Have you ever run into a technical support issue while you’re out and about? Or perhaps you recently posted to the BlackBerry® Support Community Forums already and are waiting to receive a reply from the community? Well, we’ve got an awesome little-known secret to let you in on: The BlackBerry Support Community Forums are fully optimized to be viewed right on your BlackBerry smartphone!

The site offers much of the functionality available via your desktop browser, but displays in a clear, concise format to accommodate mobile browsers. Reading and responding to posts is as easy as it is on your computer!

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

Nominate Research In Motion for a
social media award in the Shorty Awards

If you follow us on Twitter®, you may have seen that @BlackBerryHelp, the official Twitter account of the Inside BlackBerry® Help blog and the BlackBerry Customer Support team, has been nominated for a Shorty Award! For those of you unfamiliar with the Shorty Awards, they’re online awards that highlight the best companies and individuals across social media, complete with a big ceremony to recognize the winners! Twitter users in particular can nominate their fellow tweeps for awards based upon excellence in tweeting over the past year.

So far #TeamBlackBerry has already helped catapult @BlackBerryHelp to 1st place for the Shorty Award in the best customer service category. Has @BlackBerryHelp ever helped you get out of a bind or troubleshoot a problem? Then support @BlackBerryHelp by following these easy steps to cast your vote!

1. Go to: www.shortyawards.com/BlackBerryHelp
2. Fill out why you nominated @BlackBerryHelp (important! This section has to be completed for your vote to count!)
3. Enter your email.
4. Finally, Tweet your vote!

The Shorty Award nomination period closes on Friday January 28th Tuesday February 11. Thank you all for your support! If you’re interested in learning more about the @BlackBerryHelp Twitter team, check out the Shorty Interview.

A little while ago, Ty talked about easy email setup tips for your BlackBerry® smartphone. Today, we’re going to go over some of the different options you have when organizing your main messages list on your BlackBerry smartphone.

If you have multiple email accounts on your BlackBerry smartphone, you have likely noticed two things:

1. Each email address account on your BlackBerry smartphone has a separate icon.
2. Emails from all your accounts also appear within the main messages list. If you are on a BlackBerry® Enterprise Server, these messages will also appear within this list, as will SMS/MMS texts and other notifications. This enables you to have all notifications accessible from one central messages list.

However, with BlackBerry® Device Software 5.0 or above, you have some options to help you customize what appears within the main message list. If you want to customize what is accessible from the main messages list, you can follow these simple steps:

1. Click any of your email icons.
2. Click the Full Menu (BlackBerry emblem) button.
3. Scroll down the menu and select Options.
4. Scroll to and click Inbox Settings.
5. Uncheck any accounts that you do not want to show in your main messages icon.

Note: If you uncheck everything, the only types of messages that will still show up in the main Messages icon are PIN messages and notifications from apps like BlackBerry® Messenger, Facebook®, Twitter®, or any other applications with an option to integrate with the main Messages list (sometimes referred to as Inbox integration).

Users with BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 or above also have a separate email icon specifically for accessing messages from an email account associated with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

If you don’t have BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 you can easily check for available updates for your device at www.blackberry.com/go/update

Let us know if you have other suggestions or questions on how to organize your messages!

Recently, I was at a friend’s house when they handed me their BlackBerry® smartphone and asked why they had received a message from blackberry.com stating that their email account required re-confirmation. The message they received stated the following in the opening paragraph:

“You must confirm your email account password on your BlackBerry device by July 1st, 2010 to continue sending or receiving email messages for this account. Microsoft Corporation requires Windows Live email account users who use mobile devices to validate their accounts every 360 days. Other email accounts on your BlackBerry device will not be affected.”

My friend wondered what this message meant exactly, and why they had received it. Here’s what I told them, to help clear up any confusion:

If you are using a Windows Live™ (Windows Live Hotmail, MSN or Bell Sympatico, for example) email address with the BlackBerry® Internet Service, you must re-validate your account every 360 days for security purposes. Three days prior to re-validation, Research In Motion® (RIM) will send a PIN message to your BlackBerry smartphone to let you know that re-validation is required.

The steps to re-validate your account are listed below:

1. Locate and click on the Setup folder.
2. Within the Setup folder, click on Email Settings.
3. Highlight your Hotmail email account, click the Menu key and select Edit.
4. Enter your Hotmail password and press Submit.

Completing these steps will re-validate your account and allow you to continue sending and receiving your Hotmail email messages on your BlackBerry smartphone.

If you have a Windows Live email address – or any other email address – that you would like to integrate with your BlackBerry smartphone, please check out my previous post “How to set up a personal email account on your BlackBerry smartphone”.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment!

After getting a new BlackBerry® smartphone, one of the first things you’ll want to do is add your email address so you can receive email on your device. Integrating your email address will allow you to receive messages in near real-time, reply and forward, filter message by sender or subject, and much more.

To integrate an email address with your BlackBerry smartphone, just complete the following steps:

1. Locate and click on the Setup folder.
2. Within the Setup folder, click on Email Settings and if prompted, review the Terms of Agreement.
3. A listing of various email providers will now be displayed:
• If you are integrating a Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL or Windows Live email address, highlight the appropriate icon and click Next.
• If you are integrating an email address from another provider, select Other.
4. Provide the email address and password and in most cases, you’re done!

For example, let’s say you want to integrate your Hotmail email address with your new BlackBerry smartphone. The steps to complete this would be as easy as selecting Windows Live™ (Hotmail, MSN®, Live) from the listing that appears after selecting Email Settings and specifying your Hotmail user name and password. After entering this information and clicking Next, you will have successfully integrated your Hotmail email address. It really is that easy to get your email delivered to your device!

Do you have a question? If so, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment!