Hey #TeamBlackBerry – Ritu from @BlackBerryHelp here with some useful information you’ll want to know in case you run into difficulty sending and/or receiving email on your BlackBerry® smartphone. Within this blog post, you’ll find some great tips that can help you identify what’s happening so you can get up and running in no time.
1. Do you have a data capable mobile network connection?
The first thing you should check is whether or not you have a connection to the mobile network as well as the ability to send and receive data. To verify the mobile network connection status on your BlackBerry smartphone, tap on the Manage Connections icon that appears on your Home screen and verify if your mobile network connection is enabled. Provided it is enabled, complete the following steps to see if you are able to successfully send a PIN to PIN Message. This test will confirm if you have bi-directional data communication on your smartphone, which is required to send and receive email.
- Open the Messages app
- Press the Menu key, select “Compose Other”, then “Compose PIN”
- Enter your PIN in the “To:” field
- Press the Menu key and select “Send”
Tip: If you don’t know your smartphone’s PIN, scroll to the body of the PIN message you are about to send and type “mypin” (no spaces). After typing this and hitting the space key, the PIN of your BlackBerry smartphone is displayed.
If this test fails, you might also have issues using BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) or the BlackBerry® Browser in addition to sending and receiving email. At this point, I would suggest contacting your service provider for further investigation with this issue.
2. Check your Signal Strength
In order to send and receive data, you should have a signal strength greater than -95dBm (ideal signal is -70dBm to -95dBm). If you have a signal strength that is less than -95dBm, you are in a poor coverage area and may have trouble sending and receiving data. To view your signal strength, complete the following steps.
Tip: The dBm number is a negative integer, so “greater” would mean a signal strength closer to -0 dBm.
BlackBerry® 6 to BlackBerry® 7.1 OS
- From the Home screen, select “Options”
- Select “Device” followed by “Device Status and Information”.
BlackBerry® Device Software version 5 and earlier
- From the Home screen, select “Options”
- Select “Status”.
3. What type of email account do you have?
There are two types of email accounts you might have on your BlackBerry smartphone. The first type of email account is the BlackBerry® Internet Service, which allows you to integrate up to 10 different supported email accounts. To see if you have any email accounts integrated with BlackBerry Internet Service, complete the following steps.
- On the Home screen, select “Setup”
- Select Email Accounts followed by “Internet Mail Account”.
If the email account you are having troubles with is listed here, complete the steps below to resend your BlackBerry Internet Service books which may help restore functionality. If you don’t see the option of “Internet Mail Account”, your wireless service plan might not support BlackBerry Internet Service. Contact your wireless service provider for more information.
Resend BlackBerry Internet Service Books
- On the Home screen, select “Setup”
- Select “Email Accounts” followed by “Internet Mail Account”
- Select an email account
- Press the Menu key and select “Service Books” followed by “Send Service Books”
- A message will appear stating Service Books were sent successfully.
If Service Books cannot be sent successfully, we would recommend you contact your service provider to ensure your data plan is enabled correctly – or you can tweet @BlackBerryHelp for more help!
The second type of email account you may have on your smartphone is for corporate email that’s connected through BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. To find out if this is how your email is set up, check out the following article: How to check if a BlackBerry smartphone can be used with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express
If you determine that you are using a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and are having issues sending or receiving email using your BlackBerry Enterprise Server email account, we suggest checking if any of your colleagues are encountering a similar issue. If not, contact your BlackBerry administrator for further assistance. On top of contacting your BlackBerry administrator, check out the following section which contains some knowledge base articles that might help out.
4. Additional Troubleshooting Information
After verifying you can send and receive PIN messages as well ensuring you have good signal strength, if you still have trouble sending and receiving email, a few useful articles from the BlackBerry Technical Solution Center are listed below.
- KB04422 A Red X appears in the message list after attempting to send an email message
- KB25936 Unable to send email messages from the BlackBerry smartphone when a file has been attached
- KB12116 Unable to send email messages from the BlackBerry smartphone using an integrated Yahoo!® or Gmail® Account
Don’t forget you can also search the BlackBerry Technical Solution Center for more support content, or you can tweet @BlackBerryHelp for one-on-one help.
Have a question about sending or receiving email on your BlackBerry smartphone? Leave a comment and let me know!
