Treo Essentials

Although VersaMail automatically attempts to get any available messages when you first create a new account, you're probably curious about how to retrieve messages after the initial setup. There are two approaches for doing this:

  • Manually instruct VersaMail to synchronize messages whenever you want.

    Note

    I'm admittedly using the word "synchronize" a bit freely here to stay in keeping with the terminology used in VersaMail. For POP email accounts, email is sent and received directly through the mail server as opposed to synchronizing with the Outlook Inbox on your desktop computer.

  • Set an automatic synchronize schedule so that mail is retrieved at a regular interval, such as every 15 minutes.

You can use the first approach at any time to force a mail retrievaljust tap the Get button on the main VersaMail screen. Speaking of the main VersaMail screen, you might notice that only one email account is shown at any given time. The account is identified in the upper-left corner of the screen (see Figure 8.8). To switch between accounts, press the Menu button and scroll down to select a different account.

Figure 8.8. The main VersaMail screen shows the email messages associated with a specific email account, which in this case is named Michael.

Tip

An even quicker method of switching between email accounts is holding down the Option key and pressing the Messaging button, just as you would to launch the VersaMail application. You can use this key combination repeatedly to cycle through email accounts.

Getting back to email retrieval, the second option involves setting regularly scheduled synchronizations, which is important if you want email to arrive without having to request it manually. To set VersaMail for automatic email retrieval, follow these steps:

1.

Press the Menu button, navigate over to the Options menu, and then scroll down and select Preferences. The main VersaMail Preferences screen appears, as shown in Figure 8.9.

Figure 8.9. VersaMail has quite a few preferences available for fine-tuning the mobile email experience.

2.

In the Preferences screen, tap Auto Sync to open the Auto Sync screen and enable automatic email synchronizationjust tap to enable the Sync Automatically check box. After you select the check box, the Auto Sync screen shows the actual options available for scheduling email synchronization, as you can see in Figure 8.10.

Figure 8.10. To set up VersaMail to synchronize automatically, you must specify the interval, time range, and days for synchronization.

Tip

If you're accessing a corporate email account that requires a virtual private network (VPN) connection, make sure to install a suitable VPN client on your device. After the client is installed successfully, you can establish a VPN connection by pressing the Menu button in VersaMail, navigating over to the Options menu, and then scrolling down and selecting Connect VPN.

3.

The Every field in the Auto Sync screen is probably the most important field because it determines how often synchronization takes place. The start and end times determine a range of time during which the synchronization takes place, with the idea being that you probably don't need synchronization to happen at night while you're asleep. Similarly, the Days field shows on what days email is synchronized. Because my work and personal email are often the same, I set the Days field so that my device synchronizes every day of the week.

4.

Aside from the auto-synchronization settings, you can tap the Alerts button in the Auto Sync screen to tweak the alerts associated with automatic email synchronization. By default, you are alerted when a new email message arrives as well as when synchronization fails. You also have the option of specifying what alert sound is played for these events.

Tip

Even though your device warns you about battery drain if you set the email synchronization interval to any value less than one hour, I find it more useful to go with a fairly short time period, such as every 15 minutes. Then again, if you don't receive a lot of emails and don't need up-to-the-minute email retrieval, by all means stick with a longer interval.

5.

Tap the OK button to finish configuring the auto-sync option and return to the VersaMail Preferences screen. Tap OK again to return to the main VersaMail screen.

I didn't mention in the previous steps that all the VersaMail settings accessed via the Preferences screen apply only to the currently active email account. To change the preferences for another account, you must first select the account so that it's in view on the main VersaMail screen.

Tip

If you see a flashing asterisk in the upper-left corner of the screen, it means a reminder awaits your action. New email messages can trigger a reminder, in which case you simply tap the flashing asterisk to view the reminder and access the new messages. Reminders can also be generated by other applications, such as the Calendar application generating a reminder for appointments.

Regardless of whether you retrieve email manually or set it up to arrive via auto-synchronization, new email messages appear in the main VersaMail screen when they arrive. This screen displays a list that shows the sender of unread emails in bold as well as the time the message was sent and the subject of the message (take a look back at Figure 8.8). To read a message shown in the main VersaMail message list, just tap the message. Figure 8.11 shows an email message open in VersaMail.

Figure 8.11. When you open a message in VersaMail, the body of the message is displayed onscreen along with a series of buttons for managing the message.

Reading a message in VersaMail is much like reading a message in any other email client. You might notice a few buttons along the bottom of the screen for replying to, forwarding, and deleting the current message. If you tap the Reply To button, you're prompted to reply to just the sender or to all the people referenced in the message header (To, Cc, and Bcc). Figure 8.12 shows a message being replied to. If you tap the Fwd button to forward a message, you're given the opportunity to specify a recipient for the message.

Figure 8.12. Replying to a message simply involves entering the message text and tapping the Send button.

