Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007
We’ve all been hearing about the new IMAP support in Gmail, but how do we access that from Outlook? Those of you that have been waiting patiently will be happy to know all the instructions are on this page.
Using IMAP we can synchronize email across multiple devices, since the mail stays on the server. You already stopped reading this part and skipped down to the instructions, didn’t you?
Enable IMAP in Gmail Settings
Open your Settings panel in Gmail, and then click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
Now click the Enable IMAP radio button, and click Save Changes.
Add Account to Outlook
Use the Tools menu you to open the Account Settings panel.
If this is your first account you’ll be prompted for the wizard, otherwise you’ll need to click the New button under the E-mail tab.
Now select the “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP” option and hit next.
Select the checkbox for “Manually configure server settings” and everything on that page will gray out. Hit the next button again.
Now select “Internet E-mail” (Didn’t we just do this? This wizard is taking too long…)
Finally we can enter some settings! Add in all your personal information here.
Note: If you are outside of the US you may need to use imap.googlemail.com and smtp.googlemail.com instead of imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com.
Note: for Gmail Apps accounts, you’ll need to put in your full email address wherever you see an @gmail.com above. For instance, if your account was geek@howtogeek.com you would put that in the E-mail address field as well as the User Name field.
Click on the “More Settings” button and find the Outgoing Server tab, where you’ll need to check the box for “My outgoing server requires authentication”
Now choose the Advanced tab, and enter the following values (Very important)
- Incoming Server: 993
- Incoming Server encrypted connection: SSL
- Outgoing Server: 587
- Outgoing Server encrypted connection: TLS
Note: If you are having an issue with your sent email not showing up in Gmail, you can use the Folders tab, and then select the [Gmail] \ Sent Mail folder.
Note: Only do this step if your mail is not showing up, otherwise it will duplicate the sent mail.
Now that you’ve closed out that dialog, you can click the Test Account Settings button to make sure everything is going to work.
If all goes well, you should see a success message.
Note: Some ISPs restrict outgoing mail, so if you have a problem sending a test message you’ll need to consult with their documentation.
Accessing Your Mail
Now that everything is working you’ll notice a new set of folders for your Gmail account. (I’m using Gmail apps, which is why you don’t see an @gmail.com email address)
All of your labels will show up as separate folders, and the built-in “folders” in Gmail will be under the new [Gmail] folder.
Outlook Flags = Gmail Stars
If you want to star a message in Gmail, you just need to flag it in Outlook. When I flagged this message from Mysticgeek…
It shows up in Gmail as a starred message. (And it works the other way too)
Sending Email from Outlook
To send a new email from your Gmail account, just change the “Account” drop-down to your Gmail address before you send a message.
Note that if you only use Gmail, you won’t have this drop-down and it will default to your Gmail.
Final Thoughts
Here’s a few things to keep in mind:
- Gmail Labels = Outlook Folders. To label a message, add it to a folder.
- Gmail Stars = Outlook Flags.
- Do Not move spam messages to the “Junk E-mail” folder in Outlook, move them to the [Gmail] \ Spam folder.
- Outlook has a built-in Search Folder for “Large Mail”, which will let you easily find messages with large attachments.
Now that you can access your starred and labeled messages, you can start using Outlook’s excellent Search Folders to find messages more easily.
Daily Email Updates
You can get our how-to articles in your inbox each day for free. Just enter your name and email below:
Great! Working, but:
When I select some email from my gmail account, Outlook (probably) starts to download the message + attachemets and completey freezes until the message is downloaded – ‘(Not Responding)’ text added to the window title.
Does anybody have the same issue?
Wow, best tutorial for this that I’ve seen yet. Many thanks!
I tried doing this the other day. It worked perfectly, except that it had the tendency to hang, e.g., on my “all mail” or “sent” folders. It was trying to get 5000+ headers (not the entire message) and just didn’t want to finish. It got to the point where I just stopped trying to use it. I’ve got it set up with a secondary account, and that’s working fine, but the volume of mail there is much less. I figure I’ll wait a few weeks and give it another shot.
A ton of people have been reporting issues with Gmail’s IMAP support being slow in general… and I think Outlook’s support isn’t quite as good as it could be.
I’m trying to see if there’s some hidden setting that can be tweaked.
I set this up yesterday and YEA noticed it very slow. It seemed hit and miss if it was going ot load anything. Usually if I waited a bit, it would finally load but definatelyl not usable for me. Hopefully if many people are complaining of the same problem Google will fix this.
Jonathan
I set this up yesterday and YEA noticed it very slow. It seemed hit and miss if it was going ot load anything. Usually if I waited a bit, it would finally load but definatelly not usable for me. Hopefully if many people are complaining of the same problem Google will fix this.
Jonathan
Thanks for the great tip, I set it up in Outlook 2003 and it works great. It helps to have lots of memory. I did a few mass deletions and Outlook froze while finishing the operation but then responded normally. The searching and sorting is much easier now.
A minor downside is that using IMAP forces you to use a new, separate data file. I used to have my POP gmail and home ISP emails dump to the same data file, which is not possible now unless I have gmail grab my home emails automatically. So far, IMAP is pretty cool.
Have you been able to get rid of the Junk E-mail folder? I have not. there is no need for it since Gmail has the Spam folder.
is there a way to remap the trash as well?
I haven’t figured out how to get rid of that Junk Email folder… it’s kinda annoying.
Another problem is that if you have tons of emails in your gmail account, access seems to be very slow, and not just from Outlook.
REQUEST
“Use Gmail IMAP in Windows Mobile Outlook”
Thanks for the above though, I think I got mobile working ok, just that I still have a grayed-out “pop3″ on the same page where I enter imap.gmail.com
Thanks for the wonderful article, but i still have some problems and questions.
How can i change the storage location of the gmail .pst on my computer? By default i get “C:\Documents and Settings\Vasu\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” for the storage of new .pst file and i am unable to change it to any other location.
