Admittedly, I’ve never really done email on my phone before Nokia Messaging came around. Sure, I’d installed Profimail and others, just to check out, but I usually promptly removed them, not seeing the need. However, Nokia Messaging has turned me into a mobile email junkie, but there are two main things that really bother me about the current version that’s available.
First, you cannot, currently, download email from more than 3 days ago. This limitation was added recently, so you might be able to use an older version of the app that allows for longer periods, but this is it, if you’re running the latest version. Also, you cannot currently store your messages on anything other than the C: memory, which is quite limited on devices such as my Nokia N97. As such, today I decided to check out Nokia’s Mail For Exchange application, which addresses both of those shortcomings.
While tweeting about my initial experience, I noticed that many of you were unsure of how to set up Nokia’s Mail For Exchange to synchronize with your Google Contacts, Calendar, and Email, so I figured I’d put together a quick walkthrough for you. This walkthrough should work on any Symbian-powered smartphone, provided you can install Mail For Exchange. If you have a device with Nokia Messaging built-in, such as the N86, E72, or E75, you can refer to Dotsisx’s walkthrough here.
How To Setup Mail For Exchange To Sync With Google
For starters, you’ll need to download Mail For Exchange to your phone. On the Nokia N97, this can be found in the Software Update application, or you can download the latest version straight from Nokia. Before you install this, though, you need to set your phone to store messages on your external memory, rather than the limited C: storage. To do so on the N97, open the Messaging app, press Options, and scroll down to Settings. Now, go all the way down to ‘Other Settings’, and in there you’ll find the option to change the storage location.
Now you can install Mail For Exchange to your phone, and when it is finished, it will prompt you to setup a new profile. Simply enter your Google username and password, and put a few characters for the domain – you’ll change those later. Click OK and let the app attempt to connect the account.
It should pop up an error, and dump you in the settings panel. If it doesn’t, simply press options, Edit Profile. You’ll get the screen below:
Enter ‘m.google.com‘ as the Exchange server, and click to the right to change to the Credentials panel, and erase the domain that you entered previously, to leave that field blank.
Now, press to the right again to switch to the Sync Schedule panel. Here, you can adjust different peak and off-peak schedules for when you receive mail.
Again, click to the right to setup your Calendar exchange, including how far back you want to sync and whether to keep or discard current phone entries on first sync. The next tab to the right is the Tasks sync, which is not supported by Google yet, so keep that set to ‘No’. Again to the right we get the Contacts sync.
One last click to the right brings us the treasured Email sync settings. Here you can adjust a few settings, including the signature and how far back to sync your messages. I put mine on 1 month, though there’s also an ‘all messages’ option, if you’re feeling brave.
When you’re finished, click the right ‘back’ softkey to have your settings saved, and Mail For Exchange will automatically go to work, synchronizing all your goodies to your phone. Note that the email syncing process can take quite a while, but it should automatically use WiFi if available, which will help things move a bit faster.
With this setup, I’m successfully synchronizing my Google Contacts, Calendar, and Email to my Symbian-powered smartphones. You should have no issues setting yours up just like this, for full sync. I’ll be doing some comparisons between this and Nokia Messaging shortly, so be sure to check back soon!
