Using Gmail to manage ALL your email accounts
These days, most people need to juggle at least 2 email accounts around. One for personal use, and one for work. Often though, people may even have four or five email accounts that they need to keep track of. I personally have four… 2 for work related email, 1 that came with my ISP at home (Comcast), and of course my Gmail account. If your like me, managing all these accounts in a single online location may be just the thing you need to keep your sanity.
I have used Outlook to do this very same thing for more than a decade now, but the downside was that Outlook is only located on a single computer. If I didn’t have my laptop with me, I was lost. I tried accessing my work email using a smart phone, but then I had copies on one account, and copies on my laptop in Outlook, always trying to remember which device I used to respond to which email… It was only making matters worse. That is, until Gmail rolled out their new POP3 import features and Gmail app for my Blackberry. Wow, what a lifesaver!
Frequently Asked Questions…
- Why is this better than regular POP3 Outlook? Because Gmail is on the internet, no matter where in the world you are. You do not need to lug around a laptop to access everything in a central location.
- Why is this better than using IMAP in Outlook? Using the IMAP feature in Outlook still leaves a copy of your email on the original server(s). This can be considered a benefit since you will still be able to access your email even without Outlook… Although, if you have a quota or space limit on your work email that is lower than Gmail’s impressive 7+ Gigs, you will not be able to hold on to as much of it.
- Why is this better than email forwarding? Simply forwarding all your other email accounts to your Gmail address does not allow you full control of your email. It becomes difficult to sort and manage which emails came in through what account, and does not allow you to send email from any address other than the main one. It also creates issues with some spam filtering services since you will be forwarding all your spam as well as your legit email, possibly flagging you (or your mail server) as a possible spammer.
- How does Gmail make life easier with smart phones? Gmail has a mobile app for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, and Windows mobile. Using this mobile app will let you see the exact same thing on your phone that you see on the Gmail website. If you read an email on your phone, it shows up as “read” on the Gmail website as well. If you send an email on your phone, it also shows up in your sent folder on the Gmail website.
Becoming Familiar with the Gmail Layout…
Gmail is a little different than other email systems. Take a look at the screenshot below to familiarize yourself with the layout, and some of the features.
- Gmail groups related emails together… So if you received an email, and then responded to it, those two emails will show up in the same line together with a number (2). If the person then responds back, it will show a (3) since there are now 3 emails relating to the same subject, etc, etc…
- Another big change is that Gmail does not use “Folders”, it uses Labels… Basically all your emails are always located in the same folder, there are never any “sub-folders”. Once you get used to this way of organization, it becomes very useful since each email can now have more than one color coded label attached to it. You can then select the label you want to view on the left menu and Gmail will show you all messages that have that label applied to them.
- You are able to write custom rules that can do almost anything to a message when it first arrives, like adding a “star” to all emails that are from certain people, or automatically deleting emails that have certain words in the subject line. The various options available here are extensive and may be covered in more detail in a later article.
- Gmail also uses little arrows “›” and “»” to give you a little info about who else the email was sent to. Gmail will display a single arrow ( › ) next to all messages sent to your address (not a mailing list), and a double arrow ( » ) next to all messages that were sent only to you. * I believe this feature can be turned on/off via settings.
Ok now. On with the walkthrough!
* This walkthrough assumes you have a Gmail account, and are logged in.
* You can click on the following images to enlarge them!
Step 1 - Click the Settings link at the top of Gmail
Now we are going to add our new email account, click the settings link at the very top of the page.
Step 2 - The “Accounts and Import” tab
Go to the Accounts and Import tab at the top and then click on Add POP3 email account at the bottom, a new window will pop up. Just for an example, the screenshot below also shows a few accounts that I already have setup with this Gmail feature. Do not be concerned with the Send mail from another address button just yet, we will cover that later on.
Step 3 - Fill in the email address that you want to have Gmail check
Step 4 - Fill in your email account information
Gmail will try to automatically add the POP server that it “thinks” is the right one. This however, may not always be correct. Please check with your email service to find out what their settings are. For my example below I am showing settings for the Crossroads Realty email service.
POP server: server.xrdsportal.com, port: 110.
Also on this same screen, check the box next to Label incoming messages. Then click the drop-down menu and select New label… When a small box pops up, enter the name you would like to label all messages from this account with.
Step 5 - Select “Yes, I want to be able to send mail as”…
If this is the first time you are setting up a POP3 account, Gmail will now present you with the following window to also setup the SMTP account. This will enable you to send emails from either your Gmail address or this other address we are setting up right now. If for some reason this is not the case, you must click on the Send mail from another address button that I mentioned back in Step 2.
Step 6 - Fill out your name as you want it to appear to people you email
Step 7 - Select the second option, “Send through … SMTP server”
These settings will differ depending on what email account you are setting up, for my example below I am showing settings for Crossroads Realty email.
SMTP server: server.xrdsportal.com, port: 587.
*** This setting is very important when using Gmail to check your work related emails. People you send email to will see that the email originated from your actual work email address and not your Gmail one. It is often considered very unprofessional to use a personal email address to conduct official business.
Step 8 - Verify your email account
At this step you will need to go access your email however you normally would for the account we are setting up. Check your email by whatever means you used to and find the verification message sent from Google. Get the code that is in the email, and then come back to type the code into the box on this screen and then click the Verify button.
Step 9 - Set your reply option
At this point you should be back at the same screen we started from under the Accounts and Import tab. Look for the setting shown below so that you can set Gmail to Reply from the same address the message was sent to. This makes sure that when you reply to a work email, Gmail will use your work email account to send the response back.
This setting is also very important when using Gmail to check your work email.
Step 10 - Your Done!
Congratulations, you are now setup to have Gmail fully manage your other email account! There are so many ways to customize the Gmail interface that I can not go into all of them in a single article. I plan to write additional articles in the future to go over some of the many optional features in greater detail.
One last step that you may want to do for now is color code each label in your Gmail account. You can do this simply by locating the label on the left side of the Gmail interface, click the small square next to the Label in Gmail’s menu as shown on the right, and pick the color you want. All your emails from the account we just setup will now be color coded so that you can easily tell them from the regular Gmail emails.
Good Stuff
Jeff Hallamore