Android mail
Configuring Android mail clients for CSAIL IMAP
We strongly recommend that you use “K-9 Mail”, available free from Android Market, rather than the built-in Android mail client. K-9 is an open-source fork of Android Mail with much better support for IMAP and better synchronization between the IMAP server and your phone. (The following directions will work, with some alteration for missing features, on Android Mail as well.)
Some users prefer Webmail rather than a native client as it’s simpler requiring no local configuration. If these instructions seem daunting Webmail is probably the right choice for you.
General settings
- When you first start K-9, it will show you a setup screen.
- You can access this setup later by selecting:
- “More…", “Account settings” from the K-9 menu, then “Incoming server”.
- Enter your CSAIL email address and your CSAIL IMAP password, then press “next” to enter the IMAP settings.
Incoming mail (IMAP) settings
- Under “IMAP server”, change
- “mail.csail.mit.edu” to “imap.csail.mit.edu”,
- then change “Security type” to “STARTTLS (always)”
- and “Authentication type” to “CRAM_MD5”. (You may need to scroll down to see all the settings.) The “Port” will automatically change to the correct value, 143.
- verify “Username” is only your username and not your full email address, for some verions you will need to delete “@csail.mit.edu”
- Under “IMAP path prefix”, leave it as “(Automatic using NAMESPACE if available)” (if using Android Mail, fill in “INBOX.” here. This is not required for K-9). You probably don’t need to change any of the default drafts, sent, etc., folder names.
- Press “Next” and you will see a “Checking incoming server settings” progress bar.
Outgoing mail (SMTP) settings
If you have configured everything correctly, the setup process will proceed to configuring your outgoing mail server.
- Under “SMTP server”
- change “mail.csail.mit.edu” to “outgoing.csail.mit.edu”,
- then set “Security type” to “STARTTLS (always)” and “Port” to 587. (Again, you may need to scroll.)
- Check the “Require sign-in” box and set “Authentication type to “CRAM_MD5”, then press “Next”. You will see another progress bar, this time labeled “Checking outgoing server”.
If this succeeds, it will ask you to enter an optional name for this account (used mainly in messages to tell you which account is being acted upon) and your name (which will be used in the From: header of your outgoing mail).
From K-9’s Account settings you can also change how frequently each account is polled, how many messages to download at a time, and whether messages you delete should be deleted from the server as well.