Synch Outlook and Gmail (and use Gmail labels as folders)
I have moved my corporate email to Google domains and am solely using Google's email servers. Once I started trusting Gmail, I forwarded my other email accounts to it and haven't looked back since.
I can access my email from home over the web, at a client's site, and if necessary, on my T-mobile dash. While traveling overseas, I can pop into an Internet cafe and check my email quickly.
However, sharing email from multiple email clients got tricky. While Google mail provides POP3 access so you can easily read your Gmail messages offline in Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird or any other email client, the problem is that Gmail cannot synchronize with Outlook. Messages marked as read in Outlook remained "unread" in your Gmail Inbox. Likewise, if you deleted an email in Outlook, it would still exist in your Gmail account.
Clearly there had to be a better way.
Enter IMAP. Google has introduced IMAP support for Gmail and Google domain apps. When you synchronize your Outlook client with Gmail, you can see the following:
- If you delete a message in Outlook, it is deleted in Gmail.
- If you flag and email in Outlook, it is starred in Gmail.
- If you move an email to a folder, Gmail automatically applies a label to that email on the Gmail server with the same name as the outlook folder.
To use this feature, you will have to enable IMAP through the POP/IMAP and Forwarding settings of your Gmail account. Follow the link with the instructions and don't forget to setup the correct port numbers.
