How To: Synchronize multiple mail folders in Windows Mobile 6.1

Posted on 19 August 2008, at 5:03 pm, by Clinton Fitch

This entry is part 3 of 17 in the series GD How-To

While most of you know me as Clinton Fitch, writer for Gear Diary and owner of Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!, I do have a day job. That would be the Unified Communications Product Manager for Spanlink Communications. While we are not the biggest Cisco Systems partner on the block, we are one of the best when it comes to applications in Unified Communications and Contact Centers. As you can imagine, I have email constantly flowing into my inbox and thus onto my HTC Advantage on a variety of different topics, customers and solutions. My answer to managing all of this email are sub-folders. I love them. I have them for just about every category out there and it makes it quick and easy for me to find a message. This is great on my Windows PC but by default Windows Mobile does not synchronize any folders other than your Inbox via ActiveSync or Over-The-Air (OTA) Push Mail. Fortunately this is somewhat easy to change and in this How-To I’ll show you.

Now for a word of warning: What I’m about to demonstrate requires that the folders you are wanting to synchronize are on your Exchange server. This will not work if you are trying to synchronize folders that are stored in your PST file on your PC. It could also be that your Administrator does not allow folder synchronization beyond the Inbox through policies set in place. You will need to check with them if this does not work for you. Secondly, this will require a lot of bandwidth depending on how much you have to synchronize so make sure you have an unlimited data account. Gear Diary is not responsible for your $5,000 data bill!

The first step in doing this is to make sure that your Inbox and attachments are being stored on a storage card on your device. This will help assure that you do not run out of storage space on your device which can be quite a challenge to undo once it is done. To change this setting, open Outlook E-mail on your Windows Mobile device and navigate to Menu>Tools>Options>Storage. There is a checkbox on this screen “When available, use this storage card to store attachments”. Check this box and all of your inbox and attachments will be moved to the storage card. Depending on how big your Inbox is, this should only take a few minutes to move from your main memory to the storage card. The bigger question at this point for you may be how big of a storage card you need. Ultimately, given the low cost of high capacity cards, you should get the biggest one you can that is supported by your device. Most devices today will accept up to a 8GB card while almost all will accept a 4GB one. An 8GB card is around $50 (US) while I have seen 4GB cards as low as $15 on Meritline. Make sure your device can handle the card size before you buy by checking on the manufacture’s website.

Step 1: Check to move your Inbox and attachments to your storage card.

The next step is selecting the folders that you want to synchronize. This is done inside of Outlook E-mail by tapping Menu>Tools>Manage Folders. From here, select the folders that you want to synchronize. Keep in mind that if you have sub-folders in a folder, you will need to tap the plus sign next to the main folder and select the sub-folders themselves. It may seem that by selecting a top-level folder that all sub-folders should be synchronized. That, afterall, is somewhat intuitive. However Microsoft’s approach has been that you select exactly what folders you want to synchronize so you do not waste time, bandwidth or storage space on folders that you do not necessarily want. It’s a good approach and leaves you completely in charge of what you synchronize.

Step 2: Select the folders you want to synchronize. Don’t forget sub-folders!

After you have selected your folders, go to ActiveSync on your device and force an update. How long this takes will largely depend on both the amount of data you are synchronizing but also your connection speed. For me to synchronize about 400MB of data it takes about 4 hours on EDGE with T-Mobile. On AT&T it only takes about 45 minutes. If I bypass the carrier and go to 802.11G WiFi, it takes about 15 minutes. Generally I use the Memory applet in Settings (Start>Settings>System>Memory) to watch my memory usage increment as synchronization is happening. It’s a good way to know that something is really happening!

Step 3: Force an ActiveSync Update

Step 4: Watch your Storage Card memory usage increment real time

As with all ActiveSync setups, the initial synchronization is the one that takes the longest. Once you have the folders selected to synchronize the updates are much faster. With the synchronization complete you can now pull down your folders menu in your Outlook E-mail and select folders you have synchronized! Note that the folder has a little ActiveSync icon on it. That tells you that it is setup to synchronize with your Exchange folder.

Step 5: View your folder list in Outlook E-mail

Now that you have synchronized your folders onto your device, essentially it works the same as Outlook on your PC. You can tap-and-hold an e-mail in your Inbox and move it to a folder of your choice. Once that is completed it will synchronize with your Exchange server.

Step 6: Moving an e-mail to a folder is as easy as tapping-and-holding then selecting the destination folder

Hopefully this small How To will help you get your e-mail folders in sync on your device. As always feel free to comment or post your own experiences in the comments section.

