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Questions

This is the place to look if you’re having issues with anything related to Inbox Spy. If your question is not answered below, please send it to me and I will include it.

  • It takes forever to search through my emails!

The speed at which your emails are searched is dependant on the number of emails you have in your inbox on the server, the more the slower. Another factor is the type of protocol you use. POP is slower than IMAP, always choose IMAP if possible.

  • I searched for something but it did not find it?

Inbox Spy currently only searches through the headers of an email (subject and from) but does not search anything in the main body. I may add this feature later but right now it slows down the searches too much to warrant it.

  • I need to search for something really complex!

Inbox Spy supports regular expression searches. Here are a two basic examples:

  • mom@home.com|dad@home.com will search for mom@home.com OR dad@home.com
  • [mM]om will search for mom with a uppercase M or a lowercase m

and if you need more info on regular expressions, I refer you to this Wikipedia article on regular expression and you could always Google for more info.

  • What is a mail/email server and how do I set it up?

If you’ve never setup a connection to get your emails this can be quite daunting so let’s start with the basics.

An email “server” is a computer that sits somewhere in the world connected to you in some way (like via a WiFi or 3g connection). To communicate with this computer your phone needs a few details, namely the servers address, protocol, port number, user name and password.

A servers “address” simply tells your phone where on the internet to find this computer, kind of like a street address to humans. Your phone then “talks” or communicates with this computer via what they call “protocols” (equate protocol to a communication channel, like talking to someone face to face would be using a “voice” protocol). To prevent unauthorized access to your email while you’re downloading it (which is rare and not really needed in most cases), most email servers support a secure version of these protocols (sometimes called “SSL”). Together with the address your phone needs to know the “port” to communicate on. A computer “listens” to incoming communications on a variety of different ports and certain port numbers are reserved for certain types of communications, for instance port 80 is your most common one, its the one computers communicate on if you ask them for a web page (http://….). In the world of email there are also standards for ports that map to protocols (both secured and unsecured). Finally your user name and password are used to authorize you access to your particular mail box on the server that stores your email, so that only you have access to it.

So now that you know the basics (hopefully), lets apply it to this application. This app supports the IMAP and POP3 protocols (both secured and unsecured). When you select the protocol in the app it will default the port number to the industry standard, and in most cases this should work. The server address you’ll need to find out from whoever supplies your email account, ask for the “imap server details” or “pop server details” and also whether it is secured pop/imap or not. Your user login/password details you should already have.

As an example these are the details for connecting to a Gmail Account via IMAP:

Protocol: IMAP
Server: imap.gmail.com
Secure: Yes
Port: 993
User: your full gmail account
Password: your gmail account password

Hopefully this helps, if you still don’t understand, email me and I’ll see if I can help.

  • Why are there so few options for scheduling a search?

This is by design, I’m planning on expanding this to be a more flexible scheduling facility, but I didn’t think it was critical at this point.

  • What does the “WiFi Only” option mean?

This option, if enabled, allows you to limit the application to only communicate if it’s connected to a wireless network, preventing it from using up your data bundle on your phone. Remember that if you’re not connected to a wireless network and this option is enabled, the app will not be able to communicate with your email server, rendering it useless.

  • What is the “Background Search” option?

This option tells the app to periodically (based on the schedules you setup) check for matches for your searches. It triggers off every 5 minutes, checks if your search is due to run and runs it if it is. You should enable this option as soon as possible, if it is not enabled you will have to manually run the searches (by long pressing on the search and selecting the Search option).

  • What is the “Remove Read Messages” option?

As your searches find matches and you read and mark as read the various messages, the database that stores these messages will grow. This option allows you to clear this database. What it will do is delete all messages that have been marked as “read”, leaving you only with messages you have not yet marked as read.

  • What is the “Purge!” option?

This is a fail safe last resort option, if you experience issues with the app related to messages. Use this option to purge all messages / files from the phone.

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