Reading Mail

On the Droid 2, reading email on a non-Gmail account is much like reading Gmail. In the Application Tray, tap Email to launch the Email app, and it immediately downloads any waiting mail. As with Gmail, the Email app displays the subject line, time and date of delivery, and the sender of each message. It also displays the first line or so of the message.

Note

If you’ve organized your mail into folders on your computer, that organization won’t be reflected on the Droid 2. You won’t be able to see or use the folders from your computer’s email software.

Workaround Workshop: Keeping Your POP Mailboxes in Sync

The difference between POP and IMAP accounts is that POP email only lives on whatever machine you download it to. With IMAP, a copy automatically remains on the server so you can download it again on another device. Say you read incoming email on your Droid 2, delete some of it, keep some of it, and write some new messages. Later that day, you go to your desktop computer and log into the same email account. You won’t see those incoming messages you read on your Droid 2, nor the ones you sent from it.

When you’re using both your Droid 2 and home computer to work with the same POP account, how do you keep them in sync? By making your POP account act more like an IMAP account, so it leaves a copy of all messages on the server when you download them to your home computer. That way, you can delete messages on the Droid 2, and still see them in your inbox at home.

In Outlook 2010, choose File→Account Settings, and then double-click the account name and select More Settings→Advanced. Turn on “Leave a copy of each message on the server”. Also turn on “Delete messages from server after they are deleted from this computer,” so that you won’t fill up the server space allocated to your account.

To get to these settings in earlier versions of Outlook, choose Tools→E-mail Accounts→E-Mail→“View or Change Email Accounts”→your account name→Change→More Settings→Advanced.

In Entourage, choose Tools→Accounts. Double-click the account name, and then click Options.

To read a message, tap it. If there are images in the message, they aren’t displayed off the bat; to see them tap Display Images. At the bottom of the screen are icons that take you to the next and previous messages, for deleting mail , and for replying to or forwarding mail . To forward or reply to mail, tap the icon and select whether you want to forward or reply.

Note

If the sender is a contact for whom you have a picture, the contact’s picture will show up next to his name in the From area.

The Droid 2 gives you a few more ways to handle mail. Tap the Menu key, and you have these options:

• Move. Lets you move the mail to another folder. If it’s an IMAP account, you see the folders created on the server. However, with a POP3 account, you won’t see other folders here aside from Trash.

  Tip

  If you’ve set up multiple email accounts, when you go to your inbox, you see email only from the first one you set up, which is your default account. To change your default email inbox, press the Menu key, tap Email Settings→“Default email account”, and then choose which you want to be the default.

• Mark unread. Email you haven’t yet read shows up as blue in your inbox, with a blue button. If you want the mail you’ve read to again appear unread (showing up as blue with a blue button), tap this option.

  Tip

  To read email from another account instead of your default, you can use the Droid 2’s Universal Inbox, or use the Messaging applet to check inboxes individually. For details, see The Universal Inbox.

• Flag. If you have mail that you want to mark as important, tap this button to flag it. When you do this, a flag icon shows up next to it in the inbox.

Tip

When you’re reading an email message, you can display additional information about its sender. Tap the right-facing arrow at top right, and you see the sender’s entire email address.