Blackberry OS6 Can Do it?
Nope, it can’t. I read that OS6 was supposed to support 2 BES accounts (and possibly more) on a single OS6 device but that was apparently incorrect.
Fortunately it is quite easy to add more than one BES accounts to your blackberry running OS5 or OS6.
How To Add A Second BES Account to Your Blackberry:
Here is the nut of it, you can only activate a single BES account wirelessly and each one has to have its own service books name. After the first BES account is activated and the service books renamed, you can activate additional BES accounts using Blackberry Desktop Manager.
- Perform security wipe of DATA ONLY on my 9700 (this is not actually required but a good idea)
- Perform an Over the Air (OTA) activation for a BES / BES Express account on your Blackberry
- Launch BLACKBERRY DESKTOP SOFTWARE v5 or v6 (on a PC on the same network as step 2), select DEVICE OPTIONS, EMAIL tab, and change the SERVICE name from DESKTOP to Acct1Ex07 (or any other name you want)
- Disconnect your BBerry from the PC and confirm that what was the DESKTOP folder is now names Acct1Ex07 (you can also note that the service books show a pile of Acct1Ex07 entries)
- Physically go to your second office (the other company which has a BES account for you), connect your Blackberry to the PC using a USB cored and launch BLACKBERRY DESKTOP SOFTWARE (v5 or v6 both work) on a PC and agree with any prompts. This will “activate” the second BES accont on your Blackberry.
I now have:
- TWO email “folders” on my Blackberry
- ONE calendar, but it shows both accounts and even automatically colour coded them for me
- ONE address book, which shows the address’ from both BES accounts
- All of this wirelessly (OTA) sync’s and updates… yaaa
When I want to add a new Calendar item or Contact, the system prompts me to choose which BES account I want it applied to… wonderful!
From my research on this I understand you can have up to 9 BES accounts on one BlackBerry and that the additional accounts are not supported, but seem to cause absolutely no problems.
FYI, the systems I was running are:
- Blackberry Bold 9700 running OS6,
- BES 5 Express,
- Exchange 2007 on one domain,
- Exchange 2010 on the other domain.
I hope this helps you… enjoy!
4 Comments
Guest · October 2, 2012 at 8:04 am
Can I use some modified form of this workaround if I don’t have access to the Desktop Manager of my first BES account? I am out of the country and can’t plug my device into my first BES account until I return but would like to activate my second BES account in the meantime.
Ian Matthews · October 2, 2012 at 6:27 pm
I don’t know for sure as I (sadly) had to scrap my last BES server and all my blackberry’s
KD Lange · November 24, 2011 at 11:18 am
Does this process work if the 2 BES accounts are on the same Exchange server and Domain?
Ian Matthews · November 25, 2011 at 9:17 pm
That is a good question and my answer is… I just don’t know. Sorry