I love Apple’s Mail.app, which is why I’ve been using for over a year to access my Gmail account via POP. The one problem is, when I get my new high school laptop in two weeks, I’ll want to check me email on that to, but POP only works well with one computer. I need a way to keep my email in sync across multiple computers; I needed IMAP. IMAP is an email protocol which allows email to stay in sync across multiple readers, synchronizing read/unraed status, folders, etc.. POP, on the other hand, can only download mail, and does so only once for each message, making it very difficult to use with multiple email clients. Not only that, but POP also has no concept of read/unread, only downloaded/not downloaded. I had looked into IMAP for Gmail before, but to no avail. I signed the IMAP for Gmail petition, tried out Gmailproxy and gavamail, and even tried the new Perl script for Gmail and IMAP, but none of them worked for me. Finally, I decided to settle on a simpler, but just as effective solution. this required me to forward all of my incoming mail at Gmail to an IMAP email account, and then use Gmail’s SMTP servers to send mail. It was a little difficult, but here’s how I got it to work:
1. Set up your IMAP email account. If you want to keep all of your Gmail mail on the IMAP server, you’ll probably want your IMAP server to be big. If you have a server or web hosting with email, using that’s great. Some other free IMAP email accounts are AIM Mail (decent webmail interface, though it does have ads, as much storage space as Gmail at 2GB) and Fastmail (free service has puny 10 MB storage space, but paid versions are great deals).
2. Set up Mail.app for IMAP. Go to “Mail > Preferences,” then click on the Accounts pane. Click on the plus sign on the bottom-left hand corner of the window. From the drop-down menu in the new window that has just popped up, select IMAP. Make the Account Description “Gmail IMAP Account,” put in your name under “Full Name” and make the email address yourgmailusername@gmail.com. Click Continue. Set your incoming mail server to your IMAP account’s IMAP server (AIM is imap.aim.com, Fastmail is mail.messagingengine.com. Other services are typically imap.youremaildomain.com or mail.youremaildomain.com). The user name is typically the part of your email address before the “@” sign, but sometimes it’s the whole email address. After you put in all of the information, click Continue. if your host supports SSL (most do), check “Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),” and authenticate with password. Click Continue again. Now, set the Outgoing Mail Server to smtp.gmail.com, check “Use Authentication,” and set the username to yourgmailusername@gmail.com, and password to your Gmail password. Click Continue, check to make sure everything’s set up OK, click Continue again, and click Done.
3. Now, to move all of your Gmail messages to your IMAP account. In Gmail, go to “Settings > POP and Forwarding,” select “Enable POP for all mail,” and select “archive Gmail’s copy” in the drop-down menu next to that. Cick “Save Changes.” Then, set up a POP account for Gmail in Mail.app according to these instructions. When you’re done, wait for all of your Gmail mail to be downloaded in Mail.app. This could take a while. Once it’s done, copy all of your Gmail mail. This could also take a while. Finally, paste all of that into your Gmail IMAP Account Inbox (this really will take a while). When this is complete, go to “Mail > Preferences,” click on the Accounts pane, select your Gmail Account, and click the minus sign. Click OK. Then, use the search tool to find all messages sent by you in your Gmail IMAP Account, and move them to the Sent folder on your IMAP server, but not the one that Mail.app uses for sending messages. Afterwords, delete all of the messages from you in your Inbox.
4. Forward all of your Gmail mail to your IMAP account. In Gmail, go to “Settings > POP and Forwarding,” select “Forward a copy of incoming mail to,” put your IMAP email address in the text box, and select “archive Gmail’s copy” in the drop-down menu next to that. Also, click on “Disable POP” and click “Save Changes.”
5. Now, for the finishing touches. Select the folder called “Sent” under your list of folders (if it’s not there, see if it’s under Gmail IMAP Account), and then got to “Mailbox > Use this Mailbox for > Sent.” Now delete the newly created Sent messages folder. This will make sure that all of your IMAP clients will use the same folder for storing Sent messages. Do the same for all folders that would seem to correspond to another Mail.app mailbox, such as Junk, Drafts, or Trash.
Woohoo, you’re all set. This isn’t the easiest or best way to do IMAP, though it does the job for getting Gmail to do IMAP. Tell me how it works for you!
I actually prefer Gmail's web interface to Mail, but I think with Leopard I may switch over.
Also, just so everyone that doesn't have a gmail account knows, Gmail accounts grow in space. I think I got mine with about 1.6GB a few months ago and now it's actually at 2.75GB. I may soon approach 2% usage soon. WHOOO!
I have been using the system you mentioned above for the past 6 months. An year and a half ago I consolidated all my emails into GMAIL and really liked the interface until recently when my needs warranted a an approach needing a desktop client with the need to check my email at home, office and while travelling on various PCs.
I set up forwarding email from GMAIL to fastmail (full membership) and set-up smtp server of GMAIL, the really good thing is that thuderbird automatically also copies the sent email to sent folder. So I started to have a copy of all my inbox and sent items in GMAIL and also in Fastmail. So now when I need to search for a mail that somebody sent me 2 years ago I go to gmail as its search beats fastmail hands down. For everything else I use fastmail in thunderbird which is an excellent imap client.
Recently I upgraded my account at fastmail to enhanced and downloaded all my GMAIL (1.4 GBs) into fastmail (upgraded to enhanced membership) using get-POP on fastmail web. This method is shorter than the method you mentioned of downloading the GMAIL via pop to local PC then uploading to an IMAP server. And believe me when I say this when you have email the size of 1.4 GBs.
Now I have two copies of all my mail:1) all my email in fastmail with all my folders synced offline (imap) making them completely searcheable, and on GMAIL also. And the later is where I go to when I need to have that more powerful search.
I tried GMAIL pop but it has a big drawback. While one can delete the hundreds of stupid emails that one no longer needs in thunderbird/outlook but they remain on the web. If one needs to unclutter the mailbox them IMAP is the way to go. And did I mention that IMAP is excellent for implementing the zero inbox philosophy.
So what about setting it up on another computer? Do I need to follow these steps again for a second computer?
Sounds good, but I need pictures. Preferably drawn with crayons.
Well, here we go:
Tauseef, I know about the fact the Fastmail can use POP to retrieve messages (just like .Mac mail), but the one problem is that most other email services don't offer that and for Fastmail to be worth getting, you have to pay, and many people, includingh myself, refuse to pay for email.
And wackytbit, for setting it up on another computer, all you need to do is Step 2. Nothing else. Period. The great thing about IMAP is that once you've got the account set up, it syncs across all of your clients. The instructions in Step 2, of course, only work for Mail.app, so you'll have to modify them a bit to get them to work with another email program, such as Entourage or Thunderbird bu the base settings, such as what the mail sever is, will say the same. try and find specific instructions from your IMAP email host.
And finally Joe. I'm sorry, but it's too much work to do visual instructions. Even in crayon.
Use Mail.app to view Gmail on one computer, and the web interface on the other computer.