Now not saying my e-mail situation is the best setup around, but I do like to think I have a pretty neat foundation in place. Mixing Gmail with Thunderbird and my other mail accounts elsewhere I have everything sent to one place and I can get to it all from one login location either on the desktop or on the Web.
Import POP3 Accounts into Gmail
First things first, we have my Gmail account. This acts as my main mail account. From there, I have added all my other mail accounts from other various locations (such as lunarpages.com or mitchkeeler.com) to Gmail. Google’s e-mail client can act as an e-mail fetcher for all your other POP3 e-mail accounts. Here is a post from them describing how to set that up:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=21288
The short version would be go to Settings > Accounts and then “Add Another Mail Account”.
Get Gmail to Work with IMAP
This is where problem two comes into play. I want to be able to use Thunderbird on my desktop PC to manage my e-mail and then Gmail via the browser on my laptop (or anywhere else) to get to all my same mail via the Web. To enable IMAP in Gmail:
- Sign in to Gmail.
- Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
- Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
- Select Enable IMAP.
- Configure your IMAP client and click Save Changes.
To configure Thunderbird for Gmail/IMAP, be sure to check out this post here:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77662
Now for the Little Annoying Things
Alright, my mail system is in place and I can mirror Thunderbird with Gmail (or vice versa). There are a few small kinks yet to be worked out though. The worst of them is that your address book will not stay in sync between platforms. You can do this manually of course, but that is a pain in the rear. There are also a few configuration tweaks you have to change to get your tags and folders to match up with the right spot inside of Thunderbird.
Lifehacker has done a good write up on most of these other little tweaks you may wish to do, so check that out for more information. There you have it. It might not be the prettiest system but it does get the job done.
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