[bryanus]

Today I've been trying to figure out what the deal is with my email:

I work for a company that has several email aliases (support@, service@, demo@, etc.) that all forward to a single email account (info@), which is then retrieved by a support ticketing system (kayako, btw). Once the ticket system generates a support ticket from the incoming emails, it sends everyone in the Support dept and email notification. For years, the emails show up on my Blackberry as sender name or address, followed by the subject.

I have been using a Gmail account for work purposes and it's always been great (instant push, etc.)

Over the past couple days, something got screwy and emails are now being received as MY NAME followed by the subject. What's even weirder is that the icon is not a mail icon. Instead it's a CHECKBOX, as in the message was SENT from my Blackberry!

What's worse is that because it's showing as "Sent", my Blackberry doesn't notify me that i have a new email at all!

My coworkers on Blackberrys do not have this issue and everything works and displays normally.

If I send an email to my Gmail account directly, the message appears properly with the mail icon and sender info correct as well.

I've been trying to test this all day and have found some even stranger behavior:

If I receive an email to my Gmail account, but don't open it in Gmail Webmail, I get the email pushed to my Blackberry nearly instantly (like 2 secs later).

If I open the email in Gmail Webmail _before_ it's pushed to my Blackberry, my Blackberry won't get it for a few minutes. And once I do get it, it's already marked as opened! In the past, it didn't matter if I read the emails in Gmail or not; they always appeared as UNread in my Blackberry.

I sort of feel like this is a Gmail issue, but I am not sure. Did Gmail change anything recently that would cause the Blackberry to act like it's using IMAP (showing messages as Read if opened in Gmail webmail)? Why would messages sent to me through my support system be displayed as Sent messages on my blackberry (and with my name as the sender)?.

This is confusing, eh? It's literally driving me nuts!

[bryanus]

Well, I gave up basically. But I have a workaround in place that seems to be doing the trick and at least functioning in the same way that i was used to.

Instead of setting up my Gmail account on my Blackberry, I set up a Forward in my Gmail to forward all emails to my Tmo Blackberry address (that is also on my blackberry). Since emails received in Gmail appear correctly, the forwarded messages also appear correctly once they are sent to my Tmo address.

Also, since it's a direct forward the instant an email comes in, anything received on my Tmo account shows as unread again. (maybe all along I was under the incorrect impression that opened emails in Gmail always appeared as UNopened on my blackberry?).

I then changed the reply address for the Tmo account to be my primary Gmail account. So for anyone receiving my emails in reply, it will appear normally to them and without the Tmo address showing.

Lastly, since I still need the Gmail account on my phone for purposes of Contact and Calendar sync, I went into my BIS account manager and checked the option for Filters, then clicked the button that says "When no filters apply: Do not forward to device". That effectively makes the Gmail account active, but no emails are forwarded to it from BIS. Weird option, but I'm glad it's there!

So now my Calendar and Contacts are sync'd with my primary Gmail account, and my email display issues are seemingly resolved by the forward-to-tmo-address workaround.