Mixing POP3, Gmail and Thunderbird for E-mail Anywhere!

Comments (1) · August 11, 2008 at 5:37 am · Online Tools, Personal

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:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
4. Select Enable IMAP.
5. 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. 

 

Faster and Free E-mail Checking

Comments off · December 3, 2006 at 4:45 am · Software Help

When you have more than one email account, managing them all can become a real pain. You either have to do your best to import them all into one place or you have to do the email checking dance and go from Web site to Web site to get things done. I needed a freeware program that would allow me to control all my email accounts at once central location. My solution was found in POP Peeper.

+ Read More About and Install for Yourself, POP Peeper!