Also can’t i set this new gmail .pst as the default data file and remove existing Personal Folders that came as default with Outlook? When i select this gmail .pst data file the “Set as default” option in Outlook gets disabled? Why?
Thanks for the great tutorial… I’ve one question:
I’ve been using Gmail thru Outlook via POP for some time now, and have sorted all my emails into folders in Outlook. If I switch to IMAP, does this mean I will lose my existing folder structure in Outlook? If so, I would need to re-categorize all my emails all over again! Any idea how to get around this?
In other words, is it possible to “import” the existing folder structure I had from Outlook which was previously created through POP, into the Gmail folder structure via IMAP?
Hope someone can shed some light on this! =)
When I set up GMail IMAP, will it enable download of all emails in my GMail’s |All Mail| folder. I just checked, the number of email in my Gmail |All Mail| and it is 6485 and rising!!!
I would hate to have all the emails download into my Outlook 2007 and then I delete them, since these are all read emails.
Thank you for a great screenshot-how-to.
Is there a way to “upload” your .pst other than drag and dropping it in outlook? It seems quite inefficient and it makes outlook seem like it is going to crash.
@Gene:
I just dragged and dropped the folders from the default Personal Folders pst to the Gmail IMAP pst folder structure. It took some uploading, but it places that folder name as a label in your Gmail. So you’ll have the same folder with the same emails in your IMAP folders.
I was having a lot of trouble setting this up earlier, this article got it working for me! Thanks so much!
Thank you for the great article, very useful
Any problems with the iphone as in security after my work enables IMAP on the Exchange Server? they are concerned with this, but everyone else I talk with says it will not create any problems. Gmail works great on the iphone, but the Exchange server has been the iphone’s only trouble!!
Thanks for this. Do you / does anyone know what happens when I delete a message in Outlook? Normally with IMAP the message is just marked as deleted, but here it seems to remove it completely from the inbox (like Thunderbird does). It doesn’t appear in the Trash folder and doesn’t seem to be deleted from the conversation when I log in via the web interface either. I’m running Outlook 2003 and have set the root folder path to [Gmail] (to hide the ‘double inbox’) if that makes any difference.
@Andrew
That’s because when you delete the message with Gmail IMAP, it doesn’t really delete it in Gmail. It just removes the Inbox label from the message. It leaves it in All Mail. I don’t particularly like that, but if they keep increasing my mailbox space over the years, I can deal with it.
If you want to trash it, you’ll have to drag it to the Trash folder under [Gmail] in your email client. There it will be deleted automatically by Gmail after the given amount of time OR you can go to that folder and permanently delete it manually.
This goes for all folders. There’s an article in Gmail’s IMAP help that talks about what each action in your client does in actuality on the Gmail server.
Thanks Hai-Peng. I will try it out and see how it goes!
I love using pop3, but hated that in my GMail account my inbox had over 4000 emails. Now, that I have a new computer with Outlook 2007 I see I can no longer use pop3. So I have some questions!
First, I am with RJNJC that my All Mail in Outlook now has over 8000 emails. If I deleted all of these from GMail, would they disappear from my folders in Outlook? I would want to keep the emails I have in Outlook. I sort of feel like I need to ‘clean house’ in GMail, to start with IMAP from scratch. Not sure how this would affect Outlook. Also, I of course did receive 2 sets of emails in my Outlook folders when I switched over to IMAP.
Also, I have a second email from comcast.net that comes to Outlook; is there no way to house one Inbox on Outlook for both my GMail and comcast.net accounts using IMAP for both?
Does anyone know of a IMAP ‘manual’ or something? I find that this is very frustrating, and it’s never a simple solution for me. Thanks so much!
And, yes, your instructions above were great, thank you!
Thanks for the awesome help session. I set up my imap and started out fine, but then I was doing a mail merge and after about 300 contacts the messages just sat in my outbox and didn’t send. I moved everything to my drafts and tried sending them one at a time, but to no avail. I have deleted and reconfigured the imap several times, and can’t get the imap to send any messages to anyone. I can receive them through outlook, but can’t send. What gives?
Thanks Hai-Peng!
@Jen
POP sends a copy of each email to your computer, which stores it locally. The messages are usually deleted from the server immediately. In IMAP, messages are left on the server; Outlook will cache them, but the ‘proper’ copy is the remote one. So if you delete messages from Gmail (in Outlook or via the web interface) they will disappear from both (the caveats Hai-Peng supplied notwithstanding). If you want to remove messages from Gmail but keep them on your machine you’ll need to get a local copy first (via POP or just by dragging them all across from IMAP to a local folder in Outlook).
It’s possible to set up rules in Outlook to copy messages from one folder to another when they arrive, so you could configure Outlook to move any messages that come in via Comcast to your Gmail inbox. In practice, (with another IMAP service) I’ve found this only works moderately well as IMAP can be rather slow and unreliable at times. A better solution would be to set up a divert.
@Charles
According to the docs, Gmail limits the number of messages that can be sent by their SMTP server to 100 per day (limit is 500 via the web interface for some reason). Could this be the issue?
Can you help me. Everytime i click on gmail screen, it will take sometime for it to react. How can i rectify this tq
I don’t use Outlook, but have been setting up Google Apps for a few of our users now. One thing I found confusing for them is that there’s a separate inbox and folder structure for Gmail. People expect to look in Outlook’s inbox folder. The system works more logically in Outlook Express and Thunderbird. Perhaps, if there is a way of getting the “regular” inbox to contain mail in Gmail’s inbox, you could explain this.
Another thing, with all the mail clients I tried, is that the Sent Mail folder of Gmail shows the sender column, and not the receiver column, so it is necessary to change the view settings for that folder. This problem is easily solved, but in Outlook it isn’t so obvious how to accomplish this, and many people will just end up staring at the screen and wondering why they can’t find their sent messages.
