Getting email JUST right

[Schtibbie]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Scenario: I have a personal iPhone that I pay for fully but I happen to have it hooked up to my work exchange account for mail and calendar. I also have my gmail set up in the mail app.

Issue: if I choose to use mail app to send gmail, I have to deal with this gigantonormous contact list that apparently comes from exchange. My personal (gmail) contacts aren't there. I can use safari for gmail and it looks awesome! But then what's the point of also having it set in mail app?

The other semi-issue: it's the weekend and I open mail app and BOOM - a ton of work emails. I can't make just gmail update.

What do folks usually do?

 

[Schtibbie]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Bump! I guess my question is only partly a technical one. I'm also curious how folks with "personal" iPhones like mine handle their work vs personal (gmail etc) split on their phone - effectively.

 

[swiftaw]

I guess you could turn off your work contact list in settings, and then disable your work email during the weekends.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Bump! I guess my question is only partly a technical one. I'm also curious how folks with "personal" iPhones like mine handle their work vs personal (gmail etc) split on their phone - effectively.

Honestly, I leave my work email off my phone. It's not required for me to have it on there fortunately.

The only thing I could think of so that it doesn't update exchange when your off is going into Settings and turning exchange off till you're back at work. Kind of a hassle but it should do the trick.

[Edit]: Doh! shiftaw is quicker than I!

 

[Schtibbie]

I guess you could turn off your work contact list in settings, and then disable your work email during the weekends.

Uck, ugly. Ok, I think I'm realizing that I'm probably asking the phone to do too much to keep my work and personal lives separate.

I suppose I'd be satisfied if I could figure out how to get GMail contacts in (so they autocomplete just like they do in Mobile Safari in Gmail, so that emailing a photo for example could be done).

If I REALLY don't want to even think about work on the weekends, I could just open GMail in Safari during the weekends and never touch the mail app icon (even though it says I have 35 new mails), or maybe just leave the mail app for ONLY my work email and disconnect it from GMail entirely.

And I'm not even gonna THINK about my calendar yet..

 

[JulianL]

I could just open GMail in Safari during the weekends and never touch the mail app icon (even though it says I have 35 new mails), or maybe just leave the mail app for ONLY my work email and disconnect it from GMail entirely.

Personally that's what I'd do, to the extent of disconnecting the mail app from your gmail. If you search the app store for "gmail" you'll find a few apps that are custom browsers for gmail access and I think that some of them might give badge notifications for unread e-mails so you'd end up with two email apps on your phone, the built in mail app for work and a separate gmail app for your personal stuff.

Let us know how you get on.

- Julian

 

[SnowDX]

Do you have Gmail set up as an Exchange account? Or do you have set up as IMAP? I've got my work Exchange account set up and then I also have Gmail set uo as an exchange account and all of my Gmail contacts are there (and I don't even have contacts syncing with Gmail in the account settings on the phone). And yes I also have a huge a list from the Exchange server as well, but the Gmail contacts are in there.

I don't know if you need push mail during the week during work, but if you don't, you could turn off push for your work Exchange account and just set it to fetch manually. Then only your Gmail personal email will be pushed to you and it shouldn't check your work email unless you hit the circular arrow at the bottom of the mailbox page or go into the work inbox or unified inbox (so make sure just click on your Gmail inbox). Worst case, you could turn off push for work on the weekend and turn it back on Mondays.

 

[soLoredd]

Not sure if this is viable but my work has a web address I can go to and login using Novell GroupWise. They actually have Novell Mobile website. That's what I do but I also am not required to have email access when not at work.

 

[Schtibbie]

Do you have Gmail set up as an Exchange account? Or do you have set up as IMAP? I've got my work Exchange account set up and then I also have Gmail set uo as an exchange account and all of my Gmail contacts are there

Interesting. I have gmail set as IMAP and my work (obviously) set as Exchange. I didn't know I could do Gmail as Exchange also. I'll check it out! I *was* just going to yank Gmail out of my mail app to keep work truly separated, but I think I have to have it in there so I can email photos and stuff FROM that account. Is that right?

And I don't have push set up for anything on this phone - I'm on the 200meg plan!

 

[SnowDX]

Interesting. I have gmail set as IMAP and my work (obviously) set as Exchange. I didn't know I could do Gmail as Exchange also. I'll check it out! I *was* just going to yank Gmail out of my mail app to keep work truly separated, but I think I have to have it in there so I can email photos and stuff FROM that account. Is that right?

And I don't have push set up for anything on this phone - I'm on the 200meg plan!

You can have more than one Exchange account (not sure how many, but at least 2) if you have iOS 4.x. Versions prior to 4 didn't support multiple exchange accounts.

If you set it up as an Exchange account, you should have your contacts. And if you use a Gmail calendar, you can have that syncing as well then (easier than setting it up as CalDAV). Now, I thought that having everything set to fetch manually meant that when you click on Mail, that it wouldn't check email until you clicked the circular arrow, or until you went into one of the inboxes. But, I've got 3 push accounts and 2 fetch accounts set up so sometimes I see the spinny wheel at the top when I open Mail and sometimes I don't, so you'll have to test this with everything set to manual fetch. Hopefully, it will only check if you click the circular arrow or if you click on an inbox. Then, only use the unified inbox at work, and on the weekend, just click the Gmail inbox.