[curtispriest]

Hi all,

Short Version: Does anyone know how to make the "Send-From" e-mail address feature of Gmail (Google Apps for Business) work correctly on BlackBerry 10 when Gmail is setup using ActiveSync? It's setup and working fine in the browser, but not from my Z10.

Long Version: Since RIM dropped the BIS I've been trying to replicate the email setup that I used to use on my older BlackBerry's on my new BB10 device. Unfortunately I've hit a few road blocks and although I have a somewhat workable solution now, it's not ideal and been causing me quite a bit of frustrating trouble-shooting time (days). My previous setup was as follows:

[email protected] would forward to [email protected]. On the BlackBerry, [email protected] would send e-mail from [email protected]. This created a nice little loop that ensured I always received every e-mail to both my BB (using push) and my Outlook, and always used my professional work account to do it. It did give me 2 copies of each e-mail, but I didn't mind this for reasons I won't bother getting into. It also had the advantage of instantly adding calendar appointments into my BlackBerry calendar that I received from others (as my Outlook does), which was very handy since often I'd receive appointments I had to see in my calendar before I'd had a chance to go through all of my e-mails. Combined with the BlackBerry's ability to sync with Outlook via BDM over USB I had a pretty decent setup that worked well for me.

But I am not adverse to change so when I discovered BB10 didn't support BIS any more, and Link didn't support Outlook sync, I dove head first into trying to find a solution using the "cloud".

1. My first attempt was Gmail since I have a grandfathered free Google Apps account with the Google Outlook Calendar Sync program they discontinued for new accounts. I forwarded my work address to the Gmail account and set my Gmail account to Send-From my work address to attempt to replicate the setup I had with BIS. My friends are doing this with their Android and iPhone's and it works well, so I was optimistic. I then set Google up using ActiveSync and all went smoothly... until I sent an e-mail. For some reason it was sending from my Gmail account and not the send-from work address. This function works properly when I send e-mail from Gmail in the browser, but not from my Z10.

2. Ok, plan B. Instead of using ActiveSync I attempted to setup my Gmail account the regular way, not using Advanced and simply following the initial prompts. This failed with a Gmail error, which is evidently common and a known issue. So I followed the advice I found on some websites and setup my account using the Gmail option, and then manually added the CalDAV and CardDAV accounts.

This sort of works, but has the following issues:

- E-mail is sent from my Gmail address "on behalf of" my work address. Not a deal breaker, but certainly less professional.
- E-mails I read on my phone are not marked as read on the server.
- The calendar is very broken. I am unable to create appointments on my BB using this calendar, and when I receive calendars events from others I can't do anything with them. I have to rely on Gmail in the web browser to Accept, Decline, Reply, Delete, etc. the events. What's worse, if I open a calendar event from someone else in my Hub it creates a duplicate calendar entry in my "Home Calendar".

3. With this being less than ideal I decide to explore Outlook.com as an option. Theoretically it should support most of what I need - the basics such as email, calendar and contacts sync, the ability for me to get my Outlook calendar and contacts into it (transferring from my old device to my Z10 using Link and an SD card and Bluetooth all failed to do that btw, ugh), and the ability to set a "send-from" address. Unfortunately Outlook.com suffers some major flaws. In addition to just being incredibly buggy (I won't get into everything that occurred but it was probably equally Outlook.com as it was BB10), but suffice it to say it was slow, unreliable, events would often would show up 4 or more times in my calendar, or never, the event e-mails suffered strange seizures, and to top it all off it also sent e-mails from "on behalf of" my work address. And unlike the Google calendar sync which lets me specify any Gmail account I want to sync my Outlook to, it would only sync the actual outlook.com calendar and not my regular desktop Outlook calendar.

4. So next I tried Yahoo Mail. It failed right out of the gate and lacked most of the features I needed, so I gave up on that pretty quickly.

