← Back to Archives

Gmail Phail

system

(I know I should be blogging other matters... but I'm in serious need of a sort of techie catharsis. And this is it. Damnit.)

This is what pops up intermittently on Gmail for iPhone:

[

screenshot of a frustrating gmail error on the iPhone

](https://web.archive.org/web/20081108093321/http://www.flickr.com/photos/joebeone/2964326220/ "weird gmail iPhone error by joebeone, on Flickr")

Yes, the error message above says:

Some addresses in the "From" field were not recognized. Please make sure that all addresses are properly formed.

This is an extremely frustrating error. It happens write after I hit the “Send” button. And no amount of hitting “Send” again will send the email. It appears to think that my “From” address is malformed.

But, you may say, "Hmm. You can't specify a ‘From’ address in Gmail on the iPhone, can you?" You would be correct. There is no way to change the “From” address on Gmail on the iPhone, yet it is telling me that there is something wrong with my “From” address.

Ah, you might say, "Wait! Maybe you have some weird-ass ’From’ address specified through regular Gmail?" But you'd be incorrect there. I have my Gmail address set as my default address via regular Gmail. (Plus, they could do whatever check is failing here on regular Gmail.)

So, yeah, this is a freakin' error. And it sucks. It appears that it only happens when I send to certain addresses. (that could be an illusion, of course) However, I can compose new mail addressed to these addresses and it goes through fine. And it only happens after a bit of a thread has built up.

That lead me to think it must be something inherent in the body of the message after it's built up a substantial thread. Well, I first went through a message affected by this and removed all the email addresses. No dice. Then I decided I would delete the entire thread inside the body of the email and then have just my added message (essentially just keeping the subject of the email). BTW, because the user can't scroll in Gmail on iPhone, it is a serious pain in the ass to try and delete a bunch of an email in a message. Anyway, that didn't work either. Still this error.

Crap. Ok, so I have a phone that sorta has Gmail capability. I might just look like an ass using it, though... I'll have to break threads constantly to communicate and can't quote others.

Yes, I submitted this to Gmail feedback a while back.