Most individuals that use their Blackberry in a small businesses environment would not buy Blackberry Enterprise Server for Exchange as it is simply too expensive and quite pointless for one or two users. Here is one method to bypass this and use the (UK) mobile phone providers Blackberry infrastructure and run it in conjunction with your Exchange system.

Since this article was written, IMAP and Outlook Web Access (OWA) have been made available via the Blackberry web gateway for a lot of providers. However mileage with these services vary and so there are sometimes reasons for reproducing the setup below. I'll also mention here that runPCrun can provide managed Microsoft Exchange hosting with full over the air Blackberry synchronisation from £12 p/mailbox with, call us if you are interested in this.

It's main advantages over just setting up standard POP3 collection are immediate (push) delivery of messages (rather that waiting for the Blackberry service to poll the POP3 provider) and also items sent via your Blackberry are kept in your Sent Items in Outlook/Exchange. This is attained with a little bit of tweaking and performs very well, although (obviously) the calendar,notes and tasks are not synchronised over the Internet as with the full blown server. In a small company this is not an issue and the synchronisation can occur easily using the cradle.

What this method does in a nutshell is when an email is received, it is forwarded immediately to the blackberry address. When a new mail or reply is sent from the Blackberry, it is sent masquerading as the Exchange email, and a copy is BCC'ed to the Exchange email address. This email is the sorted into the Sent Items folder using a server side rule.

The steps to attain this are thus:-

If you have a question or slight difficulty with Outlook Web Access then have a look at this handy guide - link below. (or print out and keep with you when travelling)

How to connect to Gmail/Googlemail via POP3 and IMAP using an email client. This information is easily available via the Gmail/Googlemail website, and is here really for our ease of access. :)

POP3

POP server: pop.gmail.com
Port: 995
Require SSL: Yes

User name: <your full Gmail/Googlemail email address>
Password: <your Gmail/Googlemail password>

• Go to https://digitalid.verisign.com/client/class1MS.htm in Internet Explorer.
• Fill in your first name, last name, email address and a simple memorable password (in the challenge phrase box)
• Select "I'd like to test drive a 60-day trial Digital ID for free"
• Scroll down and accept, check the details and agree.
• When the email from Verisign comes in, copy the Digital PIN and click on the link.
• Paste the Digital PIN into the new webpage and click "INSTALL", again Agree/say yes to the boxes it presents.
• Open Outlook , go to Tools > Options > Security and tick the checkbox for "Add Digital Signature to outgoing messages"
• Click OK.

Volia!

Settings that typical Outlook users want when moving to Thunderbird.

Tools > Options >Composition
Check Forward message Inline
Check Configure text format behaviour - send message in both plain and HTML

Install Quota extension
Install Add BCC button extension


Account settings > Server settings
Check for new messages every 2 minutes

> Composition and addressing
> Automatically quote orgininal message select "start my reply above original quote"

Offline & Disc space
> Check "Make messages in my Inbox available offline"

> Check "When I create new folders select them for offline use."

Junk mail controls
> Trust junk mail headers set by "spam assasin"

Set Signature.

• Make a copy of the PST. Do all of the following from this backup.
  
• Open a hexeditor. HexEdit is a free hex editor if you need one.