Outlook Mobile Team Blog

Using Gmail with Outlook Mobile

In this post I discuss some of the most common issues that arise when trying to use Gmail on your Windows Mobile phone.

IMAP vs. POP

There are two 'languages' (or protocols) that the phone can use to communicate with the Gmail servers.  These protocols are called POP3 and IMAP4 and can be selected in the email setup wizard.

Generally speaking, if you are using Windows Mobile to access your Gmail account, you should use IMAP.  The Gmail POP server has some well-known 'quirks' that often end up confusing users.  Some of the more common POP-related issues are listed below.

Q. Messages that I mark as Read/Unread on the phone do not get updated on the Gmail website.

A. This is an inherent limitation of the POP protocol.  IMAP does not have this limitation.

Q. Messages are being downloaded to my inbox but disappear the next time I synchronize.

A. This is because the Gmail POP server only reports back information about 'new' messages.  The phone interprets the lack of information about old messages to mean that they were deleted from the server.

One workaround is to edit your username in the account settings wizard to use a format specific to Gmail POP accounts.  Instead of the username myaddress@gmail.com, enter the username "recent:myaddress@gmail.com". 

The addition of the "recent:" prefix informs the Gmail server that the phone wants information about all the messages from the past 30 days.  Unfortunately this means that you won't be able to read messages older than 30 days.

Q. Messages older than 30 days are being deleted from the phone even though I configured my account to download all messages.

A. See above.

Q. Messages that I send to others are showing up in my own inbox.

A. This is a quirk of the Gmail POP server.  Some people prefer this behavior since it allows them to review messages they have sent.

IMAP vs. Windows Mobile 6.0

In WM 6.0, we implemented some features that made setting up an email account easier than ever.  These included a revamped setup wizard and automatic setup for well-known email services.

However WM 6.0 shipped before Gmail unveiled IMAP access, so automatic setup creates a POP account.

To disable automatic setup, uncheck the box labeled "Try to get e-mail settings automatically from the Internet" on page one of the account creation wizard.

Some versions of Windows Mobile might not have this checkbox.  In that case, you must perform a bit of trickery to fool the setup wizard.  When asked for your email address, type a fake address that does not end in @gmail.com.  After the account is created, edit the account settings, and enter the correct email address.

Have other Gmail questions or tips?  Post a comment!

Warning: the following contains explicit SSL

(or, Messaging: Port Probing Demystified)

The "Require SSL" checkbox in the account configuration wizard for POP3/IMAP accounts is an often misunderstood feature.  It's somewhat ironic, then, that the intent of the checkbox is actually to simplify account configuration.

Compare the following two screenshots taken from WM6 Standard and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Notice how much more complexity there is in the Thunderbird dialog.  Now this is not intended to be a dig at Thunderbird.  In fact, as a power user I prefer and appreciate this level of control.  But I realize that my preference doesn't reflect the best user experience for someone who doesn't write email software for a living!

Pop quiz, hotshots:

1. List the standard and secure ports for POP3, IMAP, and SMTP.
2. What is the difference between TLS and SSL?  How do you know which your server supports?
3. What is the difference between "Use secure connection" and "Use secure authentication"?

To expect that the average user would be able to answer any of these questions is ridiculous.  If they are able to provide the server address and username, that is already a huge win in my book.

So in the name of usability, we distilled all this down to a single, easy-to-ignore checkbox.  Users who don't care about security don't need to worry.  More informed/vigilant/paranoid users can enable the secure setting.

Probing the issue

Despite all the settings available in Thunderbird, there are really only three common connection profiles:

1. Implicit SSL on the secure port (a.k.a. IMAPS/POP3S/SMTPS)
2. Explicit SSL on the standard port (a.k.a. STARTTLS/STLS)
3. Unencrypted on the standard port

Rather than ask the user to know or guess which profile matches their particular server configuration, we simply try them all until we find one that works.  We call this port probing.

Let's run through an example port probing scenario where SSL is not supported:

1. User configures an IMAP4 account and initiates a Send/Receive
2. Probe attempt 1
   1. Implicit SSL on IMAPS port 993
   2. Connection time out
3. Probe attempt 2
   1. Explicit SSL on IMAP port 143
   2. Connection successful
   3. Ask server if STARTTLS is supported
   4. Server says "no"
4. Probe attempt 3
   1. Unencrypted on IMAP port 143
   2. Connection successful (just use the connection from the previous attempt)
   3. Ask server if plaintext authentication is supported
   4. Server says "yes"
   5. Login!

Now that we know which connection method the server supports, we can continue to use that method during subsequent Send/Receive sessions.

One important aspect of this routine is that the more secure connection profiles are tried first.  In the above example, plaintext login was tried only as a last resort.

