MacMost: Making the most of your Mac, iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV.

To create an iPhone email account, go to the iPhone Settings, tap the Mail item. This will take you to the main Mail preference. Under a list of current accounts, you will also see categories for Message and Sending. Probably best to set those up first.

There are also some choices under the Sending category.

To create a new email account, tap the “Add Account…” item that is at the bottom of the Accounts category. You will then be given a number of choices: Y! Mail (Yahoo Mail), Gmail (Google Mail), .Mac, AOL, and Other.

The first four allow you to quickly and easily add email accounts from four of the major Web-based email providers. When you select one of these, all you need to do is your name used in the account, your email address associated with the account, the account password, and a description to display on the iPhone to identify the account.

Selecting Other is how you would go about setting up an email account to any other email service. You get three choices: IMAP, POP, Exchange. Most email accounts would be POP (Post Office Protocol). Some more advanced new servers may offer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). The difference between them is basically that POP email stores email on the server until you retrieve it. IMAP stores and manages email on the server, and you view it and take actions by accessing the server directly. So IMAP email is easier to share between two computers, like a desktop and a laptop, or a computer and a device like the iPhone. With IMAP, you can read, reply and move an email and all devices accessing the account will show these actions. With POP, all of hat takes place on your local computer, so other devices won’t even know the email existed.
When creating a POP or IMAP email account on your iPhone, you will need to enter a lot of information that should be available from your Internet service provider. However, if you already have this account set up on your Mac, you can simply go to Mail on your Mac, and look at the Preferences for that Account. Everything except your password will be visible, and you can simply copy your settings.

You can also access email using Exchange server. To do this, you must have IMAP access turned on on the Exchange server. Then create an account and enter the information required.
Once you have set up an account, you can edit its settings. An “Advanced” option is at the bottom of these settings and should be set up immediately.

There are also some Outgoing Settings. You can set Use SSL, AUthentication and Server Port for outgoing mail as well.