How to set up BIS email on your BlackBerry

Over the past two years we’ve developed a diverse audience at BBGeeks. Some are hardcore types who use their BlackBerrys every day. Others are beginners who find the site through Google or other search engines, trying to find answers to a specific question. That can make content creation a balancing act. Sometimes we’ll have a bit geared more towards hardcore users, while others will be geared towards the beginner. Today will be the latter, with apologies to our hardcore fan base. Today’s lesson will be the most basic of BlackBerry tasks: adding a new email to your BIS account. Thankfully, most POP emails function in the same manner, so we can give general guidelines here. In our epic BlackBerry Gmail thread we talked about pushing via IMAP, but Google has since improved their POP delivery. Most POP-based accounts will work in this manner.

Step 1: Log into your BIS account

All of your email setup will originate from your BIS account. You can access through your web browser by visiting your carrier-specific BIS site and entering the login information you created when you purchased your device. Alternatively, you can log into your BIS by going to the Email Settings icon from your BlackBerry handheld. That will open a web browser that goes to your BIS login. *NOTE: If you use a third party theme, you might not see the Email Settings icon. I don’t know why, but I didn’t see it on my third party theme, and I’ve heard the same issue from others. If you don’t see it, go to Options-Theme and change it back to the default. The icon should be in the Setup folder.

Step 2: Add the account

If you’re going from the web interface, click on the Set Up Account button, the first one below the list of your current email addresses (also under the Add An Existing Email Account header, if you don’t have any email addresses currently set up). If you’re doing it from your handheld, click the big Add button. It’s tough to miss. The web interface will bring you to a simple screen where you enter the email address, the password, and then the password again to confirm. That’s all you need to do. It will take a few seconds to load, but you’ll see a dialog box that confirms you’ve added the email — it will give you an error if you entered something wrong — and you’ll see the addressed added under Email Accounts. The handset interface will present you with a number of options for popular webmail clients. You can easily add from Windows Live (Hotmail, MSN, or Live), Yahoo!, AOL/AIM, and Gmail. It really doesn’t matter, though. All it will do is add the @blank.com automatically to the email field. If you use another service, click other and it will only pre-add the @ sign. Once you’re done, click Next and it will add your email to the list.

Step 3: Delete the account

If you ever need to delete your account, just scroll over the account on the handset interface, click the trackball, and select delete. You’ll get a confirmation, so just click OK and you’re set. On the web interface, just click the trash can icon, the furthest to the right next to the email account.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.