How To Set Up An Email Account On Your iPhone

Setting up email on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is really simple so long as you know where to look and what information you need. So, first things first, here’s what you need to find out before you can get started:

• What kind of email account you have. Is it Gmail? Yahoo? Something else?
• Your full email address (e.g. [email protected]).
• If your email account isn’t through MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, you’ll need to know your username and password. Your username is generally just your entire email address, but sometimes it’s just the part to the left of the @ symbol. If you’re not sure and neither of these options work, you should contact your email address provider to find out what your username is.
• If your email account isn’t through MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, you’ll also need to know your incoming mail server (either IMAP or POP) and outgoing mail server (SMTP). If you don’t know what these are, contact the company that provides your email address (or use their online support centre) to find out. Generally these servers are just mail.domain.com (domain.com being the part of your email address to the right of the @ sign, such as yahoo.com or aol.com), so you can guess but it won’t work if you’re wrong. It’s always best to ask and make sure.

Once you have all of that information, follow these steps to add an account (or watch the video above to see how it’s done):

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” tab.
3. Tap “Add Account…”
4. Choose the type of account you want to add. If you add MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo or AOL, you’ll only have to enter your name, email address and password, then click Add. If you’re adding one of those, congrats, you’re done. If you need to select the “Other” option, continue reading.
5. After tapping “Other,” you’ll see a bunch of options but you can ignore most of them. Just tap “Add Mail Account.”
6. Start off by entering your name, email address and password. You can also enter a description of the account, which can be pretty much anything you want. When you’re done, tap “Next”.
7. On the following screen you’ll need to fill in a lot. First, you’ll need to choose IMAP or POP. The main difference between the two is that IMAP downloads copies of your emails from the server to your iPhone but leaves the originals on the server. Any changes you make on your phone get synced back to the server and to any other computers using this account (if they’re also configured using IMAP). This is generally what you want on a mobile phone because you’re probably also using webmail or checking this email account on another computer. POP downloads the messages from the server and then erases them, so it’s really only good for using with a single device. Choose the one you want (IMAP is selected by default).
8. You’ll see that your name and email address have been filled in already from what you entered on the last screen. In the incoming mail section you’ll see your host name (your IMAP or POP server) and username are left blank, however. Fill those in with the information you received from your email provider. Chances are it will be mail.something.com for the host name and your email address for the username.
9. In the Outgoing Mail Server section, do the same thing. The information should be the same, but the host name might be different because this host name refers to your SMTP server. Your email provider will be able to tell you what the host name is, so be sure to ask if you don’t know. When you’re done, tap “Next.”
10. You’ll now be asked to choose what types of information you want to use with this account. Generally you’ll only have the option to get Mail and Notes. Mail will be turned on by default and notes will be turned off. If you want to store notes in this email account, change the slider to the on position.
11. Tap the “Save” button and you’re all done.

Congratulations! Now you have your email account set up on your iPhone.