iPhone GMail Calendar Synch. & Other Misc. Tips

More iPhone tips.

We will begin with a walk-through on setting up your GMail account with IMAP. Which is the way you want to do it. You delete it on your iPhone and it deletes it in your GMail account, like it should.

You need to be absolutely sure that you are currently running OS 3.0 or higher. If you are, let's begin.

1. Make sure you've enabled IMAP in your main GMail settings. Go to GMail.com and set that up.
2. On your iPhone, or iPod touch, tap Settings.
3. Mail.
4. Add Account.
5. Other.
6. Add Mail Account.
7. Enter your account information. Be sure to use your full GMail or Google Apps e-mail address. XXXXX@GMail.com for example.
8. Tap Save.

Then in the section titled "Incoming Mail Server."

1. The host name is imap.gmail.com.
2. Your user name is your full Gmail address, including "@gmail.com" or your full Google Apps email address.

For the section titled "Outgoing Mail Server"

1. The host Name is 'smtp.gmail.com'
2. Your user name again, is your full Gmail or Google Apps e-mail address including the "@gmail.com" part.
3. Tap Save.

Then go to your mail account's "Advanced Settings" near the bottom.

1. Under "Mailbox Behaviors" tap on Deleted Mailbox and select Trash.
2. Under the Deleted Messages section, tap on Remove and select Never.

Now to synchronize your Google Calendar. This is great if you share appointments with someone. I LOVE using this to keep a group calendar with my wife. We share the same Google Calendar account and it keeps us synchronized with life. :)

1. Tap on Settings.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account...
4. Select Microsoft Exchange.
5. In the Email field, enter your full Google account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an "Unable to verify certificate" warning when you proceed to the next step.
6. Leave the Domain field blank.
7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the User name.
8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
10. Choose Accept if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.
11. A new Server field will appear. Enter m.google.com.
12. Press Next at the top of your screen again.
13. Select the Google services you want to sync. Currently only Contacts and Calendar are supported.
14. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

Now for some little tips that make things more convenient. I receive at least 100 or so messages a day from Facebook so the default settings are a nuisance. I don't want to have to open each e-mail and slowly delete them all. If I do it from the inbox, I can't really tell what I'm deleting since half of the preview is a bunch of Facebook information.

I found these nice options in the settings which I don't remember having seen before.

1. Go into Settings.
2. Tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Scroll down to the "Mail" section.
4. I changed the "Show" option to 100 Recent Messages but you can increase up to 200 or decrease to 25 if you are running low on resources.
5. I increased the Preview to 3 Lines so I can now see more of the e-mail from the inbox instead of being forced to open the message to see what it is about.
6. Below that you have the Minimum Font Size which I reduced in order to fit more into that preview. The default is Medium, I selected Small.

There are a lot of nice options here like increasing the Calendar sync date, e-mail sort order and CC Label display.

I don't really hear many people talking about these options but I found them very convenient. Hope you do to. :)