Out of the box (at least with an “internet plan”), the BlackBerry doesn’t support multiple e-mail personalities (multiple “from” addresses). This absolutely shocked me. The BlackBerry is widely regarded as being a superior mobile e-mail device, so much so that users will forgive pretty much any other shortcomings it may have in other areas, so to discover that it lacked the functionality I had in my mail clients back in the mid-90’s was really a surprise.
There are two products that people recommend to provide multiple From addresses for the BlackBerry:
- BBReply (free, open source)
- PocketDay (commercial, there is a stand-alone util that does just the Reply-To as well according to what I’ve gleaned from the various BB forums)
Unfortunately, neither of these actually provide multiple From addresses or “personality” support, they only allow you to set a Reply-To field for the message. I tried to get BBReply working, and failed.
The solution
Sure, I have to remember which real e-mail address is have masquerading as a Gmail address (the From options show the “real” e-mail address), but I set up the Gmail accounts in a smart way so that isn’t much of an issue.
Do I think it’s ridiculous to jump through these hoops to get multiple “From” functionality on the BlackBerry? Oh yes. Have I decided that it’s not worth fighting against how the BlackBerry wants to work? Yes again. 🙂
I’m complaining a lot about things I find to be shortcomings on the BlackBerry, mainly because I don’t like taking a giant step backwards in certain areas when I “upgrade”, but there are some really nice things as well; as I’ve noted in previous posts.
There is also one big issue that makes the BlackBerry very appealing that I haven’t really covered yet. More on that later.
UPDATE: This solution works on T-Mobile, but may not work on Cingular (see comments).
I’m not sure I understand how this is getting you multiple from addresses … Are you sending email to one of your gmail accounts and it’s specially formatted so gmail wraps around and forwards the message on to your recipient or something?
I added the Gmail addresses as accounts for the BlackBerry to check, and (in the BIS account set-up screen) set the “Return Address” for each account to be an address I want to be able to send from.
When I send an e-mail, I can now choose from:
(hidden)@tmo.blackberry.net
(hidden 1)@gmail.com
(hidden 2)@gmail.com
(hidden 3)@gmail.com
(hidden 4)@gmail.com
Each of these has a “real” e-mail address that it uses as the From address.
Hmm, that’s weird. In my BIS setup I can only choose one from address or reply-to address. I guess BIS is different between cingular and t-mobile which is sort of surprising. Anyhow, glad you got something that works for you.
I can set the Name and E-mail for each account I add.
[…] The main reason I’ve decided to make the jump to the BlackBerry, despite it’s shortcomings, is that I no longer have any faith in the Palm OS as a platform. […]
I’d love to be able to view multiple gmail accounts from the same gmail installation on my blackberry. Is this possible?