Very detailed and useful post – thanks. One minor problem I have with using gmail IMAP in Outlook:
When I browse the “All Mail” folder under the “[Gmail]” folder, select a message, then hit reply, Outlook automatically chooses to send the message via gmail.com. This is the preferred method.
When I browse the Outlook created Gmail “Inbox” folder (outside of the “[Gmail]” folder), select a message, then hit reply, Outlook chooses to send the message via Exchange. This then saves the sent message to my Exchange Sent Items folder and does not show up in Gmail’s Sent Items folder.
To have to manually choose to send via gmail.com (remembering to choose is the hardest part) when replying to emails is a pain. Anyone know of a way around this?
Thanks again
Thank you, SO MUCH! This was a huge help, just what I needed. Walked me through the issue professionally. (How to set up IMAP from gmail to Outlook 2007.
YOUR a ppro!
thanks it all works fine! i am so happy!
thank you
I have the same question as Vasu: “Also can’t i set this new gmail .pst as the default data file and remove existing Personal Folders that came as default with Outlook? When i select this gmail .pst data file the “Set as default” option in Outlook gets disabled? Why?”
Please advise.
Thanks,
Alex
I have the same problem as Alex. When i select this gmail .pst data file the “Set as default” option in Outlook gets disabled?
Looking forward to your comments,
Thanks,
Christian
thank you so much for publishing this FOR FREE! my boyfriend and i solved out i.t. issues without the help of anybody else. yay! hooray for google, which pointed me to you in the first place!
cheers,
mandy
yeah it really works i am happy and doing best via outlook , thanks gmail …
Thanks for the useful article.
I have set up outlook now and have added my IMAP inbox and sent items to my favourite folders instead of the old POP ones. however the Favourite folder names are followed by a long description of the IMAP account which makes it hard to see the number of mails in each folder without stretching the nav bar all the way across the screen. does anyone know how to remove the ‘in name@domain.com‘ from the end of the favorite folders
Send test e-mail message: Cannot send the message. Verify the e-mail address in your account properties. The server responded: 530 5.5.1 Authentication Required g36sm4736508rob
WHAT am I doing wrong? I’ve tried several times!
I just upgraded to Outlook 2007, and IMAP with my ISP. With Pop3 I could automatically delete the server copy of the emails I got on the server and I only have 100Mg allowed in the server. Now that I use IMAP I have to manually check each individual email to delete it manually. Does anyone know where the little radial button is that says “Delete copy from Server” like it used to be on Pop3? I would be very muc obliged if anyone could help me out on this one.
Thanx!
Domenic
I am using Microsoft outlook 2003 thru exchange server, will be on leave so wanted to chk all my outlook mail on my gmail account. how can i do this. can anybody help
Thanx & Regards
Hari
Hari:
The easiest way is to create an Outlook rule to forward your mail to your Gmail account, unless your organization has webmail support.
Great tip, worked right away. I had previously tried the Microsoft and Google help sites and neither had accurate info.
Thank you!
To correct situation where “Sent” box in Outlook displays messages by who message was sent “from” rather than the more logical who the message was sent ” to”, you can fix it as follows: 1. Highlight the “Sent” box (under “…@gmail.com”). 2. Click on the “file/edit” tool bar: “View”, then “Arrange by”, then “Custom”. 3. Then click on “Fields” radio button- then “remove” the “from” field and add the “to” field”. Click “OK” two times to close those windows. There is one final step I did: in the View/Arrange by/Custom box, I clicked on ‘arrange by “Date”‘ to have the Sent box displayed by date then by “to” address. Hope that helps.
Thank you very much sir its all done just form your help i really lucky that all had gone well in one shot no problem at all… thanks again
regards
Anand
I configured gmail as imap in outlook 2007. Is it possible to configure outlook so that when it opens, it also opens my gmail inbox and not the inbox of the personal folders (allthough there is no account that uses the personal folders, it is not possible to remove personal folders from outlook 2007).
hi. i followed your instructions, but got:
Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): The connection to the server failed.
Send test e-mail message: The connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).
is there anyway to fix this? i followed all the instructions.
I have the same issue as yefiwaded,
I use AVG and even when I disable it, it still fails. Gmail IMAP or Outlook 2007, one of the sucks!
I changed the location where Outlook stores sent items to [Gmail]/Sent Items as specified in the post. I now have a little envelope on the [Gmail}/Sent Items folder indicating the change was successful. However, none of the emails I send are being saved here. In fact, I can’t find them being saved anywhere. Any ideas?
I’m trying to use this feature so that I can route all my email addresses through gmail.
This is no problem if I use the online interface as you can setup numerous ‘Send mail as’ addresses which lets you send mail as if it was from a different account (when you compose mail you get a drop down to select the account you want to send from).
However when using a client like outlook you don’t have this option, if you reply to a message it uses gmail as the default.
Is there any way round this?
I have the same problem as yefiwadad and Smashy. The ISP says it’s not its problem. More or less the same than Google and M$.
For those of you with IMAP problems asking for your username and pass
I was having problems with this when I was setting up a google app account for http://www.janetandray.com
When you set up google apps to take over mail for a custom domain
your mail servers are STILL imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com
however, your email would be, in this case user@janetandray.com with the password you have chosen in google apps.
hope this helps! wasted 30 mins of my life trying to figure that one (i was using imap.janetandray.com)
“I configured gmail as imap in outlook 2007. Is it possible to configure outlook so that when it opens, it also opens my gmail inbox and not the inbox of the personal folders (allthough there is no account that uses the personal folders, it is not possible to remove personal folders from outlook 2007).”
_______________________________________________
In the folder menu on the left, Right click on the gmail inbox and choose “Add to favorite folders”. Then go to the “Favorite Folders” Group, above the mail folders, click the gmail inbox you just added, and drag it to the top of the pile, that way it will open as the default every time.