Questions arise

Q. Isn't port probing slow?

A. Yes, it can be slow since in many cases we are sitting around waiting for the socket connect attempt to time out.  But typically the probing is only done during the first Send/Receive so it is a one time cost.

Q. What if my server doesn't listen on the standard ports?

A. Specify the port number in the hostname (e.g. "imap.aol.com:143").  This works for both incoming and outgoing mail server. 

Protip: Specifying the port number in this manner will influence the port probing logic to favor the specified port number and will generally speed up the connection process!

 

Q. I'm using WM5 and [scenario] won't work!

A. Unfortunately there were a number of bugs in the port probing implementation in WM5 (see Errata below)

Q. Wait, you never explained what the "Require SSL" checkbox does

A. If the checkbox is checked, the port probing will never try plaintext login over an unencrypted channel.

Errata

The port probing implementation in WM5 was not perfect, though I'd venture to guess that most users never encountered these bugs.  That said, woe unto he whose email administrator did use nonstandard ports or did regard STARTTLS above all others.

If you are having email connectivity issues and you suspect port probing may be to blame, try these troubleshooting techniques:

1. Add or remove the port number from the hostname
2. Toggle the "Require SSL" checkbox on or off
3. Toggle the "Outgoing connection requires authentication" checkbox on or off
4. (Try different permutations of the above settings)

If you have control over your own mail server, some connectivity issues can be resolved by opening alternative encryption/authentication methods.  For example if your server only uses explicit SSL, try enabling implicit SSL on a different port.

Smartdial: Combining Calls and Contacts

In a recent post I talked about the introduction of Smartdial to WM Professional and described a bit of what it does.  In a nutshell, it provides you with a filterable list of calls and contacts.

But I thought I should say a little bit more about the “calls and contacts” part of that description.  Smartdial aggregates your contact list, your SIM contacts, your call history items, and your speed dial entries into a single searchable list.  Needless to say this could be a pretty large list.  I don’t consider myself much of a talker, but even my call history list gets pretty long so when you add contacts to the list you might worry that it could get unmanageable.

To try to prevent that from happening we did a couple things in WM6 to make the list more people centric and manageable.

First, we collapse all the call history entries from a particular contact or phone number.  So if you have called your friend Bob three times and he has called you twice you’ll still only see a single entry for him in the list.  The icon will indicate the direction of the last call (incoming, outgoing, or missed) and the communication method will be set to the last used (work, mobile, etc.) so that you can easily call back at the same number.

This doesn’t just apply to people in your contact list – if a phone number is not recognized as being associated with a particular contact then all of the calls to or from that phone number are collapsed as if it were an unnamed contact.  And of course in either case you can easily get to the full list of calls to the person through the summary card and the Call History Per Contact feature that I described in another post.

Then, because this is a dialer after all, we order the list by time of last call.  So the first entry in Smartdial will always be the contact or phone number that you most recently communicated with.  Because we collapsed all the call history entries for a given person they will be ordered based on the time of the most recent call you had with them.  So of course you can always press talk-talk to call back the last person you talked to, and it is easy to find people you contact often at the top of the list.

Of course, with the list ordered by call history it becomes even nicer to be able to use filtering to find people you haven’t spoken to as recently who are further down in the list.  So it all ties back in to that original post about filtering in Smartdial – how convenient J

Windows Mobile Professional: Smartdial

Here's another new thing in WM6 that I am particularly fond of - smart dial for WM Professional (Pocket PC).  Sure, this is old hat to WM Standard (Smartphone) users, but I like the touch experience and am thrilled to have access to this feature now on my WM Professional.  For those of you who aren't already familiar with I'll talk a bit about it.

You see smart dial when you enter the dialer - by pressing talk, by choosing phone from the start menu, and with this feature also by typing from the home screen.  The idea is that when you are in the dialer you can see a list of calls and contacts and you can filter that list by typing or pressing keys on the on screen keypad.  Use the keypad to type out the name of a friend and their contact will show up at the top of the list as all the other calls and contacts are filtered out.  You can keep typing until they are at the very top of the list or type until you see them and scroll down.  Personally I'm not a big fan of scrolling so I use this to quickly find and talk to people in my contact list.

This is actually the same sort of functionality you get when you type in the contacts application, although it has call history and speed dial integrated in as well.  And, if filter down to find that you didn't actually have a contact for a person after all you can direct dial their number immediately.

Call History Per Contact

In WM6 we did a bit of work to make it easier to track your call history with a particular person.  So, in addition to being able to see your entire call history you can now get individual call history from your contact card.  This is a feature I'm particularly fond of, so I thought I'd point it out and run through the details.