After entering the body of the message reply, just tap the Send button to send the message. You can also tap the Outbox button to move the message to the Outbox folder without actually sending it yetit's sent as part of the next synchronization. Or you can tap the Drafts button to save the message to the Drafts folder, which indicates that you aren't quite ready to send it yet. And finally, if you change your mind entirely, just tap Cancel.

One thing I neglected to mention about receiving email messages is that messages aren't always received in their entirety. In fact, by default any message larger than 5KB is only partially retrieved from the mail server. You can tell whether a message hasn't been downloaded fully because an additional button is visible when you're viewing the open message. Figure 8.13 shows this extra button just to the right of the Delete button. To download the complete message, tap this button and then confirm that you want to download the message by tapping Yes. This feature prevents you from having to wait for long messages to download to find out what they are; you can quickly isolate junk and unwanted email and clear them out before downloading them in their entirety.

Figure 8.13. A special download button appears if a message is too large to be received in its entirety.

Tip

To open the first message in the message list quickly, press the Space key. You can continue pressing the Space key to step through open messages as you're reading them.

Download

The entire message is then downloaded and appears in VersaMail. If the message has any attachments, which is often the case when messages aren't initially received in full, you'll see them near the bottom of the message, as shown in Figure 8.14. In this example, the attachment is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet called Construction2005.xls.

Figure 8.14. Email attachments appear at the bottom of a message with a little paper icon next to them.

Attachment

To open an attachment in an email message, just tap the attachment. Assuming the attachment type is supported, the attachment is then opened in the appropriate application. Table 8.1 lists the attachment types supported by default in the Treo 650, along with the application used to open each type.

Table 8.1. Email Attachment Types Supported by the Treo 650

Type

Treo Application

Contact (vCard)

Contacts

Appointment (vCal)

Calendar

Memo

Memos

Text document

Memos

Palm application (PRC)

Applications launcher

Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

Documents to Go

Image (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP)

Pics&Videos

Video (MPEG)

Pics&Videos

Ringtone (MIDI)

Ringtone Manager

MP3 music

RealPlayer

If you aren't satisfied with the standard attachment support in the Treo, you can install third-party applications to handle additional data types. Examples include eReader for reading eBook attachments, Adobe Reader for viewing PDF files, and Macromedia Flash Lite for viewing Flash animations.

Note

Compressed ZIP files are also supported as attachments, in which case VersaMail extracts the files from the archive to device memory.

Compose and Send an Email Message

I covered the sending of email messages in the previous section only briefly when mentioning replying to and forwarding messages. It's worth examining the sending side of the email equation a bit more closely to understand exactly how to create and send emails. To compose a new email message in VersaMail, follow these steps:

1.

Make sure you have the email account selected in VersaMail.

2.

Tap the New button on the main VersaMail screen to open the New Message screen (see Figure 8.15).

Figure 8.15. Use the New Message screen to enter the message recipient (To), the message subject, and the body of the new message.

3.

Tap the To field in the New Message screen to enter the message recipients. In the Recipient List screen that appears, enter the recipients or select them from your contact listtap the Lookup button to select recipients from the contact list. When you're finished entering or selecting recipients, tap the Done button.

4.

Back on the New Message screen, it's important to enter a subject for the message. After the subject comes the body of the message, which is the actual message text.

5.

You might notice a few icons in the upper-right corner of the New Message screen. You use the page icon on the far right to access additional recipient fields, including Cc and Bcc recipients. Recipients placed in the Cc field receive a copy of the message and are visible to other people who receive the message; Bcc recipients receive a copy of the message but are hidden from view.

6.

The paper clip icon allows you to add an attachment to the message. (Please refer back to Table 8.1 for a list of supported attachment types.) You can actually attach any file you want, but other Treo devices can open only the supported types unless the recipient has installed third-party software for handling additional attachment types. Figure 8.16 shows the Attachments screen, where you select attachments on your device by type.

Figure 8.16. The Attachments screen is where you select attachments for an email message to be sent.

Note

The page icon in the upper-right corner of the VersaMail screen that appears when viewing an email is actually a header control. More specifically, the control determines whether an email message's full header or short header (the default) is displayed.

7.

To add an attachment to the message, first select the attachment type in the Type pick list. The available attachments of that type are then displayed in the list immediately below the type. Tap to select an attachment in this list, and then tap the Add button. You can add multiple attachments of different types if you'd like. Tap the Done button when you're finished adding attachments.

8.

One last setting you might want to consider when creating a new email message is the priority of the message, which can be normal or high. By default, all new messages have a priority of normal. To change the priority to high, press the Menu button, navigate over to the Options menu, and scroll down and select Set Priority to High.

9.

When you're ready to send the message, tap the Send button to send it. You also have the option of tapping the Outbox button to move the message to the Outbox folder without actually sending it yetit's sent as part of the next synchronization. Or you can tap the Drafts button to save the message to the Drafts folder, which keeps it from being sent until you indicate that you're ready to send it.

Depending on whether you opted to send the message now or place it in the Outbox, the new message is delivered immediately or queued for sending the next time you synchronize email. If you saved the message as a draft, you have to open and send it for it to actually get sent.

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