Gmail Digs IMAP
Gmail's Web interface has many admirers, but you may prefer to access your account via a standard e-mail program, such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail. Gmail has long allowed users to download its messages to such e-mail programs by using the Post Office Protocol (POP3) standard, in which the program downloads a copy of each message to your PC, and optionally deletes or leaves a copy of the message on the mail server. The service recently added support for the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) protocol, in which the mail program leaves messages on the server, downloading a copy for local viewing only when needed. One key benefit of IMAP is that your inbox, sent mail, and sorted mail folders (or in Gmail's case, labels) look the same no matter which PC or program you use to access your mail--a boon for anyone who uses a combination of home, office, portable, and public computers. IMAP is also perfect for accessing your mail from cell phones and other devices with limited storage (for instructions, see "Three Ways to Use Gmail on Your Phone").
Before you can read Gmail in your mail program, you must make some decisions. First, choose Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP and specify either POP3 or IMAP. For POP3, select Enable POP for all mail or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on. Choosing the first option will cause your e-mail program to download everything it finds in your Gmail account, which could tie up your computer and its Internet connection for some time, depending on how many messages you have in Gmail and whether they contain large file attachments. Choosing the second option leaves past communications in Gmail and starts your POP3 downloads from the present moment. Next, you need to decide what should happen to the messages in Gmail after you've used your mail program to download them from the When messages are accessed with POP menu. Given Gmail's near-unlimited free storage, I recommend avoiding the 'delete Gmail's copy' option and instead choosing 'archive Gmail's copy'. The other option, 'keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox', leaves Gmail's mail list unaltered by your POP3 downloads. Click Save Changes to enable POP3 in Gmail. To enable IMAP, select Enable IMAP and click Save Changes.
Get Gmail in Thunderbird or whatever your favorite e-mail program may be, thanks to IMAP and POP3 support.Next, configure your e-mail program to send and receive mail via your Gmail server: Choose Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP,and click Configuration instructions in either the POP or IMAP section of the page for details on how to configure your software. For a POP3 configuration, the server for incoming mail is pop.gmail.com on port 995 using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security; and the server for outgoing mail (which uses the Secure Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP) is smtp.gmail.com on port 465 using SSL or on port 587 using the newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. Don't enable options to log on using Secure Password Authentication. For an IMAP configuration, the incoming mail server is imap.gmail.com on port 993 using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security; the outgoing mail server (which uses the Secure Mail Transfer Protocol, or SMTP) is smtp.gmail.com on port 465 using SSL or on port 587 using TLS (see the image at left).
Whether you choose IMAP or POP3, as soon as your e-mail program connects to the Gmail server, it will find and display your Gmail labels--including 'Sent Mail', 'Spam', and 'Starred'--as folders. If you choose POP3, creating or deleting folders in your mail program won't affect your Gmail labels, but deleting a folder will also delete the files contained in the folder from the Gmail server (just as you'd expect). If you choose IMAP, creating or deleting folders in your mail program will create or remove the corresponding label on Gmail, because that's where the folders/labels actually reside. Deleting a folder doesn't delete the messages it contains--just as deleting a label in Gmail doesn't delete the messages tagged with it.
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