Hey class, welcome to another BlackBerry 101! This is Bla1ze from the CrackBerry Forums and Videos4BlackBerry.info filling in for Kevin this week who is busy coming to terms with the iPhone in the Smartphone Round Robin. I had so much fun with Lecture 10: Getting started with Videos on your BlackBerry that I jumped at the chance to be a professor once again.
If you have all been doing your homework, you’ll remember a few weeks back we learned The Basics of Setting Up Your BlackBerry as well as BES & BIS: What’s the Difference?…well today we are gonna touch a little bit more on the BIS aspect of things, this is one of the first things people run into when purchasing a BlackBerry device, and often it seems to be more difficult then it really is..this lesson was put together in hopes to clear up some of the air for people…also in this lesson we will be covering some the “problems” that may arise when setting up a BIS email account as well…for example..GMail sending sent items back to your device…with that being said, this lesson will be a lengthy, but informative one…Let’s get crack’n!
The Basics
- Find your Carrier’s BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) website Select Create New Account
- Enter in your BlackBerry’s Device Pin and Device IMEI
- Select your username@carrier.blackberry.net email address to be used with the device
- Customize your BIS Settings (Send from Address, Keep copies of outgoing messages in Sent folder, Signature, etc.
- Once complete, you will receive a Welcome to BlackBerry email from the Activation Server on your BlackBerry, letting you know you are good to go. You now are connected to the BIS which will enable your device to send/receive email, surf the web, use BlackBerry messenger and other applications that require data transfer.
If you have an existing BIS account and want to put a different BlackBerry on it:
- Login to your BIS account
- Go to Profile
- Select Change Handheld
- Enter the PIN and IMEI of your New Device
- If you receive a message saying your Device is Not Found/Does Not Exist, on your BlackBerry go to Options > Advanced Options > Host Routing Table > hit the menu key and > Register Now
TIPS
BIS Sites:
Here are the URLS of the main North American BIS Sites:
Locating Your Devices PIN and IMEI: This information can be found:
- On the outside of the box of your new BlackBerry
- On the BlackBerry, under Options > Status
- On your device’s Help Me Screen. Hit Caps, Alt, H on QWERTY models to bring up the help screen.
Adding A GMail, Yahoo, GoDaddy, etc... Account
A few things to address in this section before we dig in deep…recently all the carriers BIS sites (see above) were all upgraded to the new service, this new service being BIS 2.4, this upgrade implemented some new security features which may affect how you go about setting up your BIS/Personal email accounts (more information here), example..if a user goes to their carriers BIS site inputs all the information as stated above you may get the error .. “The site cannot be accessed in this manner. Please use the URL or link provided to you by your service provider.” this is fine, it just simply means that you will need to add the account using your device or call your carrier to create you a username and password, you will then be able to use the website using your home computer. With that cleared up, let’s have a look at creating an account using your device first.
- Scroll to and select the Personal Email Set Up icon.
- The “Welcome to BlackBerry Internet Service E-mail” screen will display.
- Scroll to and select the BlackBerry Setup icon.
- Scroll to and select Yes to indicate the “Legal Terms and Conditions” have been read and understood.
- Scroll to and select I Agree to continue the account setup.
- Configure an e-mail account to be used with the BlackBerry Internet Service.
- A confirmation will appear when the account has been successfully configured . Select OK.
Now the set up for each email account is exactly the same with the exception of Hotmail accounts they require you to have a MSN Hotmail Plus Service account or a really old Hotmail account otherwise you will see the error “Cannot integrate the e-mail account! Please check your information and try again“.
For individual account walkthrough’s please visit (based on AT&T Service but overall, generic):
- Create BlackBerry Internet Service User Name and Password
- Create a BlackBerry e-mail address
- Integrate an AOL e-mail account
- Integrate a Gmail e-mail account
- Integrate a Hotmail e-mail account
- Integrate a Yahoo e-mail account
- Integrate a POP or IMAP e-mail account
Now How To Do It On A PC
- Access the BlackBerry Internet Service
- In the “Add An Existing E-mail Account” section, click Set Up Account.
- Enter the appropriate e-mail settings and click Next.
- At this point it will process if successful it will display
RIM has agreements with Yahoo, GMail and Godaddy for easy integration but sometimes people don’t use any of those if this is the case it MAY not set up for you, in which case farther steps are needed.
- The following will display if the e-mail account could not be configured. Verify the “Email address” and “Password” are correct. Select “Re-enter email address and password, enter the correct information and select NEXT.
- Select “This is my personal email account” option and click Next.
- Select “I will provide the settings to add this email account” option and click Next.
- Enter the following e-mail settings and click Next.
In case a list of incoming e-mail server addresses’s are needed...once the correct information is in place you should then see the confirmation screen again.
Wheeew..Ok Almost Done
Last issue I will be addressing in this BlackBerry 101 is GMail, GMail has a tendency to send the emails that you send out…back to your device…This issue seemingly has not been addressed as of yet, even though GMail has seen many upgrades since it’s implementation to BlackBerry services, Now our very own naviwilliams has covered this problem very well already in the forums, so I would like to take this time to draw attention to that post, rather then going through and just repeating stuff.
That’s All Folks!
Now while it’s impossible to cover all scenarios at this point, I hope this has helped out in some way, many thanks go out to the CrackBerry Team for allowing me once again to bring this information to you all…Remember folks…Keep Crack’n
