Exchange and Google Apps accounts on one iPod touch?

ikendra — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:47:26 +0000

Today I set up the Google Apps for my domain yken.org. The Standard Edition of Google Apps enables some interesting applications, including Gmail and it is completely free (providing you already own the domain). The problem occurred with setting up the account on my iPod touch, with already one account set up on the device earlier, for my work.

To access your Google Apps e-mail, Google suggests to setup an Exchange account on your iPod touch / iPhone. That’s fine. I already had one Exchange account set up, did not expect an issue. However, the iPhone OS (current version 3.1.2) does not support more than one Exchange account on a single device. Oops.

It is simple to setup a Gmail account instead of Exchange ActiveSync account for your Google Apps account. Just use your personalized e-mail address username@yourdomain.com instead of Gmail address. This will however not help to sync your Google Calendar events.

To get my Google Calendar events to my iPod touch I set up a CalDAV Account. When adding an account on your iPod / iPhone, in the main screen listing all account types (Microsoft Exchange, mobileme etc) select “Other”, then “Add CalDAV Account” and fill in the form which follows. Server value should be www.google.com. You can now not only download the Calendar events to your device, but also add events on your iPod touch / iPhone and have them synced to your Google Apps Calendar.

This solution does not offer all the comfort for Google Apps account, but at least enables the e-mail and Calendar events synced both directions while the functionality of the Exchange account remains unchanged.

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Exchange and Google Apps accounts on one iPod touch?