Last Friday I described how to receive messages sent to your ISP mail account in your Gmail inbox. Lots of people prefer the sorting, contact lists, and other features of their client mail program, so today I'm going to turn things around and tell you how to forward mail sent to your Gmail address in the Outlook or Thunderbird inbox for your ISP mail account.
Start by logging into Gmail, clicking the Settings link in the top-left corner, and selecting Forwarding and POP/IMAP. If your ISP uses POP3, choose Enable POP for all mail if you want to see all your current Gmail messages in your desktop mail app, or Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on if you want to keep your existing Gmail stuff where it is and get only new messages forwarded to your mail program. In the drop-down menu to the left of "When messages are accessed with POP," you can choose to keep the messages in your Gmail inbox, archive them automatically, or delete them. If your ISP mail account uses IMAP, simply click Enable IMAP. When you're done, click Save Changes.
Set Gmail to forward its messages to the POP account in your desktop mail program.
Once you've got Gmail set to forward, you're ready to add the account to your desktop mail program. If you use Outlook 2003, click Tools*E-mail Accounts, choose Add a new e-mail account, and click Next. On the Server Type screen, select POP3 or IMAP, whichever you set Gmail to, and click Next again. Enter your name, Gmail address, logon name and password, and the incoming and outgoing server addresses: pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com, respectively, if you use POP, or imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com, respectively, if you use IMAP. Finally, click Next and Finish.
Configure Outlook 2003 to download your Gmail messages automatically.
Access Outlook 2007's Add New E-mail Account wizard by clicking Tools*Account Settings*New. Choose Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP, and click Next. Fill in your name, e-mail address, and password (twice), and then click Next again. The program will attempt an encrypted connection, and will opt for an unencrypted one if the first try fails.
Connect Gmail With Thunderbird
To add your Gmail account to Mozilla Thunderbird, click Tools*Account Settings*Add Account, choose Email account, and click Next. Enter your name and Gmail address, and click Next again. Choose POP or IMAP, whichever is appropriate, enter the Gmail server address (either pop.gmail.com or imap.gmail.com), leave User Global Inbox (store mail in Local Folders) checked if you want the mail kept in Thunderbird as well as in Gmail, and click Next once again.
Use Thunderbird's Account Wizard to add your Gmail messages to the mail program.
Enter your "Incoming user name" (if Thunderbird doesn't add it to the field automatically), click Next, type in your Gmail address (Thunderbird should do this for you as well), and click Next one more time. Check over the account settings, click Finish, and then OK.
Tomorrow: Reset Microsoft Word's faulty defaults.
I haven't checked my ISP mail inbox for about six months, but that doesn't mean I'm out of touch. I get the messages delivered to my Gmail account automatically, which allows me to read the mail on any PC with an Internet connection. I can even reply or send new messages in Gmail as if they came from the address my ISP supplied.
Start by logging into your Gmail account, or if you don't already have one, sign up here. Click Settings in the top-right corner of your inbox, and then choose Accounts. To receive mail addressed to your ISP account in your Gmail inbox, your ISP must use POP3. If it uses IMAP, you can centralize things by forwarding your Gmail messages to your ISP-supplied address. I'll describe how to configure this on Monday.
Select Add another mail account next to "Get mail from other accounts," enter your ISP mail address, and click Next Step. Enter the ISP account's user name and password, and the POP server address and port. The server address will likely be pop.your ISP's URL; check with your ISP if it's otherwise. If your PC uses Windows and you're using SSL to connect (which I recommend), the port will be 995 (110 if you aren't using SSL).
Add mail from your POP3 account to your Gmail inbox by providing the account settings.
Chances are you'll want to access your mail from any PC, so check Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server. I also suggest using SSL (I'm repeating myself), and label the messages with your ISP account's address, which makes it easy to tell at a glance where the message was originally sent. Click Add Account, check Yes, I want to be able to send mail as (that address), and click Next Step. You can change the name of the sender, and specify a different reply-to address, if you wish.
When you're done, click Next Step again. Now select Send Verification, open your regular mail client, click the confirmation link in the "Gmail Verification" message, or copy the verification code and paste it into the Verify field back in Gmail. Finally, click Verify.
Monday: Turn things around by getting your Gmail messages delivered to your ISP account's inbox.
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