The guys at modmyi.com have worked out that by editing the com.apple.accountsettings.plist file to include information about 2 exchange accounts they both actually work.

I found this quite handy as a while back Gmail added push notifications for the iPhone but this was done buy configuring it through an Exchange account, my problem was that I already used the Exchange account on my iPhone for my Exchange server at work. Now I have both Exchange and Gmail configured as Exchange accounts and both with Push working!

Hopefully someone comes up with a nice app that just does it all for you pretty soon but if you do want to give this a go, I’ve tried it and it works. Just make sure you have a backup of this file before you start making any changes so that you can always restore it if you break anything. Try this at your own risk.

1. Make sure you already have a working exchange account setup on your iPhone

2. Install Open SSH on your iPhone through Cydia

3. Use something like WinSCP to connect to the IP address of your iPhone from your computer. The default username is root and the default password is Alpine. It is a good idea to change this password as this is the same password for every single iPhone and there are some malicious hacks going around which could cause damage. Just do a good on how to change this, it’s pretty easy.

4. Once you have connected to your iPhone navigate to /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/ and copy the com.apple.accountsettings.plist to your computer. Make a copy of this and keep it in a safe place just in case you make a mistake editing it.

5. Open the com.apple.accountsettings.plist in a plist editor, if you have a mac there is software built into OSX to do this if you are running Windows I used Plist Editor for Windows 1.0 and it worked perfectly fine.

6. Scroll down through the file and find all the settings for your Exchange account it will start with:

You need to copy everything from and including <dict> to </dict> and paste it directly below so that you have to exchange accounts with the exact same settings setup.

7. It won’t work if both of these are exactly the same so now there is some further editing of the 2nd lot of settings you just pasted below the first.

Find ASAccountEmailAddress and edit the value below this to be the email address of the new exchange account

Find ASAccountUsername and edit the value below this to be the username of your exchange account.

Find DAAccountPersistentUUI and edit the last 4 digits of the value below this to be something different to what is currently there, it doesn’t matter what it is, it just needs to be unique

Find DisplayName and change the value below this to whatever you want the display name of this account to be, you can change it again later on the iPhone if you like.

Find Identifier and edit the last 4 digits of the value below this to be something different to what is currently there, it doesn’t matter what it is, it just needs to be unique

Find Sync Identifier and edit the last 4 digits of the value below this so that it matches the Identifier value which you just set.

8. Save the file and copy it back the the same location on the iPhone, replacing what is there. Remember to make sure you have a backup of the original file before doing this just in case.

9. On the iPhone go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and you will see the new Exchange account. Click to go into this and set your syncing options (mail, contacts, calendars). Also go into Account info and make sure to set all the other options for your Exchange account. You will need to set the password, server and possibly domain depending on your situation.

10. I found that I had to reboot the iPhone completely for this to work after doing the above, so if you are having troubles give that a try.

I’ve grabbed all this information from the modmyi.com forums so make sure you head over there and thank them, and also check there for the latest information about this great new hack

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