ComputerMan

By Eddie L Hines AKA COMPUTERMAN!

Up until now, a lot of computer users that use a Gmail account simply log onto Gmail website check their email and that’s that.  However, in some offices the Gmail webpage has been banned so users can no longer check personal mail. Furthermore a lot of people also use Outlook to check their email, but are afraid to add Gmail to Outlook simply because they usually leave their outlook on at home set to automatically send and receive. This means that is they try to check their email away from home, OH NO no email!  Well this article will show you how to use a recently new technology called IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) to check your emails from anywhere regardless of which mail program is receiving emails at the given time.

I will first show you how to enable Gmail to use IMAP then I will show you how to configure Outlook to receive it.   To start, go to gmail.com and go to the settings page by clicking on the upper right of the web page.

Once you are at the settings page, click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link near the top middle of the page.  On this page, you can ignore the forwarding section unless you have no other email address to forward your Gmail to.  At the POP download, I suggest you disable that so you cannot mistakenly use Email in Outlook anymore even if you did it by accident. Now the third option is IMAP…

Do you see these options? Let’s enable IMAP first by clicking on that first radio button.  Then say yes to Auto-Expunge. This will prevent your emails from piling up when you want to delete them offline.  The third option I would recommend you click on “archive the message”. This means if you deleted one by accident, Gmail will keep it on their server for 30 days regardless.  Save your changes then exit out of settings. You are done with the website portion, so let’s open up Outlook and begin working there!

I will be using Outlook 2007, but you can adjust this to any version of outlook you wish.

1. Open Outlook.
2. For new setups, select Do not upgrade.
3. Click Yes.
4. Enter your display name, email address (including ‘@gmail.com’), and password.
5. Select the ‘Manually configure server settings or additional server types’ checkbox.

1. Select Internet E-mail.
2. Settings: name, full email address
   • In the Account Type dropdown menu, select IMAP; enter the incoming and outgoing server names shown below.
   • In the ‘User Name’ field, give your full Gmail address, including ‘@gmail.com’
   • After creating these settings, clicking next takes you to the end of the setup.

1. In the Tools menu, select Options then Mail Setup. Under ‘Email Accounts,’ click E-mail Accounts.
2. Select an account, and click Change above the list of accounts. Click More Settings, then the Advanced tab.
   • Incoming server must be 993, and must use SSL encryption.
   • Outgoing server can use 587, TLS encryption.

1. Click the Outgoing Server tab. Make sure that ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication’ is selected. The radio button ‘Use same settings as my incoming mail server’ should also be selected.
2. Click OK > Next > Finish > Close > OK.

This method works in mobile devices too! For Windows devices all you need to do are these steps…

• · Enable IMAP in your Gmail settings. (which you can find earlier in this article!)
• · Open the Start menu and select Programs > Messaging > New E-mail Account.
• · Enter your Gmail address (including ‘@gmail.com’) in the E-mail Address field*. Google Apps users enter your full address in the format ‘username@your_domain.com’*.
  * Windows Mobile 6.1 users: Enter an unintelligible email address (such as ‘g@g’) at this step. This will bypass the automatic configuration for POP access.
• · Uncheck the box that asks to get settings automatically from the Internet and select next.
• · Select Internet e-mail as your email provider in the drop-down menu
• · Enter your name as you want it to appear in sent emails.
• · enter a descriptive name for the email account and select next.
• · Enter ‘imap.gmail.com’ in the Incoming Mail Server field
• · Select IMAP4 as the Account type from the drop-down menu and select next
• · Enter your full email address (including ‘@gmail.com’ or ‘@your_domain.com’) and password.
• · Select Next
• · Enter ’smtp.gmail.com’ in the Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server field
• · Make sure that the Outgoing server requires authentication box is checked.
• · Select the Advanced Server Settings link.
• · Make sure that the Require SSL box is checked for both incoming and outgoing emails.
• · Select the Internet as the network connection from the drop-down menu.
• · Select Done and then Next.
• · Select how often you want your phone to send/receive emails from the drop-down menu.
• · for more download options, select the Review all download settings link.
• · Select Finish.

Blackberry and IPhone users have similar instructions so follow these steps the best you can to create your email settings.

Using these steps you can now check your emails from anywhere…anytime…with any device.  For non-Gmail accounts that also use IMAP, just make sure IMAP is enabled with your server and make sure you get the SSL settings correct and you are on your way to getting your email, anyway you want it!