______________________________________________
“Very detailed and useful post – thanks. One minor problem I have with using gmail IMAP in Outlook:
When I browse the “All Mail” folder under the “[Gmail]” folder, select a message, then hit reply, Outlook automatically chooses to send the message via gmail.com. This is the preferred method.
When I browse the Outlook created Gmail “Inbox” folder (outside of the “[Gmail]” folder), select a message, then hit reply, Outlook chooses to send the message via Exchange. This then saves the sent message to my Exchange Sent Items folder and does not show up in Gmail’s Sent Items folder.
To have to manually choose to send via gmail.com (remembering to choose is the hardest part) when replying to emails is a pain. Anyone know of a way around this?
Thanks again”
____________________________________________________
If you go to “Tools” and choose “Account settings”, click on the gmail account and then click on the button above that says “Set as default”.
When I send email through Outlook – it appears in the All Mail folder. Not sure why this is happening – shouldn’t it only show in Sent Mail?
For people with imap connection problems, use imap.googlemail.com and smtp.googlemail.com
I think this applies to new accounts, but I’m not sure.
i have a quick question. It looks like Categories in 2007 doesn’t work and it can only be with a PST file, is this correct or is there a work around?
Thank you in advance
Thanks for lots of help & tips…
Am a complete newbie to Vista, and just got new own computer (always had company ones before, badly missing the IT department!).
Can you help…
In the Add New Email Account screen where it asks for your email (gmail) address and then password – it says to type in the password provided by your ISP.
What password does it want? The password you use to log on to gmail? Or the ADSL password?
Help please!
Thanks hopefully.
THANKS!! that helped me alot!
Thank you VERY VERY much, you just made my life better
My outlook keep ideling off and I get an error… also in the bottom right hand corner it always says offline.
Did I do something wrong?
The emails still work but I still get the errors and the offline in the bottom right of outlook.
I’ve configured my couple of Gmail accounts to work in Outlook 2007, but I have one question/complaint: How do I get the Favorites Gmail folders to refresh when I launch Outlook, to show new mails? It seems the only way to do this is to click on each one to wake it up. Ditto for send and receive throughout the day, there seems to be a lag or no connection with the Favorites showing new mails unless I click on each. Is there a rule or something I can create? And lastly, is there a way to point all Gmail spams for all accounts to one “review” folder that updates in my Favorites so I can see what’s being labeled as spam, etc? Oh and to make messages that are not spam as that, without having to log into Gmail web? Thanks in advance for whatever help you can offer! Joe
Man awesome tute everything works great
Thank you very much sir its all done just form your help i really lucky that all had gone well in one shot no problem at all… thanks again
regards
jignesh
Answer to How can i change the storage location of the [IMAP] gmail .pst on my computer?
- Launch Outlook 2003
- Create the IMAP gmail account. It’ll create a .pst in ,e.g.,
C:\Documents and Settings\javier\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst
- Exit Outlook 2003
- Copy this Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst to another location, e.g. (could be network drive):
P:\mails\Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst
- Delete Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst from the original (C: drive)
- Launch Outlook 2003 and try to open imap.gmail.com. Outlook will give an error since it can’t find the .PST. Also it’ll pop a dialog box asking to locate the Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst.
- Choose P:\mails\Outlookimap.gmail.com-00000015.pst and voila…Outlook will download next all e-mails to the new location.
Hope it helps.
Any solution to the slowness issue yet. After running gmail and Outlook 2007 for two month, it is suddenly reallllly slllllow, syncing takes forever.
Thoughts?
I have a problem which I hope you are able to help with.
I have some clients that are using Outlook 2003 to access their IMAP accounts.
some of them have more than 1 account on their PC and are having trouble setting up theire Sent Items. I have set the rules and ticked the box in Email Preferences but my problem is when they send an email form an account other than the default it wont go through to their IMAP sent Items folder like the rule is set to do.
Can anyone help with this problem because my clients are getting frustrated and they aren’t the type of people you want to upset.
Thank You
Is there a way to have your drafts automatically sync/goto the gmail drafts folder? Much like how Outlook can handle Sent Mail.
i also cannot sync the drafts created on outlook 2003 with the google drafts when using imap apps. i think its a limitation of outllook as i cannot configure the path for the draft emails in outlook.
i have configured the gmail account but i did not get the gmail account in sending option, if i try to make it default it says the account does not exist although i can receive emails.
Looking for your support
Ray Li
I have the same problem as a couple of the guys above – how do you delete the personal folder that is set by default. You can’t change the gmail imap account to default for some reason. I discovered that by default the personal folder (inbox) was opened, but that didn’t work, maybe there is something else like this to find.
Thanks for guide,
I cannot believe that using IMAP hadn’t dawned on me before but this article gave me just the nudge I needed.
Nice one
How to Start Outlook showing IMAP Inbox instead of Outlook Today
* On the Tools menu, choose Options.
* Click the Other tab, and choose Advanced Options.
* Under General Settings, next to the Startup in this folder box, click Browse.
* In the Select Folder dialog box, select the IMAP Inbox folder.
* Click OK to close the Select Folder window. Click OK to close the Advanced Options window and close the Options window.
Can someone PLEASE tell me why ANYONE ever needs to have 5000~10000 emails in their inbox? These are the kinds of things that make me crazy…LOL…computers are making people lazier (you wouldn’t keep 5000 old newspapers in your house would you?) and dumber…no one can remember a simple phone number anymore and don’t get me started on spelling…
If someone has a reason besides ‘It’s easier than deleting’ please let me know…
I just got the new AT&T Tilt phone & am trying to set up my email accounts. I want to be able to receive all emails from my Yahoo! account into my phone *but* only keep the ones I want on my phone without deleting them from my Yahoo! account. It seems this is impossible. Whatever I do on my phone is mirrored in my Yahoo! account.
