
Edit the account in the same way as above, but set "Email Account" to
"external_2" and "E-mail" to "external_2@someisp.com". Set the signature if you want to.

Set four filters for this account as follows:

1)
Apply Filter when "To" Field Contains "external_2@someisp.com"
Check "Forward messages to handheld"

2)
Apply Filter when "CC" Field Contains "external_2@someisp.com"
Check "Forward messages to handheld"

3)
Apply Filter when "To" Field Contains "external_1@someisp.com"
Check "Do not forward messages to handheld"

4)
Apply Filter when "CC" Field Contains "external_1@someisp.com"
Check "Do not forward messages to handheld"

The one limitation with this setup is that BCC'ed e-mail won't be pushed to your Blackberry Device unless you choose one account to receive such mail. You choose this by setting "When no filters apply:" to “Forward messages to handheld" for the account you want to receive BCC'ed e-mail. For the other account you need it set to "Do not forward messages to handheld" (unless you want to have BCC'ed e-mail to both accounts).

I thought that you would only need filter 1) and 2) for each accounts, but that didn't always work right for some reason I have not investigated yet.


Now you are basically done:

You will have two new accounts on your Blackberry device called "external_1" and external_2" (or whatever you named them). They will receive e-mail separately. You can reply and forward from your "Messages" folder having the correct from address set every time. You will have sent mail from both external accounts stored in your Yahoo! Mail Plus outbox. You can compose new mail from your Yahoo Mail! Plus account's web interface with the two external account e-mail addresses (this mail will of course not be pushed to your Blackberry device).

You can of course compose new e-mail from both accounts on your
Blackberry choosing one as the primary one, meaning the one you will compose
from by default, under Advanced Settings > Message Services.


Disclaimer:

Please do not hang, flame, fry or flog me if it doesn't work for you, or if I have made mistakes in this HOWTO. I was asked to write it on this forum, and have only tested it with my carrier, T-Mobile, on my 8700g. I am only assuming it will work the same way with other carriers and Blackberry devices.

However, I have now tested it for several weeks without any problems, so it seems like a stable solution as long as carrier, RIM and Yahoo! have their stuff in working order (that has not always been the case the last few weeks).

//C

[Stinsonddog]

Wirelessly posted (8700c: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

A few notes. Thanks. These tricks are useful. Cingular is not setg up for push Yahoo and free Yahoo allows at least one alias as I have that. If you don't mind me adding this to my tips page, please PM me.

[cdysthe]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

Originally Posted by Stinsonddog

Wirelessly posted (8700c: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

A few notes. Thanks. These tricks are useful. Cingular is not setg up for push Yahoo and free Yahoo allows at least one alias as I have that. If you don't mind me adding this to my tips page, please PM me.

Thank you for the comments. I didn't know you could have aliases on a free account. What would be interesting to know is if the free accounts allow you to use the alias as login name for the account. If not, the free account won't work for this setup. Does the free account allow you to reply and compose mail with it?

//C

[Stinsonddog]

Originally Posted by cdysthe

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)



Thank you for the comments. I didn't know you could have aliases on a free account. What would be interesting to know is if the free accounts allow you to use the alias as login name for the account. If not, the free account won't work for this setup. Does the free account allow you to reply and compose mail with it?

//C

Yes it does allow both composes and replys. AND yes you can log in with the alias. I think its the same inbox though.

[cdysthe]

Originally Posted by Stinsonddog

Yes it does allow both composes and replys. AND yes you can log in with the alias. I think its the same inbox though.

That's werid. It's not what it says here:

Yahoo! - Mail Plus

As you can see it says that you only can "send messages from any of your email accounts" with the Plus account. If it's like you are saying the only thing you get with a Plus account is more storage, better spam filtering and no tags.

//C

[anesone]

My understanding is that all you would need is your reglular Yahoo accounts, no Plus account needed. mobile.yahoo.com/blackberry shows that it will push email from your Yahoo account to the handheld. (One-way synchronization between your BlackBerry device and your web based Yahoo! Mail account. When you make changes on your BlackBerry device, it's reflected in your web account. (And two-way sync is coming soon.))

When you compose an email, you can set which account it is being sent from by toggling the Send Using field at the very top of your message. Also, when replying to an email...it uses the address the original email was sent to.

I guess I'm just not understanding why you would want to set it up the way cdysthe proposes.

[cdysthe]

Originally Posted by anesone

My understanding is that all you would need is your reglular Yahoo accounts, no Plus account needed. mobile.yahoo.com/blackberry shows that it will push email from your Yahoo account to the handheld. (One-way synchronization between your BlackBerry device and your web based Yahoo! Mail account. When you make changes on your BlackBerry device, it's reflected in your web account. (And two-way sync is coming soon.))

When you compose an email, you can set which account it is being sent from by toggling the Send Using field at the very top of your message. Also, when replying to an email...it uses the address the original email was sent to.

I guess I'm just not understanding why you would want to set it up the way cdysthe proposes.

Let me clarify:

Please note that I am talking about _external_ accounts, not another Yahoo! address (although you need the other Yahoo address also in my setup).

I know you can send from the other Yahoo! address you set up in the free account, but you can not send from external accounts. So if you either collect, or have "external_account@mysip.com" forwarded to Yahoo Mail, you can not answer with that address from Yahoo, only with one of your "yahoo.com" addresses.

I signed up for a free account to check. I set the Yahoo! account up to pop from an external account. I can not send mail from Yahoo using the external account's email address. It even warns me in the setup:

"Send Mail from this account in Yahoo! Mail. Upgrade to Yahoo! Mail Plus".

So I do not know what kind of free Yahoo! account you guys have!

On why to set it up like I propose:

It's because I want to be able to reply with the right from address from my BlackBerry device to the two _external_ (not Yahoo!) accounts. Mail push is just an "added bonus" in this context.

My setup "tricks" BIS to see one Yahoo! Mail Plus account as two separate accounts where you can set from address and filters for both (since you can use both email addresses for the account as login). I initially thought I would need two Yahoo! account to get what I want, but I found a way with filters to only use one Yahoo! Mail (Plus) account. The whole thing is in the end designed to overcome a limitation in the Blackberry e-mail client where you can not have the client set the from address based on the to address unless the mail comes in to two separate BIS mailboxes.

To conclude: If you do not need to deal with two external accounts separately on your Blackberry device you do not need this. But if you are this is the only way I have found to be able to have it work transparently (I do not have to do anything but hit reply and the correct from address is used based on the address is was sent to). There are manual solutions to this like BBReply, but they require that you actually check, and if need be, change the from address manually. I can not be bothered with that, since I would make mistakes and reply to work mail with my private address all the time!

[anesone]

I see what you are saying now. Very ingenious solution. I may have to look into that.