Google Saves E-Mail!

I use email a lot. I’m sure many of you do as well. So why not have a super-safe way to keep all of your email (from as many accounts as you might have) in one place, and get some virus protection to boot?

Sound too good to be true? It’s available to you right now. Thanks god, errr…. google…..

Get Google To Store All Your Email

First, login to gmail (yeah, you have to login first :/ ). Next, find the ‘Settings’ link in the top right of your browser.

Once you’ve clicked on that, you’ll see the settings page, with some options in the top. You’ll want to click the ‘Accounts’ link in the top left

After you’ve gotten there, notice the region (towards the bottom of the page) that says ‘Get mail from other accounts’.

This is where you’ll add email accounts from. Go ahead and click the ‘Add account’ link. After you do this, you should be presented with a pop-up window that will ask you for the email address you wish to replicate on google. It looks like this:

Go ahead and enter whatever email address you want to use, and click ‘Next Step’. After you’ve gotten that accomplished, you’ll be presented with something slightly more involved. Don’t worry it’s not too tough to get through.

So, the first thing you enter is your username. Most of the time, that will be your full email address. Your password is, well, your password. The POP server is something for you to figure out. Usually, it’s mail.your-domain.com. So, if your email address is joeballs@physics.org, then the POP server is probably mail.physics.org. Sometimes it’s pop.physics.org, or pop3.physics.org.

Anyways, once you figure that out, and get it in there, you have a few choices to make.

The checkbox that allows you to leave a copy of the retrieved message on the server can be important. I think I speak for sys admins accross the internet when I say ‘Dont check this box!’. The reason: if you leave this box unchecked, google will remove a message from your server once google downloads it. That’s great for disk space, and since google seems to be growing hard drives on trees, they might as well do all the storing.

The next option you have, is to use SSL when connecting to your POP server. If your POP server supports this option, do it. While it’s not likely, it is possible for someone to see your emails as Google downloads them from your mail server. Since e-mail is usually personal, you probably don’t want this to happen.

After that, there’s the option to label incoming messages. I really recommend you do this, especially if you’re using more than one email account here. It really helps to distinguish which email was sent to which address.

Finally, you have the option to Archive incoming messages, so they never hit your inbox. I never use this option, so I can’t really speak to why you’d want to. I’m sure some of you have a reason, so try that one at your own leisure.

Get Google To Send Mail For You

Having Google store all of your mail is only half the battle. The next part, is having google send mail for you too. Back in the ‘Accounts’ tab of the ‘Settings’ page, find the area for ‘Send mail as:’

You have the option to add an email address here. Go ahead and click this. Once you do, another pop-up window will appear that will look like this:

You’ll be prompted for your name and email address. You even have the option to specifiy a different reply-to email address. Go ahead and fill those 2 fields out, then click ‘Next Step’. Then, you’ll be presented with another window :

This is a prompt to let you know an email will be sent to the email address you’re trying to send as. This helps prevent other people from sending mail on your behalf without you knowing about it. Go ahead and click the ‘Send Verification’ button. Google will now send you an email verifying that you actually have a right to send mail as that email. When you get the email, click the link in it, and you’re done.

Wrapping Up …

Google has an awesome ability to filter spam and viruses from email. Using Gmail as a proxy for your email cuts down on the spam you recieve, and the likelyhood you’ll get a virus from your buddy. Even better, you get to use gmail’s awesome web interface for all of your email.

Currently Gmail supports IMAP integration as well, so your email client (or iPhone) can use IMAP to replicate folders (labels) in GMail. I’ve heard that’s a little buggy right now, but I’m sure fixes are on the way.