Same for GMail. The Tilt is Windows based so I can sync it to my Outlook. I set up my GMail account in my Outlook so I can sync it my phone & retrieve my GMail emails *but* I only want the keep the emails I want on my phone without deleting the original from my GMail account.
Is there any way to fix this with Yahoo!/GMail/Outlook???
Has anyone gotten Outlook 2007 to save draft messages in the gmail folder? I can’t change the default and even if I put it in “favorites” it still saves to the original outlook “drafts” folder.
Thanks.
Reader of this thread may like to know a useful microsoft recommended registry hac, subject to your version of windows/updates/outlook, that makes life between gmail and outlook a lot lot easier.
Concealed “sent” field values in outlook sent item view:
I noticed recently that messages sent via gmail apps were not displaying all their details when viewing the sent item folder in outlook 2003. I could only see message title, but not the sent value/recipient. In outlook i often sort the messages by dbl clicking the column headers but many messages were not displaying the sent values unless they were clicked open. This makes quick sorting on the fly really awkward. Its a subtle but hellish annoying bug.
I applied the registry tweak:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316113
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=328281
and have now outlook works in conjunction with gmail imap apps as you would expect it, ie send a message from gmail, and all its header values appear in the sent folder in outlook.
However I have not been able to apply this retrospectively. Therefore messages that in the past have been sent from gmail will not display their sent values until the emails are fully opened.
If anyone know hows to apply this in bulk to all past sent messages, please please speak up.
After trying in vain to set IMAP up following google’s patchy instructions I found this wonderful site and it worked. You are awesome guys! Thank you.
Yeah!!
It’s done but going very slow. I think this problem is now common to evry on eusing gmail IMAP. You google guys watch out this!!!!!!
Dula
When sending email from my IMAP account as it comes up with my tim@googlemail.com address. Can anyone explain how i can configure IMAP to send email from outlook so it comes up with my name tim@mydomain.com ?
I have also added an email address in Gmail’s settings, but then it comes up with “From: tim@googlemail.com; on behalf of; Tim [tim@mydomain.com]”
Any ideas much appreciated.
Hi,
I was so pleased with this. As the other tries were timing out and having issue’s.
Thanks so much for the extra tips
Ugh, so many options in outlook and they didn’t get the basics rights.
I also want to store drafts in imap gmail folder, not local outlook folder.
I am running Outlook 2007 configured with IMAP for Gmail. Everything is configured as described, and works fine, but Outlook 2007 crashes on a regular basis.
Is anyone else having this problem and is there a solution?
thanks
you guys are brilliant, especially Mark Lewis.
I’ve got 6 different Gmail addresses running on IMAP in Outlook 2007, all of which are running pretty well. The speed is hit or miss, but that’s more on Google’s side than Outlook. The only thing I wish I could do is make all the emails in Gmail’s SPAM folder to automatically be “read”.
OK I’m completely lost & think my problem may be the opposite of the person who started this. 15 yrs PC, last 5 Mac, just back to PC. Purchased laptop with Vista. Bought Office (Student) 2007 & Outlook 2007 (separately).
All I want is ALL of my incoming e-mails (regardless of account) showing up in ONE Inbox, where ALL e-mails can be listed by the time they came in (my preference) or by e-mail account, sender, etc.
I have 3 e-mail accounts: msn (no pay), hotmail & g-mail.
Set up Outlook and added the 3 accounts beginning with g-mail.
Test e-mails show I can send from all accounts and receive to all accounts, but in the following confusion:
Favorite Folders ~ Inbox: only contains mail TO g-mail account.
Favorite Folders ~ Sent Items: contains e-mails sent from all 3 accounts.
Favorite Folders ~ Unread Mail: only contains unread RSS articles
Mail Folders ~ All Mail Items: contains 3 folders: Personal Folders, xxx@hotmail.com & xxx@msn.com The Personal Folders folder contains all of my g-mail account folders and the Inbox under Personal Folders contains incoming mail TO my g-mail account e-mail. The hotmail and msn Folders contain all of the folders I have created for each of those accounts, respectively, along with an Inbox for each, which contains the current incoming mail To each of the two respective accounts.
I have dragged & dropped the hotmail & msn Inbox’s into my Favorite Folders and nothing changed.
I have left clicked the hotmail & msn Inbox’s and Moved them to my Favorite Folders and nothing changed.
I tried dragging & dropping those 2 Inboxes into the Inbox and Unread Mail under Favorite Folders, but they would not go.
I tried dragging & dropping the hotmail & msn folders under All Mail Items into the Personal Folders under All Mail Items, but they would not go.
Either way I still have to open those individual Inboxes to see my hotmail & msn incoming e-mail.
How do I configure Outlook so that all 3 Inboxes are combined? Strange how the Sent Mail (under Favorite Folders) combines Sent Mail for all 3 accounts??? A clue?
I apologize for any rusty or forgotten PC tools.
Thanks, in advance, for any assistance.
Hi,
I’m using Outlook 2007 to access my Gmail account via IMAP on Windows XP SP2 with all security patches installed. Recently I began to experience a strange problem. Actually, I think it’s a feature which I must have inadvertently enabled, but I can’t figure out how to undo it.
Here is the situation: Whenever I click on an e-mail which hasn’t been downloaded or I move around in a folder with up and down arrow keys and select an e-mail which hasn’t been downloaded, i.e., whenever the selection changes and an e-mail that hasn’t been downloaded yet is selected in any way, that e-mail is downloaded automatically (the little icon in the “Header Status” column disappears.) BTW, I’m not using reading panes at all. So it’s just (from left to right) navigation pane, e-mails in the selected folder and to-do pane.
This is most disturbing when I select the Spam folder in Gmail. Here is what happens:
- The first mail in Spam folder is selected, and is downloaded automatically.
- That e-mail is tagged as spam by Outlook and moved into Junk E- mail folder which has been created automatically by Outlook when I first created the Gmail IMAP account.
