Hello there all,
I am looking into getting a BlackBerry 7100t and have a few questions about the email interface.

I currently use a Tmobile SideKick 2, and am loving it. But I would like access to more than 3 extra pop accounts. To my understanding, with the BB you can check up to 10 external POP accounts.

Currently, I do what alot of you are doing. I have my mail server forward a copy of all inbound email to my sidekick's email address (that way it's closer to "real time" email receival). With the 3 extra pop accounts I have configured on the SideKick, if someone emails at one of those email address, when it gets to the sidekick if I hit "reply" it auto figures out what email address to send it from. But if someone emails me at a different email address that the sidekick is not configured for, it defaults to the tmail.com address (which can be changed, but that's what I have it at).

My question, in reguards to the above is this. On the Sidekick, I can change which address I want the email to appear as coming from, no matter which email address "received" it (or rather, which address it was sent to). So if it was send to I can choose to reply from ... or whichever email address I want it to come from on the sidekick.

Is this possible on the BlackBerry? Can you choose which email address shows as the "from" when you're replying to an email?

Also, can each email address that the BB is configured for have it's own seperate email signature, or is there only one signature for every email account that you use?

(if any of that was confusing, i'm sorry.. please let me know and I'll try to reiterate myself *smile*)

Thanks in advance for your answers.

No!

Sadly you cannot, and it's a shame, because it's the only thing I feel the SK has over the BBerry these days.

Not with the included BWC service....

You need a third party service to pull this off, unfortunately. If you have an MDS account (MDS hosting starts at $10 per month), you can have another "From:" email address.

Ouch! that really sticks a needle in my side. I really wanted to trade in my SideKick 2 and get the 7100t, but I don't know if I could live with not being able to change the "from" address... I do too much emailing, and I don't want to look like I'm emailing everyone from the same address, cause then they'll all start emailing back to that one address... and that wouldn't be good (in my case).

Elaborate, please?

I have an MDS of my own already at work, but I'd like to have multiple From: addresses. It's the only reason I even considered the SKII.

At the moment, I'm only using two From: addresses -- one for Desktop, one for Web Client.

But I agree, I'd love to have the feature of being able to reply to messages recycling the original "To:" in the original message, if it matches one of my aliases. (Thank goodness newer versions of Mozilla Thunderbird added this feature, I was about to switch to another mail client)

You know, the more I think about it. the more I am surprised that the BlackBerry does not support this. For how business/professional it is, you would think that it would support something like this.. Who, in business, in their right mind would want to reply to an email and have it show up on the other end as being sent from an address other than whom/where it was sent? If I was a customer, and I received a reply from an address that I didn't email in the first place (especially if dealing with sensitive materials) I would be kinda worried... wouldn't you? :D

Oh well, I guess the best just isn't quite the best yet huh?

You can have a million signatures on the BlackBerry if you want, there is this thing called auto text and I can put my whole full signature in there and trigger it with a few keystrokes!

sig1 when I type that on the BlackBerry it automatically pastes my signature any where I want it.

There is also sig2, sig3, sig4 ect. you can have as many as you want and name them whatever you want.

As for the muliple sent from address, I use BWC for personal email, (It automatically knows to use the reply to address configured in the BWC when I reply to my personal email account.), and I use my BES account to reply to work email, thats all the seperation I need. Work and Home. lol plus I dont send alot of large replies from my BB, i receive a ton of email though but 96% of it I dont need to reply to but I have to read

Its not like people dont know who is replying to them thats crazy in your need I am assuming you have a more uncommon need for more then two replyto addresses or multiple personalities lol

Just kidding!

but seriously you can actually theoretically have unlimited reply to addresses if you have unlimited BES's because you can have more than one BES account and it will know which replyto address to use, Ive tested this you have to change the service book names for different profiles in desktop manager, redirector settings, advanced.

The big draw back is you cant have two accounts for the same handheld on the same BES

Actually, DigitalJEM -- traditionally RIM has sold BlackBerries to big companies, governments, and institutions, that always use one email address per employee. There used to be absolutely no reason to support multiple identities.

You don't want corporate users to be able to edit their BlackBerries to masquerade as somebody else -- Administrators have Absolute Control over BlackBerries -- security reasons! (But ideally, this should be configurable -- i.e. administrators being able to turn this feature on and off on the BES end)

But the demographics of the BlackBerry market is gradually changing.

I predict that by BlackBerryOS Version 4.1, RIM will support a multiple-identities feature at least through BES.