Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Blackberry with Thunderbird or Other Non-Outlook Email Applications

Summary: Blackberry users should not be forced into using Outlook. Blackberry service can be easily integrated with Thunderbird or other non-Outlook email applications.

Solution: Thunderbird is the primary email application that is used on a desktop to send, receive and file messages. Blackberry is a secondary email application that is used to send and receive email messages remotely. User needs to (1) use a single email address known to the outside world, (2) be able to receive and send email to and from this single email address from either the Blackberry or Thunderbird, (3) maintain a complete record in Thunderbird of all sent and received email (whether sent or received from the Blackberry or Thunderbird).

Detailed Instructions:

1. Select an External Email Address. Select an email address that will be used externally, i.e. the email address you provide to others on your business card or otherwise. For this example, we will use fred@flintstone.com.

2. Configure Domain-Level Email Forwarding. Configure your domain-level email forwarding so that all incoming email addressed to fred@flintstone.com is forwarded to both a dedicated Blackberry address (fredflintstone@att.blackberry.net) and a dedicated Thunderbird address (fredthunderbird@gmail.com).

3. Configure Blackberry. Configure the dedicated Blackberry address so that the "Reply to:" address is fred@flintstone.com and the "Auto BCC:" address is fredthunderbird@gmail.com.

4. Configure Thunderbird. Configure Thunderbird to retrieve email from fredthunderbird@gmail.com; this will include incoming email sent to fred@flintstone.com as well as BCC email from the Blackberry. Configure Thunderbird so that the "Reply to:" address is fred@flintstone.com and the "Auto BCC:" address is fredflintstone@att.blackberry.net. Create a Thunderbird rule that is applied to all incoming email sent from fred@flintstone.com (which is BCC email from the Blackberry) that marks messages as "Read" and files them in the "Sent Items" folder.

7 comments:

  1. Hi,

    There is a wireless option that gives BIS users the BES experience.

    The Funambol sync clients for BlackBerry and Thunderbird/Lightning works well on Windows, Mac and Linux. You need a data plan as Funambol needs to use your carriers APN.

    If you were fortunate enough to register with Funambol before October 2009 you have a free unlimited account. New accounts are 90 day trials only...

    -- Robert.

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  2. I am in the middle of attempting this right now. The only issue that I see at the moment is that I am receiving duplicate emails to the BlackBerry...any suggestions?

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  3. Why can't you just have the blackberry connect directly to the gmail account through IMAP? Why setup and dedicated blackberry e-mail too?

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  4. Here is a real life situation. You are in a foreign country (Israel) and your provider cannot setup world data service from this country. You need your business calendar. You need the ability to sync a non-outlook client using the USB. The only true fix is for there to be a more universal RIM sync application that does not force outlook or Yahoo.

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  5. Stop spamming this link on pages asking about syncing the CALENDAR in Thunderbird (the Lightning add-on) with a Blackberry. You spammed this link on every freaking page that has nothing to do with email per se, but was only asking about CALENDARS.

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  6. I agree! I need to know how to synch Lightning, not Thunderbird.

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    ReplyDelete