You find this feature in the contacts card of someone you've called or who's called you.  Just under the header you'll see a new field that says "Last Call".  This field gives you information about your last phone communication with this contact:

• The time of the last call, or the date if it wasn't today
• The number that was used - in case your contact has multiple numbers like mobile, work, home, etc...
• The direction of the call in an icon - outgoing, incoming, or missed

If you action on this new field you'll be taken to a list of all your phone communication with the contact.  More recent communications are at the top and each one indicates all the information shown for the "Last Call" plus the duration of each communication.  From this list you can delete individual call logs, delete all call logs, or of course call someone back if you are feeling more generous :)

If you are trying to find out how many times your mom called you last week this would be the way to go, and you can even get to it from the call history list by actioning on a particular call to bring up the contact card.  Of course you can still see your full call history from the dedicated app with calls to all contacts sorted by time.  There you can filter for missed, incoming and outgoing calls as well.

WM6 - Messaging

I have a few seconds, so figured I'll show off some (not all) Messaging featuers. Some of these features require Exchange12 to work and will not work with previous versions of the Exchange Server.  All of these screenshots were taken on HTC Dash running Windows Mobile 6. 

I'll give out details in some later post.  This will be a very high level walk-through :). 

Here is how the Messaging Account Picker looks like (the default start screen) :-

List view looks pretty much same, or does it :)?  New icons :-

Notice the IRM icon and the fact that you can flag Messages now!

Messages are richer, much richer now (this is a read form, scrolled down a bit) :-

Now to downloading.  Or rather, fetching.  No more having to start a Send / Receive after clicking "Download".  Also check out the new status bar :-

More flagging features :-

The next few screenshots show IRM (Information Rights Managed) emails :-

Have you ever gone on vacation and forgotten to set your out-of-office message? Well, now you can do that right from the device :-

And yes, you can also search your exchange server for emails, right from the device. 

Cool huh?  Thought so :).

Have fun!

Zeeshan.

WM 6.0 is on wikipedia + some new Messaging friendly devices...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile.  I've always been a huge fan of Wikipedia.

But really got me excited is the new Moto Q q9.  It looks awesome!  Check out the QWERTY keyboard.  I've been going around without my laptop for a while. I think it's time to put the laptop on ebay now (uh actually it's Microsoft property so ... probably not ebay).

I can't decide between this, Samsung Blackjack and T-Mobile Dash.  Only if my wife would let me get all three....

Windows Mobile 6 is here...!!!

Drool...

After sooo many months of development, it's finally here.  Public! We can write about it.  We can show it off.  Yes!!!!!

Over the next few days developers, testers and program managers in the Outlook Mobile team will write about features they worked on here.  But lets do some high-level overview here.

So what's so cool about Windows Mobile 6?  Well, it's not a comprehensive list but some of the things I like about WM6 are:

• New look and feel, new icons, new sound ... little things amuse me :).
• It's faster! 
• More secure.  More cryptography.  You can read and compose rights-managed mails (IRM).  You can also open rights managed Office documents.  It's awesome. 
• Ready for this?  You can read HTML Mail! Yup, rich emails with images, tables, formats and much more! 
• Comes with Windows Live (was that too much to ask).  Hotmail, MSN Messenger, Spaces...it's all in here!  You can chat with multiple people at the same time.
• Keyboard Shortcuts in Messaging: It seems lame, but it's super useful.  Press-and-hold a shortcut key and boom, the action happens. 
• You can also set Out of Office messages on your exchange server using the phone.  I actually use it every time I am away (yes yes, I have a bad memory and forget to set my OOF message on the desktop before I leave).
• Exchange e-mail search!  You can search your emails stored on the server from your device. 
• Quickly fetch e-mail messages from the server, instead of having to do a full sync (like in Windows Mobile 5).  Emails now show this useful statusbar showing what's happening.  The status bar actually goes away when there's no update to show to maximize real estate. 
• You can finally flag e-mail messages and sync that with the server.  Makes e-mail management really easy.  No more marking the email as unread to remember to action on it on the desktop later.  Just flag it!
• The infamous IMAP namespace issue is ... drumroll ... fixed!  That's right.  Fixed!!!!  We had so many questions about it that I had to post an apology.  But it's fixed. 
• What else did we fix?  Oh ya, multiple accounts in Messaging sync just fine.  Schedule sync works!  And the reply-all bug y'all complained so much about (well, at least some of you did) is also taken care of.  See, we do listen! 
• Call history is now linked to contacts, so it gives you context.  Open a contact and see when else you communicated with that contact.  Missed a call?  Now instead of just seeing the number you missed, open the contact and communicate however you want (other phone numbers, SMS, IM...). 
• The calendar app has this fancy ribbon thing that summarizes the day.  It's more useful than it seems.  I'll let Calendar folks talk about their stuff in a later post. 
• Works magically with Windows Vista.
• .NET CF 2.0 and Mobile SQL Server!
• Support for storage card encryption and storage card wipe.