- Then the selection changes again, the next e-mail is in Spam folder is selected, and is downloaded automatically.
- That e-mail is tagged as spam by Outlook, too, and moved into Outlook’s Junk E-mail folder.
This goes on like this until each and every mail in Gmail Spam folder is moved to Outlook’s Junk E-mail folder. Of course, I could turn spam filtering off, but that doesn’t prevent automatic download of IMAP e- mails when I click on them; that’s what I am really after. Besides I have other accounts set up, so I need spam filtering for them.
I have exactly the same setup on a Vista machine (Accessing Gmail using Outlook 2007 via IMAP), and what I described above doesn’t happen there. This is why I think it’s a feature of Outlook 2007, but I cannot figure out how I enabled it, nor how to undo it.
Well, this really bugged me, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it, so I reinstalled the OS and Office 2007 from scratch on both of the machines (one Vista, one Windows XP SP2). The result: Office 2007 on Vista doesn’t download the IMAP e-mail when I click on it whereas Office 2007 on Windows XP SP2 does! So all the evidence leads to the fact that Office 2007 behaves differently with IMAP mails under Vista and XP WITH ALL THE OUTLOOK SETTINGS THE SAME ON BOTH MACHINES!!! I know it sounds silly, but that’s what I could figure out so far.
Has anybody else experienced such a problem or “feature”? Any suggestions?
Ertugrul Gokcen.
Thanks Mark Lewis for addressing the subject of Outlook starting in an IMAP Inbox. However, Outlook XP/2002 doesn’t have any ability to browse for a folder for this setting, it just has a list of choices; Outlook Today, Inbox, Calendar, etc.. Am I missing something, or do the newer versions of Outlook have this capability? Thanks
IMAP support for my account has disappeared!!! Outlook keeps telling me that IMAP is not available for my account, and there is no IMAP setting in the Forwarding Tab.
Is it only me or is anybody else experiencing this?
IMAP support “came back” half an hour later; it must have been a temporary glitch.
Another strange thing happened: Outlook 2007 on the Vista box which wasn’t downloading the undownloaded mails when they were clicked on, started to download them all of a sudden even though I didn’t change any settings! This is beginning to get even more weird!
Could you guys and gals elaborate on how Outlook 2007 behaves when you click on mails that haven’t been downloaded yet? Do you think there is a setting which enables or disables this “feature”?
Thank you very much!
You guys are the best!
Thanks!!!!!
Outlook 2003 takes 4-5 minutes to load on a new dell core2duo when configured with Gmail Apps IMAP accounts.
My configuration:
Outlook 2003 and Windows Vista Home Premium.
more than 25 IMAP (gmail apps) accounts configured properly
Who’s to blame and how to get this rectified
@Bharat
Who’s to blame? Are you serious? Don’t you think 3 minutes for TWENTY-FIVE imap4 accounts is a fine time? If it’s really to slow for ya, just disable the header download.
Gmail IMAP is pretty slow. Takes 30 seconds to access (i have ONE account there). 25×30 seconds is way more than 3 minutes. So you can be happy lol
Well I have been testing Google Apps email on Outlook and Thunderbird and I declare the winner to be daah! daah! – Thunderbird.
As can be seen in the comments above and in spite of the excellent tutorial offered here many people have been struggling with Outlook 2003/2007 on IMAP for a whole bunch of reasons including the (lack of) speed.
In my side-by-side tests Thunderbird did not exhibit anywhere near the problems of Outlook in synchronising, offline work and freezing.
Lets face it, Outlook was designed to talk Exchange and Micro$oft is not interested in IMAP.
Its really a helpful document. I am very much appriciate.Thanks a lot.
My messages are all in outlook 2007 from gmail but a lot of them are duplicated. At gmail.com not all of my messages are in the inbox. I think they are in All Mail, I want all my messages back on gmail.com in the inbox. Like normal, incoming mail in inbox and sent mail in sent mail.
Also I dont know how to get rid of the duplicates in Outlook 2007 inbox because there are 300 duplicate emails in my inbox. First I set up POP gmail then went to IMAP, I dont know where the duplicates came from in that process and why my inbox and at gmail.com is incomplete. I want my inbox at gmail.com to be normal again. Any help?
Thanks for the tutorial, had no clue about the advanced tab, changing those values made everything work
very helpfull and it was soo easy
thanks a lot dude….
it helps a lot..
good post!
i think gmail and (existing) outlook users are a golden combination.
less spam through gmails spamfilter, no backup worries, excelent webmail.
this really breaks the monopoly position of M$
on the companies i work for i am gradually testing and transferring users to imap gmail,
pitty i didnt know about the gmail hack discribed above,
to correctly download headers in sent mail with the “to” address.
some user had to open and close (=download) all her sent mail to get the”to” address …
configure gmail imap alongside the old pop account in outlook,
set the default email in gmail to the old existing email,
copy the old pst files first
then drag the emails from the old inbox to the new gmail inbox,
and the sent to the new gmail sent and presto.
this could take a while though… so do it at the end of a working day
i just want to tip about something,
- the “from” address could be set in gmails webmail, in settings,
so it will default to your “original” email address that you had before.
just add the email address under settings, a confirmation will be sent, confirm, go back to settings, and set the old email address as default for sending
- also, if sending mail doesnt work,
i read that you can set the port for your encrypted outgoing email, smtp, to 465
it solved some problems for me.
- as last tip, brief your users on how to use it.
open the imap folder and you will see your inbox, add buttons in the sidebar for inbox and sent etc. in outlook. explain a bit what happens when you sent receive, or sync., understanding is always good.
With regards to the missing “to” and “from” field I note that despite following my own advice posted previously here, for some windows XP Pro, sp2 machines running outlook 2003, the registry hack is FAILING to download the “to” field. On other machines running the same configuration the hack works correctly.This inconsistent success rate is intensely annoying.