So right now I am using option #2 and suffering through a "view-only" calendar that has duplicates of calendar event e-mails I've opened in the Hub, and the slightly unprofessional sent "on behalf of" my work address.

I would really like to get the same kind of functionality that my friends have with their Android and iPhone devices using Google's mail, so essentially I just need to figure out how to get the sent-from e-mail address to work properly using the Gmail ActiveSync setup. It's a bit shocking that the main reason I love BlackBerry (the functionality of the e-mail, calendar and contacts) is the thing that's been wasting hours upon hours of my life trying to figure out. My ego is taking a huge beating from all my friends on other platforms who have this working great. I do love my Z10 in every other way (although still trying to figure out how to get through a day on the battery), but this e-mail issue is causing me some major grief.

Sorry for the long post, but any help would be appreciated. Or perhaps this is a bug BlackBerry is working on and I'll just have to be patient

It's late and I'm exhausted and at my wits end here, so please let me know if I haven't been clear on anything.

Thank you.

Curtis
#BB4LIFE

[ealvnv]

While searching for a solution to this, so far this is what i found per google's information

Managing 'Send mail as' account behavior with the 'Treat as an alias' setting

If you use Gmail's Send mail as feature to send messages on behalf of another email account, you may encounter the following issues:

Messages you send to a Send mail as address appear as unread in your Inbox, in addition to appearing in your Sent Mail.
If you receive a message from a Send mail as address and you click Reply, the To: field is incorrectly populated with your primary address.

These issues occur because Gmail treats your Send mail as address as an alias of your primary address. You can change this behavior in your mail settings by deselecting Treat as an alias for a given Send mail as address. Messages you send to the Send mail as address no longer appear as unread in your Inbox, and the To: field populates correctly when you reply to a message sent from the Send mail as address.
Example: Ben sometimes sends messages to clients on behalf of his manager, Mary, so he adds Mary's address as a Send mail as address and deselects Treat as an alias. Now, messages Ben sends to Mary don't appear as unread in Ben's Inbox, and if Mary sends Ben a message, the To: field autopopulates with Mary's address when Ben replies.

To change the Treat as an alias setting, do the following:

Sign in to Gmail.
Click the gear icon in the upper right and click Settings.
Go to the Accounts tab.
Under Send mail as, find the email address that you want to configure and click edit info.
Deselect Treat as an alias.

Original Article

[just_luc]

While searching for a solution to this, so far this is what i found per google's information



Original Article

That's a good find, but unfortunately it doesn't apply to the OP's situation.. that's only for sending mail from the gmail web interface.. the issue is no matter what is selected in the web interface, google's implementation of EAS defaults to the main email address.. I am having the same problem with my account as well.. I've been on with google tech support by phone and by email for days about it.. they don't seem to care..

Just to make sure i'm understanding OP, your google apps account is [email protected].. but that isn't the "business address" you are talking about.. you have another.. [email protected] address you are trying to use?

[b320]

Short Version: Does anyone know how to make the "Send-From" e-mail address feature of Gmail (Google Apps for Business) work correctly on BlackBerry 10 when Gmail is setup using ActiveSync? It's setup and working fine in the browser, but not from my Z10.

Hi Curtis, welcome to CrackBerry Forums and congrats on your new BlackBerry Z10!

Thanks so much for looking through the forums and trying out various solutions and workarounds before posting. If I understand your scenario correctly, these should be answers or at least hints on the issues that I can speak to, leaving the rest to others for now:

1. Custom send-from addresses are currently not supported on BlackBerry 10 from what I've seen beyond what you already have ("on behalf"). I don't believe that this will be different on Google Apps UNLESS you switch @mydomain.com email service entirely to Google Apps. If your [email protected] is hosted on Google Apps, your email messages sent from your BlackBerry 10 devices *will* come from [email protected].

2. Yes, there are issues with Google Calendar. The main workaround is to integrate using Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) if you can but you appear to not be able to because Google discontinued support for this on free accounts.

