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Setup Outlook for IMAP with Gmail

Nerd Grind — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:28:44 +0000

Outlook is a great program to manager calendars, RSS feeds, contacts, to-do lists, and email. There are two options for email, POP, or POP3, and IMAP. POP3 allows email to be downloaded to your local computer, and a copy left on the server, or deleted after downloading. Today we will setup IMAP in Outlook for use with Gmail. You could setup IMAP on one computer, and POP3 on another, while setting it to leave all messages on the server.

IMAP allows you to view your mail and mail folders on the remote Gmail from inside Outlook, and since you are only viewing the email it all remains on the Gmail servers for those times when you want to access your Gmail account from a different computer. There are a lot of Gmail features that are not available in Outlook, but the ones you really need are.

To setup IMAP in Outlook for use with Gmail you’ll need to first login to your Gmail account, and click Settings at the top right of the screen. Click the radio button next to Enable IMAP, and click Save. Now you’re ready to configure Outlook.

Open Outlook, click on Tools -> Account Settings.

Click New, and the Add New E-mail Account dialog window opens. Click Next.

Check the box next to Manually configure server settings or additional server types, and click Next.

Leave Internet E-mail selected, and click Next.

Fill out the form with the Incoming mail server set to imap.gmail.com, and Outgoing mail server (SMTP) to smtp.gmail.com, then click More Settings.

Under the General tab you get some nice Purge Options, so read it over to see if that will work for you. I don’t use that feature myself.

The Folders tab lets you choose to save sent mail in your Outlook Sent Items folder, or in Sent Mail Items folder on the Gmail server. You can even create a different folder on the Gmail server to store Sent messages from Outlook. It would be nice to have both local and server options at the same time.

On the Outgoing Server tab check the box next to My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.

On the Advanced tab screenshot below you’ll see the standard settings that we need to change.

On the Advance tab we need to change the Incoming server (IMAP) port to 993, and the Use the following type of encrypted connection to SSL.

Change the Outgoing server (SMTP) port to 587, and Use the following type of encrypted connection to TLS.

Outlook will create a .pst file on your local hard drive to store the email even though the email is also stored on the Gmail servers, but it will only be accessible if your account is setup as IMAP. The .pst file for this account should be backed up along with the other .pst files for Outlook.

Using IMAP in Outlook

When you start Outlook you’ll see a folder named as your Gmail address. I changed the name of my folder to Gmail by right clicking and choosing properties. Click the plus button to expand the list of folders. You’ll notice a subset of folders labeled Gmail.

In your Gmail account Labels are the same as Folders. The list of System labels, or folders, that cannot be changed are Inbox, Starred, Sent Mail, Drafts, Spam, and Trash. All the other labels, or folders, can be deleted, and new labels can be created.

To label a Gmail message as Spam in Outlook drag and drop it into the Spam folder, and Gmail will automatically delete it after 30 days. Don’t drag junk mail into your Outlook junk mail folder, drag it into the Gmail Junk E-mail folder, or label, or better yet if it’s really Spam junk mail then drag the message into the Spam folder or label.

You can copy messages from the Gmail folders, or labels, into Outlook folders on your local hard drive by dragging while holding down your right mouse button, and after releasing choose copy.

To Star a message simply drag it into the Starred label, or folder, or click flag on the message while viewing it in the list of messages in Outlook.

After flagging the message in Outlook you’ll see it Starred in your Gmail account when you login.

To send a new message from your Gmail account simply choose it from the drop down list of Accounts when your create new message.

Gmail Service Problems Result in Downtime Again

Nerd Grind — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:35:09 +0000

Just three weeks ago Google Gmail had some major downtime, which Google explained as a huge load on their servers that was unexpected, and required the addition of more servers.

After logging into Gmail this morning I got the message:

Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts. You may experience issues while this persists.

After reviewing the service dashboard the Google Mail status confirms the service disruption.

So far Google has given two status updates the first said:

“We’re aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail, but we’ve provided a workaround below. We will provide an update by September 24, 2009 4:29:00 PM UTC+1 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. You can access Gmail via IMAP.”

The second update said:

“Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.

The Gmail issue should now be resolved for most of our users. There still might be issues with your contacts. For Gmail users: Use www.google.com/contacts to access your contacts For Google Apps Customers: www.google.com/contacts/a/yourdomain-name.com”

We can understand how difficult it must be for a fast growing company like Google to scale their email system, but since they are also handling business email that uses company domain names as well, this sort of downtime is unacceptable. Google needs to stay way ahead of their server load.

Google Rolls Out Themes for Gmail

Nerd Grind — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:55:32 +0000

Google has once again impressed Gmail fans by rolling out themes allowing users to "pimp their email." This isn’t anything drastically new, users have been able to accomplish this "unofficially" through the use of Greasemonkey scripts, but it wasn’t until recently that Gmail allowed for this customization natively.

Gmail users will be able to customize and give their inboxes a little facelift by going to Settings -> Themes. Google launched 30 themes including a retro notepad theme, a nature theme that changes scenery over time and a weather theme that changes according to your local weather.