My question is to other on this thread:
Has anyone solved the missing “to” and “from” headers download on a XP machine with windows sp3 applied? Is this fix within the massive sp3 download?
In answer to my own previous question.
Absent “from” field data in outlook 2003 is NOT dependant on sp3 being applied from microsoft.
So here is the subtle but critical sequence of configuration events to get outlook 2003 to work with full headers.
Apply the ms registry hack as described above.
(The following assumes you only want to download the headers only)
Setup your outlook 2003 with your google apps imap details, but enable “work offline” in outlook. How? – I found the way to do this was to once the final outlook email configuration steps had finished, outlook creates the google apps folder structure, and then starts downloading the email headers straight away.
You need to immediately “work offline” to stop those headers downloading at this stage, which is practical steps is within 2 seconds after you have configured the email account. This is because the default view of the “all mail” indeed the default sent email will not include the “to” field.
If you have interrupted the process at the right stage, you should see the folder structure but zero emails yet.
then click, view, organise by, personalise in outlook until you have the screen which allows you to add/remove and reorder the fields for outlook.
I did this for the “all mail” folder and included the “to” and “from” fields.
Now reenable work online (within outlook file first menu) and everything should rapidly download.
Check your sent mail in outlook within the google mail folder contains and displays all the “from” values. Check the “all mail” google folder that it displays “from” and “to” values.
From trial+error i found that if outlook had already downloaded headers once, before i had personalised the view to include “to”+”from” fields for “all mail”, then no manner of tweaking would get it to display these values properly. So if you are too slow on the draw, delete your account and start again. (or have your hand hovering over the network cable ready for a fast withdraw at the split second moment!)
At the end of the day however, it all comes down to what you are used to. if you have ever only known a pop3 email experience, you may still find the outlook/gmail apps imap experience suboptimal – if you cannot go without full outlook search functionality. However if you value a synched inbox access from 100% any device, and can use apps inbox search well, then gmail apps is a clear winner.
In Outlook 2007
Tools -> Account Settings -> (your Gmail account) -> Change -> More Settings -> Advanced
set Root Folder Path to “[Gmail]” without the quotes
this will change it from
yourname@gmail.com
[Gmail]
All Mail
Drafts
Inbox
etc..
Inbox
Junk …
to
yourname@gmail.com
All Mail
Drafts
Inbox
etc..
Also
Tools -> IMAP Folders -> Subscribed -> Query -> Select Junk E-Mail -> Select unsubscribe.
jeff – when you apply your recomendations, gmail apps interface precedes the labels with [Google Mail]/label name – but because the left most column width in gmail is not expandable the entire label does not display – a little annoying.
Is there anyway to circumvent this but ensure outlook is neatly structured as a result?
The reason you cannot get rid of the default Personal Folders that Outlook sets up for you is because Outlook makes you have a place for your contacts and calendar. Since the IMAP protocol doesn’t support “special folders” (i.e. contacts and calendars), you must leave the Personal Folders data file there. The only way I know of to get rid of it would be to use Exchange Server because Microsoft’s MAPI protocol for Exchange Server supports special folders for contacts and calendars.
If anyone knows of a mail server that does support special folders besides Exchange Server and is available cheaply, I’d really like to run my own mail server at home. Right now I’m using Google Apps, but I’d really like to run my own Exchange-style server from home.
I hope this answers some questions. It took me a while to figure it out.
-Shaun
Hi,
Ive been having a problem.
I have Outlook 2003 and have used it for a few years now. It is set up so that when I receive email via gmail, a copy goes to outlook too.
Lately, I noticed in the past week, that when I check mail via gmail on the web first and delete some emails, they dont get sent to my outlook inbox anymore???
IMAP is disabled on gmail webmail settings and nothing has changed on my outlook email account settings which are set to POP and POP is enabled on gmail webmail settings too.
Can anyone let me know what is happening and how to remedy this issue?
Thanks!!!
Cory
Hey gang,
I have my Gmail account set up & working fine in Outlook via IMAP, but does anybody know how to persuade Outlook ‘07 to show both the received _and_ the sent messages in a conversation thread?? (Like Gmail does??)
I’ve set Outlook to “Arrange by Conversation”, but only the received half of the “conversation” shows up…which makes for some pretty one-sided conversations.
Thanks!
Shane
Symantec EndPoint Protection, SEP (commercial version of the combined AV, FireWall, Spam program) does NOT work with IMAP accounts, and will PREVENT the gmail IMAP account from connecting unless you do one of two things: Uncheck the email protection scanning in SEP (NOT preferred), OR, click the “use defaults” button in SEP for the IMAP/SMTP ports (preferred I would think, as it will at least still do email scanning of other accounts you may have set up in Outlook, and maybe even the gmail messages when opened??). When you type in the correct Gmail ports into SEP, that’s when it prevents the connection.
Speaking of the ports and the security settings, I use Google Apps, and the ports they specified were 993 IMAP incoming and 465 SMTP outgoing with BOTH connections encrypted by SSL (not TLS).
So, first try changing your virus scanners email ports to something other than the ones you told Outlook to use for your Gmail IMAP account. If you still can’t connect, perhaps you want to try the 465 SMTP outgoing port and choose SSL for that as well.
– UPDATE –
OMG! I’d just reinstalled XP, & decided to give Outlook another shot (see above). I finally gave up on the idea of having Outlook conversation threads operate like the Gmail interface I’d grown so used to. No problem. I can live without.
I decided to go with POP instead of IMAP, & started setting up my Outlook filters, only to find that some really basic & expected options weren’t available. Again, no problem — to the VBA interface I go.