3. Paid Google Apps *will* let you configure using EAS. Microsoft does offer free EAS connections for Windows Live / Hotmail / Outlook.com accounts and it does work very well. Currently, better than Google's offering, so it may be a serious consideration for you.

4. I agree, forget about Yahoo. Yahoo doesn't offer push services using open protocols right now.

[curtispriest]

Thanks b320. That is correct, I have a grandfathered free Google Apps account that is a personal e-mail address of mine with my own domain. I am still able to use ActiveSync with it, but it won't give me my work address "Send From" when using the BB10. In order to get some semblance of the Send-From working (on behalf of), I have to set it up as a "Gmail" account, which only does the e-mail portion, so that forces me to use CalDav for the calendar, which as far as I can tell is very crippled and/or buggy.

We have a bunch of people and e-mail address and unfortunately we're not willing to bring our whole company onto the full paid Google Apps just so that I can have this e-mail functionality, since everyone else is able to do it fine on their Android's. Because it is working for them I am thinking this is somehow BlackBerry's implementation.

I appreciate everyone's help.

[ealvnv]

Like i said i thought this worked, OP have you asked your friends how they have this setup to work on iphone and android devices? see what settings they are using on gmail and on device too, also is there a way you can have your user@mycompany somewhat set up on your device even as pop email account?
I am asking because maybe you can keep the user@mycompany email forwarded to your google apps email and get it pushed right away to the device but reply from the original account from the device, idk if this a workable solution though

[curtispriest]

Thanks ealvnv, unfortunately that doesn't fix the BB10 sending from the original Google Apps address and not my desired Send-From address, however it DOES fix an odd issue I hadn't mentioned where e-mails I sent were showing up in my inbox as unread and I was unable to mark them as read. Thanks!

[ealvnv]

no problems too bad it does not solve the whole issue though

[curtispriest]

I considered having the work account setup separately as a POP or IMAP account, and did have it like that for the first few days actually while I played with the various options, however I ran into a bunch of workflow and usability issues too numerous to mention here, but unfortunately it didn't work as I'd hoped and needed. The hobbled Gmail setup I have now, as imperfect as it is, is the best solution under the circumstances.

My friends on their Android's and iPhone's just add their Gmail accounts to their phones and everything just works perfectly right out of the gate - email, calendar and contacts all sync up and push without issue, and their accounts abide by the Send-From rules they get in the browser. It's infuriating actually since I have been touting BlackBerry's strength in communications and efficiency for so long and now I'm hitting this wall and spending all this time on it. ****, we even made a whole fake commercial for it! haha Must watch BlackBerry Pre-Super Bowl Commercial hits Youtube! | CrackBerry.com

[ealvnv]

What about this, can be this helpful

[just_luc]

What about this, can be this helpful

That's actually exactly what we are talking about.. he's set that up.. we can log into let's call it [email protected] and set it up to always "send mail as" another address he owns.. let's call it [email protected], which works perfectly if he sends the message from the gmail web interface.. BUT when he connects his Z10 to gmail via active sync... even though he's set his preferences in gmail to ALWAYS send mail from [email protected].. the messages he sends from his blackberry come from [email protected] .. it shouldn't be that way.. but it is.. I can't say for sure whether it's blackberry's fault, or gmails fault, or just that they aren't playing well together.. but one things for sure.. google support doesn't care. As soon as you tell them you are on a Blackberry they just fluff you off..

[just_luc]

The only option to get it working 100% correctly is to setup a paid google apps account with the domain name you want the messages to come from.. That was the only option I was left with as well.. luckily i'm a single user.. 5 bucks a month or 50 bucks a year wasn't a hard pill to swallow.. I did see you said you had many users though.. I can see why that would be an issue.

[ealvnv]

Sorry i could not be more helpful but i have never deal with something like this before... i would blame the implementation of this function this time since it seems to work in other devices

[lunaticwithin]

I believe you need to "switch" this setting on to be able to use it.

Have you tried via this site - https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/welcome

[curtispriest]

Hi lunaticwithin... can you clarify what you mean? When I got to that page I only see:

"Google Sync allows Contacts and Calendar synchronization with many phones. To find out if your phone is supported and learn how to set up Google Sync visit the Google Mobile website on your computer.
m.google.com/sync"

Going to m.google.com/sync just gives me the basic IMAP and POP setup instructions for a BlackBerry but no additional settings to enable.

Am I not seeing something that I should be?

[ealvnv]

You need to go to that page from a IOS device I believe to get all the settings, if you can search for a post related to how to sync multiple Gmail calendars to the PlayBook you will find a way to do it using any other browser

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[lunaticwithin]

You need to visit that site from your phone, or install an add on to chrome or Firefox to fool it into thinking you are on a mobile device.

[b320]

You need to go to that page from a IOS device I believe to get all the settings, if you can search for a post related to how to sync multiple Gmail calendars to the PlayBook you will find a way to do it using any other browser

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

There's also an app in BlackBerry World for this. Please see CrackBerry.com a few pages back. All the instructions are there.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[b320]

You need to visit that site from your phone, or install an add on to chrome or Firefox to fool it into thinking you are on a mobile device.

This will work as well.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[curtispriest]

Wow we're getting a bit closer. I followed the steps above and now with my current configuration (Gmail account settings setup with separate CalDAV and CardDAV) there is no longer a "on behalf of" when I send e-mails. Definitely a good thing!

But unfortunately it still does not work when the account is setup via ActiveSync, even though it appears as if it should. The drop down that appears above e-mails I'm composing lists the proper work e-mail address that I want to send from, but when someone receives the e-mail, it's still from the Gmail account address.

So frustrating, but at least we're chipping away at it, thanks guys! I wonder if this is just a BlackBerry bug that will have to get resolved in future OS updates.

[curtispriest]

Or, since the "on behalf of" part is fixed for the e-mail, an alternative option is to get my CalDAV working properly. Right now it only lets me view appointments in the calendar, but I can't add/edit/delete/share/etc. It's not even listed as an option when I create a new calendar event... I only get my Home Calendar, EAS calenders and Outlook.com calendars. Is this something everyone else is experiencing, or is something weird going on with my account?

Thanks!

[just_luc]

There's also an app in BlackBerry World for this. Please see CrackBerry.com a few pages back. All the instructions are there.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

Do you know the name of the app, or do you have a link to the post? I can't seem to find anything about it..

You need to visit that site from your phone, or install an add on to chrome or Firefox to fool it into thinking you are on a mobile device.

or do you know the name of this firefox add on?

[curtispriest]

I believe this is the article and the app he is referring to:
How to sync multiple Google Calendars on BlackBerry 10 | CrackBerry.com

Very useful for calendars, but I believe it just serves the same purpose as switching your user agent in a browser and doing it that way. Chrome's developer tools allow you to do that without any extensions.

Tools -> Developer Tools -> Console -> (Gear on the bottom right corner) -> Overrides -> Select iOS 5 as your User Agent.

[ealvnv]

I believe this is the application b320 is referring to. http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/126047

Quick question and I probably know the answer but did you set the work email to be the default account in Gmail web interface?

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[just_luc]

Ah yes, I have that app.. working well to sync my additional and shared calendars but it has nothing to do with this issue.. I was hoping for access to that "send mail as" feature.. my situation is a little different as my main email address is my google apps address, so my mail is coming from the right address and my calendars work properly.. but I was using a "send as" name.. which is [removed because it was coming up in Google search results] I find it makes my emails stand out a little bit, and it works well.. but i'm getting inconsistent results because it works when I send mail from the web interface, but when I send a message via active sync is just comes from my account name which is only [removed]

I don't use chrome.. someone mentioned a firefox ad on to access mobile settings from the browser.. anybody have a search term?