Tags | Apple iPhone, Clinton Fitch, How-To, HTC, Microsoft Windows Phone Touchscreen Devices, Mobile Phones

16 Comments For This Post

Perry Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I use Outlook and Exchange not only for email, of which I get a lot, but also for RSS feeds, so I have a TON of email folders! I’ve always synced many of them to my HTC Touch, but when I upgraded it from WM 6.0 to 6.1 I found that I can no longer sync more than about 15 or so of them or I’ll receive an out of memory error in ActiveSync on the device.

Very frustrating!
Clinton Fitch Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Perry, yes, for whatever reason the RSS data is still stored locally and not on a storage card even if you tell WM to store mail there as I outline above. I’ve not investigated this much but know its a real issue for those who use Outlook for RSS.

May be time for NewsBreak?
Perry Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I wonder why WM would treat them differently, since they’re really just messages in Exchange, just like email messages.

But weirder is that I have plenty of memory on my device. I’m not actually running out of memory; it’s just an ActiveSync error.
Judie Lipsett Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Thanks Clinton; totally appreciate this tutorial! )
Clinton Fitch Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Perry, check your program memory – bet you are out there.

Judie, no problem!
Torturous Trevor the Technoholic Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Clinton, great post, thanks for sharing this info.
Bkitchen Says:
November 5th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Clinton…What about syncing subfolders for contacts? Right mow I have a WinMo 5.0 phone and use Pocket Mirror Pro to sync my Contacts that are in subfolders. Does WinMo 6.1 allow syncing of contact subfolders. While I’m at it what about notes?
tartis Says:
December 29th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Strange, but my Manage Folders menu is greyed out for my Exchange mailbox on Windows Mobile 6.1.
Rupert Says:
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Very usefull tutorial but I still have a question – is there any possibility to synchronize drafts? I have WM6.1 and there is no check box beside drafts folder. Thx.
Jeff Says:
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Is there a way to have a summary folder? That is on the win mo device to have all of the selected mail folders come into the "inbox" or summary box. With windows mobile we dont know a new message has arrived into a sub folder until we physically go and check it (provided rules are set up on the exchange server)
Perry Says:
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Unfortunately, there still is no summary folder. I would really love to see the equivalent of my "Unread Mail" folder in Outlook, which is the one I probably use the most (more than the Inbox, even). That, and color-coded categories are the two features I most wish would make the leap from Outlook to Outlook mobile.
MJB969 Says:
August 14th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
My CEO wants to be able to move emails from his inbox to his extremely complex folder structure. Currently all of his folders are under his Inbox. In the manage folders screen, I can see the Inbox, but there is no plus sign to expand the tree. I had him create a new folder outside the Inbox to store his stuff and moved one of his folders there as a test. After syncing, the new folder is there, but I still cannot see the sub-folder. Any ideas? Thanks.
Perry Says:
August 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
MJB69: Is he using an Exchange server mail account? I’ve never seen a problem with folders showing up on my phone with Exchange. Perhaps if it is another type of server there could be a limitation about which I’m not aware.
MJB969 Says:
August 17th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Perry – We are using hosted Exchange.
Perry Says:
August 17th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
MJB969: So when you create a folder outside of the Inbox, you can see it on the WM device? But not one underneath the Inbox?

That’s pretty strange; I haven’t seen behavior like that before. I use a hosted Exchange account and many of my folders are under the Inbox, primarily those where I have custom rules to automatically file messages in them. I’ve had no problems syncing them on my WM phone.

Have you tried viewing the folders in Outlook on a different PC, or in Outlook Web Access (OWA)? I’m wondering if perhaps they might not be syncing up to the Exchange server properly, although I have no idea what might cause that to happen.

You might want to contact your Exchange provider and find out 1) what version of Exchange they’re using, and 2) if anyone else has reported a similar problem. There might be something unusual about their setup.

I hate to say this, but you might also want to try a hard reset on the phone. You’ll have to re-install any applications and recover any data that we on the phone (you might want to back up the data to an SD card or PC first), but then you can try setting up the sync to Exchange again and see if the files show up.
MJB969 Says:
August 17th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Perry – It’s Exchange 2007. I don’t have the device here with me. It’s hard to get time with it, but IIRC, the only folder that showed the subfolders was the Sync Issues folder. I can do a hard reset, the only thing on the phone is pictures. I just did the 6.1 update a month or so ago, so it hasn’t been very long since the last reset.

Reviews
Gear Deals
Grinding Gears