QnA: Selecting an account from outlook mobile to send with

Question: I'm fairly new to the outlook mobile scene, and I have a question about an outlook feature and its equivalent in outlook mobile (smartphone - Treo 700w).

I have two POP3 email accounts listed in my outlook to send/receive with. I do this so I can sync it to my phone and get both personal and business e-mail. The default e-mail address in outlook is business, as when I'm at home on outlook I almost always use it for work as opposed to using the web interface (gmail) for my personal emails.

When using outlook mobile, I find that the from: field is not editable, and is defaulted to "Oulook e-mail". I would love to be able to respond to my personal mail from on the go, and not have to be in front of a computer to do so.

Is there any way to select which account I would like to send with when using outlook mobile? Or can you offer a better suggestion than creating a POP3 account on my phone solely for my personal mail, setting it not to send receive automatically, and then just using that to send items?

Answer:

Uh, Treo 700w actually runs the “PocketPC” software, not the smartphone one (the distinction is confusing even for most of us who work here). The response below is valid for both Platforms. 

I think I understand your issue. You are doing desktop sync. Unfortunately it seems that out software is suboptimal and cannot handle the scenario you described. Essentially if you are using the desktop sync then we basically put the email you send in the “Outbox” and send the “Outbox” with the desktop outlook. The desktop then sends this message out. The desktop uses whatever default account you have to send the message. We have no concept of multiple accounts within outlook if you are using the desktop sync.

 

Do you have a data plan? If yes then you could sync your gmail directly using pop3. I realize that this isn’t exactly what you wanted to hear, but at least this way you’ll be able to maintain threads when you reply using the pop3 account.

The ability to have multiple accounts to send emails from is a great suggestion. I will take it to our product planning team to consider it for a future release.

We appreciate the suggestion and apologize for the limitation. If you have other general comments about the device or the software then please do send them to me. I’ll make sure they each appropriate people. We are constantly improving our product and feedback from our users helps us a great deal in prioritizing different features in our list.

Thanks.

Zeeshan Hamid

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 14, 2007
  I recently replaced my Pocket PC 2003 SE iPAQ h6315 with a Windows Mobile 5 HTC P3300. I used to change the "sending" account all the time on my old iPAQ. This was especially useful when I had synced my Outlook mail and then later wanted to reply to or forward an item from it when I was not in a position to connect to the PC. Like the original poster of this topic, I was dismayed to find that the new Messaging client doesn't seem to give the option of replacing the defaulted "Outlook e-mail" setting for the "From". Am I missing anything or was this capability subtracted between PPC2003SE and WM5?

• Anonymous
  May 20, 2007
  I too had a PPC 2003 device and used multiple POP-3 e-mail accounts.  By expanding the headers of a note, I was able to change the account from which an e-mail was sent. I find it hard to believe that this capability is included in Outlook for the desktop, PPC 2003, but not in WM6.  Could this be true?  I haven't been able to figure out how to reply to a note I received on my WM6 system from a different account than the account which received the note.  I can easily do this on my PPC 2003 device or Outlook on the desktop. This is a very important feature when traveling on the road since my ISP (Time Warner Roadrunner) makes it possible to receive mail from anywhere, but they only allow you to send mail if directly connected to a Roadrunner network (which is not available in most hotels).  Thus, the method I've worked out is to receive mail on my Roadrunner account and (on my PPC 2003 device) change the header so that a reply to such a note is sent from my GMail account (set up to receive POP-3 e-mail). So, how is this done in WM6?  This option can't be gone!!! -- Pete

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2008
  I too am a bit dismayed. I use Desktop Outlook to communicate with several POP accounts. When I synchronize with my PocketPC device and go on the road, I cannot reply to any messages in my WM6 outlook inbox or forward any of those messages. I think there should be at least one POP account that can be associated with Outlook Mobile so that inbox messages can be replied to or forwarded from Outlook Mobile. My only solution right now is to forward all messages in my desktop inbox to one of my POP accounts before I hit the road so that I can reply or forward them when on the road.This isn't very graceful.

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2008
  I CANNOT BELIEVE they haven't fixed this YESTERDAY!  This means that I can reply to any messages I receive while on the road but if I synced up before I walked out the door and got 5 emails that I wanted to handle on the way to the airport I'm out of luck to be able to reply to them?!  That is ridiculous!  Fix this immediately Microsoft!

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2008
  I've now spent over four days trying to pull sent messages from my POP account onto my laptop so I can swap my handset (HTC 6800).  From everything I have read I can't see a way of saving my sent messages that are on my phone.  Sure I can save the mbp files, but what use are they?  My new phone doesn't open them or see them in the sent folder.   MS tries so hard, but they always fall short?  I really miss my Palm on days like this :( I'm going to lose over 100 really important emails when I send my phone back.  I too find the whole sync with Outlook useless as you can't handle the mail when your mobile and frankly, isn't that what it's about?

• Anonymous
  July 25, 2008
  The comment has been removed