Set up and use an Exchange account on an Android Phone

Although Android seems to be aimed more at the consumer market, it also comes packed with features that make it an ideal platform for business users.
The launch of Android brought full Exchange support to the OS, giving users the opportunity to get business-class push email on their handset. Setting up Exchange requires the full settings, which you may need to get from your system’s administrator. Once set up, though, you can configure the account to perform exactly as you need it.

Get started

Open the Mail app on your Android phone and choose the option ‘Exchange ActiveSync’. If you’ve already got an email account set up you will need to go into the settings via the Menu button and select the option to create a new account. With this done, you can begin entering your details. Account setup is semiautomatic, although you might still need to get the settings from your system’s administrator if you are using a work account.
Details
Enter your email address and password and tap on the ‘Next’ button. The software will now automatically fill in the remaining fields for you. However, it only makes a best guess at the details so you need to check them before continuing. For example, the server address will be filled in as the part of your email address after the @ symbol, but some accounts might have the server name appended with  an additional title, such as mail.[your domain]. Once you’ve got this information filled in correctly, tap the ‘Next’ button again to proceed.
The verification process
Your mail details will now be verified. The Mail app will go online and attempt to connect to the server. If your details are filled in correctly then you skip straight to the next step. If an error is returned, check that those details are right, especially that you have entered your password correctly, remembering that it is case sensitive.
Start configuring
Once your account details are verified you will be able to begin configuring what you want to sync on your device. The options are for email, contacts and calendar. The latter two are useful if you use a central contacts database and share calendars in your workplace. If you don’t, you can uncheck the boxes to avoid syncing these and risk creating duplicates within your calendar and contacts applications. You do need to ensure that you leave ‘Mail’ ticked.
The first sync
Tap ‘Finish’ and the app will go online once more to complete aninitial sync. This might take quite a few minutes, since it will be syncing several days’ worth of emails, and potentially hundreds of contacts as well. Ideally you will be connected to a Wi-Fi connection while this initial sync takes place, to ensure a fast and reliable connection. If you are on a slow GPRS connection, there is a risk that the process will time out before it is completed.
Choose a schedule

With the sync completed, you can now begin configuring how your Exchange account is going to work on your phone. Hit the Menu button and select ‘Settings’. There are a number of options here to work through, many of which are fairly self-explanatory. The most important one you need to address is the one labelled as ‘Schedule’. This enables you to determine when your phone is connected in order to receive your emails. If you are using a work account, for example, there is a good chance you won’t want to be receiving emails in the evening or at weekends. You can set the peak times to be Monday to Friday between, say, 9am and 6pm. During this period, push email will be activated and emails will come through in real-time as they are received in your inbox.
Going off-peak

For those off-peak times, at evenings and weekends, you can choose the manual update option, meaning you will still be able to check new emails if you need to, but will have to do so manually. This is the best approach, not only for your work-life balance, but it will help your battery as well by not automatically downloading emails when you don’t wish to read them.
How much mail?

Additionally, within the settings you can choose how much of an email is downloaded at a time. By default it will be set to download only the first few kilobytes of data, enabling you to read the subject header and the opening lines of a mail. The remainder will be downloaded as and when you need it. You can also choose whether to download in HTML or plain text formats, and how attachments are dealt with. Your decision on these settings should be based on how many messages/attachments you typically receive, and how large your data allowance is.
Ready to go

With this setup complete, you are now able to access your Exchange account in exactly the same manner as you would a regular account on your phone. Remember, though, that your phone will be constantly synced with the server, so messages read on the phone will be marked as read when you later download them on your PC, as well as replies, deleted messages and so on.