My next move was to call Apple's toll-free support line. The technician I spoke to understood my problem right away. He believed the iPhone's Mail program wasn't syncing correctly with Microsoft Outlook on my Vista PC, to which I had been syncing the iPhone's e-mail settings, contacts, and calendar. I asked him to e-mail me the steps he recommended to resolve the problem. His solution worked.

Here are the steps he suggested:

On the iPhone, delete all e-mail accounts. Reset the iPhone's network settings (Settings, General, Reset, Reset Network Settings). Disable Wi-Fi. (Some e-mail accounts don't work properly if set up the first time with Wi-Fi in use, the technician explained). On the iPhone, manually re-add e-mail accounts. He suggested I select Yahoo from the ISP options when setting up my AT&T/Yahoo e-mail account on the iPhone. In iTunes, disable e-mail syncing with my iPhone.

A Second E-Mail Challenge

From that point, I enjoyed several weeks without any further e-mail problems. However, another issue developed, this time relating to the passcode to my AT&T/Yahoo e-mail account.

The passcode for that e-mail account contains six characters. During my initial iPhone setup, I had entered the passcode to my AT&T/Yahoo e-mail account. At that time, the iPhone validated the address and passcode; everything seemed fine. However, sometime after I had resolved the e-mail problem I described earlier, I received a warning that my e-mail passcode was incorrect.

I went back to Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars and retyped the correct passcode for my e-mail account. The iPhone validated my address and passcode, and all was fine ... until I received the incorrect password warning again, a day later. I returned to Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars again and noticed the iPhone had changed my passcode from 6 to 8 characters. I retyped the correct passcode, the e-mail flowed without problems, and then—you guessed it—I was told the passcode was incorrect. I installed Apple's iPhone 2.0.2 software, hoping that might fix the bug, but it didn't. Finally, I deleted this account from my iPhone and manually added it again. So far, I've had no further e-mail problems.

Contributing Editor James A. Martin offers tools, tips, and product recommendations to help you make the most of computing on the go. Martin is also author of the Traveler 2.0 blog.