Ever have an e-mail you know you sent just seem to sit in your outbox?

Turns out you're not crazy. At least not because of this. Fellow WM Expert George Ponder has turned us on to a post over at Smartphone Thoughts that helps shed light on the whole thing.

It turns out there is a bug in Windows Mobile 6.1 that can keep messages in you outbox for good. It goes like this:

• When you send an e-mail, your phone attempts to use the specified SMTP server name. (On my AT&T phone, it's CWMX.com, a holdover from the Cingular days.) Think of that as Mailman 1.
• If Mailman 1 isn't available, for whatever reason — I like to think he's enjoying a tall cold one on the beach — Windows Mobile 6.1 looks for an alternate SMTP server. That'd be Mailman 2. But if there's no alternate server listed (has there every been?), and your phone can't connect with the first server (that beach/beer thing again), then that e-mail gets kicked into a perpetual outbox loop. Even when your phone reconnects later, that e-mail's still stuck, unsent.

The Microsoft readme file (read the entire thing after the jump) is a little more ominous:

This behavior is associated with a feature that is introduced in Windows Mobile 6.1. The feature allows for mobile operators to specify an alternate SMTP server name that is used if e-mail messages cannot be sent by using the user-specified SMTP server name. If the mobile operator does not specify an alternate SMTP server name and if the Windows Mobile 6.1-based device does not connect, the e-mail account is corrupted and cannot send e-mail messages.

How do we fix this? With a simple download. Hit up Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch page. You can either install from your desktop or directly onto your phone as a cab file. Your phone will immediately reset, and all will be right in the world. Note that if you hard-reset your phone, you'll probably have to re-apply this patch.

The bug applies to IMAP and POP mail, but not Exchange mail or SMS/MMS text messages, and it affects touchscreen and non-touchscreen phones. If all of this is Greek to you, go ahead and apply it.

Fair warning: Microsoft says anything that's stuck in your outbox will now be sent. So if you have any e-mails with the subjects "Honestly, it was just dinner," "Dear boss, screw you," or "I promise I'll have the money on Tuesday" in there, now would be a good time to clean them out.

Obligatory rant: Why have none of the wireless carriers made notice of this yet? (Edit: HTC just sent out a message on its Twitter feed a few minutes after we first posted this.) It's just one more disconnect in the strange relationship between the carriers and Microsoft. And for more about that, be sure to check out the latest WM Experts Podcast, in which Dieter and Malatesta dive deep into that dysfunctional family.

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Those of us who rely on gmail for our everyday communications have a few little gripes when it comes to mobile access — and one big one.

That whopper namely comes in gmail's finicky IMAP (wikipedia def) support in that it uses "labels" instead of true folders like the rest of the civilized world. It's not that the labels are evil, it's just that they don't play well outside the Google sandbox.

Google has, however, recently implemented some new settings that allow you to pick and choose which labels are synced over IMAP. This should have different results depending on what you're using to pull (or push) in your gmail, so YMMV. We're still waiting on true push e-mail from the Big G, but we'll take any improvements we can get in the meantime.

Give it a shot, and let us know in the comments how it works for you.

Gmail Blog: Advanced IMAP Controls

Many of us use the built in email client on Windows Mobile but sometimes we get creative. Sometimes we venture out and decide to download Java and the Gmail app along with it. Then we have full access to our email. All the beauty of archive, threaded email, contacts, and search is at our finger tips. Yet it still lacks something. It lacks alerts. Unfortunately at the moment there is no way to be alerted from the Java Gmail app when a new email has arrived.

So today we will be demonstrating a temporary fix.

The first thing that you are going to want to do is go into your Gmail settings. Click on forwarding. Then click on the button that says “Forward a copy of incoming mail to”. Here’s the tricky part. You have to know you phone number email so to speak. For at&t it’s the number@txt.att.net so for example 5551112222@txt.att.net (In order to find your phone numbers email address just send a text to your email and it will display it.) Then sit back and watch your emails come to you in a text. It’s not the best and a little garbled but at least it’s a notification allowing you to go into your Java Gmail to check your email and react accordingly. Voila notifications for your Java Gmail via text.

Let us know if this helps or if you prefer to have IMAP.

When Google offered up free IMAP for their Gmail service, there was much rejoicing. When we discovered that it send Windows Mobile blank emails instead of HTML emails, there was much lamentation. We we discovered that the iPhone handled Gmail IMAP with aplomb, there was gnashing of teeth and tearing-out of hair.

We're back to rejoicing now, as per XDA (via JAMM), Gmail's IMAP service doesn't seem to be sending out blank emails anymore. Huzzah!

We're testing it out now, we heartily invite y'all to do the same. How goes it, are you back in the blessed IMAP land?

I hate to say it, but Exchange Active Sync suddenly just lost a bit of its shine. Google is now offering IMAP for free and it's seriously tempting. The one thing I sincerely wish EAS (or at least my EAS, 1and1) would do is server-side filtering - I want the massing influx of press releases and various group emails I get every day to get out of my inbox and into their little folders.

With Gmail, "folders" are actually "labels," meaning it's technically one giant archive of email split into just two folders: "inbox" and "everything." So you can set up a filter to Label something and then Archive it and you essentially have moved it into that "imap folder," but it's also easily searchable. It's a nice setup.

Will anybody be dropping EAS for gmail now that it has IMAP? Can we really live without push? Can somebody explain to me why Gmail is still in beta? Why is a duck?

Google has upped the ante when it comes to relying on Gmail as a full featured e-mail service with its introduction today of free IMAP access to your Gmail account. In short, this means you'll be able configure Gmail to easily keep your account in sync with your home and work PC, mobile phone, and any other device used to access Gmail with.

Read: Today @ PC World Google Offers Free IMAP Access to Gmail

Thanks to Mike over at Phone different, who was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning at CTIA and caught the news before the rest of us! After the break, a quick setup video he forwarded on, and here's their help site.

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