...and a ton more.  This is the list off the top of my head of stuff that *I* enjoy.

So where are some screenshots, you ask?  Fair question.  In my excitement I don't want to hold this post for screenshots.  They'll follow. 

We are back...!

Well, at least I am back.  I'll start going through questions I received through the blog, but it'll take some time.  I'll also start posting again.  Thanks for your patience. 

Some cool devices for the Holidays...

First, please accept my apologies for being away for so long.  I took some vacation (okay, a lot of vacation days) and training.  Rest of the time was spent frantically catching up.  I'll be taking nearly all December off, so happy holidays. 

I figured I'd write about some cool devices before taking off. This is not a comprehensive list by any means.  I was told there are 100+ Windows Mobile devices out there.  Just a few :-

T-Mobile Dash / HTC s620

T-Mobile Dash, also known as HTC s620 in some markets, comes with 64MB memory, microSD expansion (those things are tiny), 1.3 mega pixel camera and a large 2.4" color screen.  It's got it all: quad-band, Wifi, bluetooth...you name it.  And yes, it does have Windows Mobile 5.0 with Messaging and Security Feature Pack (always-up-to-date e-mails baby). 

Cingular 8525 / HTC TyTN

This UMTS device also has GSM / GPRS / Edge connectivity, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and mini USB.  Better camera (2 mp) with flashlight only sweatens the deal.  Oh, and did I say it has 128 MB ROM and 64MB SDRAM? 

Cingular 3125 - HTC STARTrk

Now to clamshell (flip) phone lovers, Christmas came early this year for clamshell lovers.

Cingular Blackjack (US) / Samsung SGH i607 (elsewhere)

Wow!  And you thought Moto-Q was cool.  Similar to HTC Dash, it's a wide-screen Smartphone device with full QWERTY key board.  Vodaphone, TIM and Bouygues carry it in Europe and Singular in the US.  It's also sold unlocked.  They said it was the thinnest and smallest Windows Mobile device yet to ship with a full QWERTY keyboard.  I haven't had my hands on it yet, so I can't judge.

O2 XDA Stealth

It seems that this baby is for Eruope only for now.  It does have a touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

Pharos GPS phones

There are also some cool GPS devices.  Check out Pharos PPC 525e and Pharos PPC 600e.

Finally there's always Moto-Q and Palm Treo devices.  Oh there are so many others. This was a good year.  No, scratch that. This was a great year! 

Dash...

 Check out this baby!  The new Smartphone from T-Mobile :-

It's a wide-screen Smartphone with a Qwerty keyboard that's been getting really good reviews.

Check out this at brighthand: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=12467.

Sadly, I haven't played with it yet :(.  I'll post my own review as soon as I get my hands on it.  Now please excuse me while I wipe all this drool off my keyboard.

QnA: Can I save mails on a storage card?

Question:

I have a T-mobile SDA.  There is a limitation of base memory size on the phone.  I would like to move my outlook folder to default on the micro SDA card rather than on the main memory of the phone.

I sync with my corporate email and I get a error of low storage space.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

Answer:

Hi Neil,

Unfortunately at this time you’re stuck at using the main memory. I am sorry this isn’t as pleasant an experience as we would have liked it to be. Perhaps you could narrow your sync window (eg. download the past day’s messages only) or decrease the default sync size (eg. set it to 0.5 KB). If you’ve installed apps that you don’t use anymore then you could consider removing them to free up some space.

Since installing apps on an SD card works, I normally install programs on the storage card. I also keep my music, pictures and other files there. It’d be ideal to be able to keep my e-mails there too, but these are some workarounds that may work.

Thanks. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any other question.

Zeeshan Hamid.

QnA: "Move"ing messages across accounts

Question:

QnA: Can I sync with multiple Exchange Accounts?

Question:

Hi there. I am trying to find out if I can configure profiles for outlook mobile to use different exchange servers just like you can on desktop outlook. Is this possible and how would this impact on direct push and syncing. I want to use work and personal exchange accounts on the same device.

Answer:

Unfortunately it is not possible to setup more than one profile to sync with more than one exchange server on a device. Perhaps you can use IMAP or POP to sync with other exchange servers (if they provide an IMAP or POP front). Thanks.

Zeeshan. 

Palm Treo 700-series offer!

I am now blogging using Windows Live Writer.  Now I can actually blog really quickly without having to use a web-UI.  Awesome! 

That said, Palm has a crazy deal going on.  Trade in your Treo 650 and get $125 towards the purchase of any 700 series Palm (get one with Windows Mobile).  Seriously, who wouldn't want this baby (Treo 750v) :-

(picture courtesy of Palm)