Google, as usual, will be rolling out the update in ’phases,’ so if you don’t have the ’Themes’ tab yet, you definitely will by the end of the day. Until then, enjoy the screenshot!

Google Adds Text Messaging to Gmail Service

Nerd Grind — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:44:53 +0000

Gmail has now allowed users to send text messages through it’s Gchat function. The option is experimental, so you’ll have to access it through the Labs tab inside of settings. Your messages will appear as a 406 number, and the rest of your number will solidify once you’ve sent your first text.

Many instant message services have offered this functionality for a while, so it’s nice that Google are on point as well.

GPhotospace is Online Photosharing With Your Gmail Account

Nerd Grind — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:05:38 +0000

GPhotospace is a windows-only extension for firefox that allows you to use some of your 7+ GB of storage provided by your Gmail account. The extension provides you a free, fast and secure way of uploading and sharing all your photos online.

They claim to batch upload up to 50 photos faster than any web-based uploader while giving you 100% control over privacy. You can also share your albums quickly and painlessly over email with GPhotospace’s integration with Gmail for autocompletion of email addresses.

Use Windows Mail for Gmail IMAP or POP Access

Nerd Grind — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:52:17 +0000

Gmail, provided by Google, is probably one of the best free email services in the world, not just because it’s free, or because it provides over 6.3 GB of email account space and growing, but because Gmail allows FREE access through the use of remote protocols like POP and IMAP. This means you can use an email client you already use to download and view all your mail accounts at once. Today we’ll walk through setting up Windows Mail on Windows Vista. These instructions could also be used for setting up Outlook Express on Windows XP, Windows 2000, or even Windows 2003.

Note: Before you can use POP or IMAP with Gmail, you must first configure your Gmail account to allow POP and IMAP. Click here for instructions.

Start Windows Mail, then click Tools –> Accounts.

Now click Add.

Click E-mail Account.

POP SETUP

The setup wizard will walk you through setting up both POP (POP3), and IMAP. First we’ll setup POP, then later in the article IMAP. There are differences. POP downloads a copy of the email to your computer. IMAP allows you to view email on the server without downloading it. Use your Gmail address, and enter pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com as shown below. Check the box for Outgoing server requires authentication. Google uses authentication to prevent open SMTP relay spam. Choose POP3 for Incoming mail.

Once the wizard finishes you’ll see the General tab. You can change the label of your account to whatever you like. I used Gmail account POP. Don’t forget to fill in the Reply address, so recipients of you emails can hit reply and have your email already filled in.

Your Servers tab settings should look like the one below.

Under the Advanced tab make sure you change the port setting for SMTP to 465, and POP3 to 995. Gmail uses non-standard ports to avoid spam, and other abuse problems.

The POP, or POP3, protocol has a special feature. Rather than just downloading email to your machine then deleting it off the server, you can set it to leave a copy of the mail on the server for a specified number of days. This way you can collect email at work, and at home without losing any email.

Below is an example of an email collected from Gmail in Windows Mail using using the POP protocol.

Click Here for Page 2.

Use IMAP or POP with Gmail

Nerd Grind — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:39:55 +0000

The Google free email service Gmail has grown exponentially in popularity since it was first launched, and one reason for this is the ability to use Gmail any way you want. Gmail allows you to stay organized by giving you the ability to collect your email alongside any other email service using programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Eudora, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, iPhone, and more through the use of POP or IMAP. There are some differences between POP and IMAP. POP allows you to remotely download mail from a remote server, and after downloading it your program, i.e. Outlook, can delete the mail on the remote server, or it can leave the mail on the server for a specified period of time. IMAP allows your program, i.e. Outlook, to remotely view your mail and the mail folders located on a remote server, drag and drop between folders, etc. IMAP is just a way to remote view your email and folders on the remote server, and does not download the emails, for that you’d need to use POP if you want a permanent copy.

Before you can setup your email client for POP or IMAP you’ll first need to configure your Gmail account settings to allow those protocols to be used. Click here to login to Gmail, then click on Settings in the top right corner.

Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

Enable both POP and IMAP. For POP you have several choices. I set it to Enable POP for all mail.

After enabling POP you’ll need to choose how you want Gmail to store your email, since you won’t be visiting Gmail much from now on. I selected keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox. If you use POP you might set it to delete the mail after your email client downloads it, and if you’re using IMAP you can manage all you email as if you were logged in with Internet Explorer by dragging and dropping mail to another folder if you want. You can always change these settings later to suit how you want to keep your mail organinzed.

Now Save Changes. If you go back to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab you’ll notice the Status: POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since a specified date.

Now Gmail is ready to receive POP and IMAP requests from your email client. Don’t worry about filling up your account since Gmail currently offers 6.337 GB of account space, which increases regularly. This sure beats the 5 MB of email account space provided back when the web was first born.

NerdGrind - How-to Computer Help - Tutorials - Tech and Gadget News » Gmail

Setup Outlook for IMAP with Gmail

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