But then I started working on my task list — which is the real reason I wanted to return to Outlook. Most of my to-dos come in via email, and I loved the idea of simply dragging email messages to the task bar, categorizing them, prioritizing, and having myself a nice, happy, organized existence…except, you can’t prioritize “email-tasks”; only regular, manually-entered tasks. You also can’t set sub-tasks, which is really important to me, because I don’t want to see 100 to-dos in my list; I want to see things broken down into steps, so I don’t freak-out every time I look at it! Ugg. I started to question whether Outlook was worth it…but I still had hope that the cool new integration w/ Business Contact Mgr & MS Accounting would at least make it easier for me to track my hours on projects.
…but it winds up the tasks you set in Outlook don’t mesh with the tasks you set under projects in Business Contact Mgr, & vice versa.
End result — it was too much of a PITA. It wasn’t nearly as integrated as I thought — or, at least, I couldn’t figure it all out, which kind’a defeats the purpose — I thought Outlook & friends would be all intuitive-like; I’d spent hours goooooogling for answers to what should have been really simple questions.
Outlook was crashing at an annoying frequency — I checked my logs, & during the less-than twelve hours I had it installed, it crashed 14 times…and I was asleep w/ the computer off for at least 6 of those hours! Unbelievable.
So, my back-up plan: Thunderbird (which really does handle email better than Outlook — so many plug-ins — so easy to make it do exactly what I want), and a tiny task mgt program called, “Task Coach”, which is blowing my mind right now. It’s freakin’ perfect — Tasks w/ sub-tasks; timers that keep track of how long you spend on each task; a per-hour field that breaks-down my billing for each task — absolutely perfect. (And free.)
Well, it was nice seeing you again, Outlook. Bye bye.
Excellent!! Thank you so so much. Ive spent around 3 hours trying to get Gmail to sync with Outlook 2007 as documented by Google. After searching other sites, YOURS WORKED.
Gmails support documentation is usually good, but without doubt, their instructions are simply wrong this time.
So glad I found your site. Thank you.
Thank very much for making this tutorial. I was able to use my gmail in my outlook, which I was not able to do so using Googles directions.
I had problems sending email (gmail) via outlook 2007.
Everything was perfectly configured (port 995 / 587) etc, but still didn’t work.
The problem: my virus protection “F-SECURE” was scanning outgoing mail, which blocked it and then cut the access to the outgoing server. This was indeed my error message in outlook (0×800CCC0F). I manually configured the virus programme not to scan outgoing email (custom setting) and now it seems to work.
I hope this may be of use to someone.
Hopethis Helpsyou is on to something. I was having trouble with Outlook 2007 on an XPPro system hanging or failing to update headers when I clicked on an email with a large number of emails. Starting in safe mode by holding the Ctrl key down while selecting the icon allowed everything to run more as I expected. My assumption is that the Panada Antivirus plugin was hosing the operations before. Will have to see if adjusting it’s scan methods will make any change or not.
Hi
Extremely helpful
Cant be any better then seeing pic stage by stage
many many thanks
Thank you. This is such a great tutorial. There is no possible error, very well done.
Chreers!
Hanging Outlook!!!
Try file – work offline that will stop outlook trying to connect each time to the server, when you need to sycn or get yr email press send and recieve, works 4 me great
I had set up a POP3 account in outlook but it grabbed all my emails from the gmail online server, which I didn’t want it to do. I located the necessary option to select so it would not continue in the future, but how can I restore the emails which outlook grabbed to the gmail server? I just want to be able to access them all online at gmail.com still.
Hi,
I have my outlook 2003 programmed to receive my gmail messages too. But whenever I get sent an email via gmail it comes to my outlook inbox twice, ie I get 2 copies of the same email. Can anyone tell me why and how to change it?
Thanks Natalie
I’m having same problem as Guris and Ertugrul. One computer works as expected while the other downloads the message that I click on (not double-click)
Using Outlook 2003 on both
How can i change the storage location of the gmail .pst on my computer? By default i get “C:\Documents and Settings\Vasu\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” for the storage of new .pst file and i am unable to change it to any other location.
Also can’t i set this new gmail .pst as the default data file and remove existing Personal Folders that came as default with Outlook? When i select this gmail .pst data file the “Set as default” option in Outlook gets disabled? Why?
I fixed the sluggishness of IMAP gmail in Outlook by adding a “purge deleted messages” button to my Outlook taskbar and using it when the “all mail” in gmail is highlighted. If you don’t do this, the gmail “all mail” volume continues to grow and grow, but with it, gmail in Outlook now works like a flash.
thanks very much. so simple and easy to do!
Thanks for the info – your tutorial worked very well.
Just wondered is there an easy way to set up multiple accounts – I can send emailed addressed from my personal account or business account on gmail. Can’t see how I set this up on outlook so that I have one gmail folder but can send from address of my choice from outlook
C
People who have multiple email accounts in Outlook should beware: Gmail IMAP will delete any and all folders under the main account. We lost hundreds of messages that were sent to the domain we set up for Gmail IMAP because IMAP decided those messages were no longer needed.
Thanks to this wonderful feature, two years of hard work is down the drain. Since Google has no direct customer support for Gmail, ther is no way to see if messages the system uploaded to their server may have been accidentally deleted (for example, if they were uploaded to trash and I emptied the trash).
All in all, beyond being very slow and quirky, it’s also not something to use on a production email account.
@Tony,
Your job over the past two years has been to collect emails, and you only collected a few hundred? I’ve collected thousands and it’s not even in my job description!
Mark,
When I read your post, I realized the implications of my poor wording
Actually, my error was in storing a lot of collaborative work in subfolders on my in-box… and not moving their contents to a protected archive on a regular basis.
That’s a bust on my part (kind of like not backing up data for months at a time). Nevertheless, Google should not delete messages from the existing Outlook PST without some kind of double confirm or explanation of this feature the first time it’s used. I think it would also be a good idea to archive messages deleted on the client end for some period so they can be retrieved in the event of an accidental mass deletion. Users quite possibly are seeing a lot of “trash” email and deleting the “trash” to save space. I don’t know if that’s what happened in my case, and the not knowing is almost as bad as losing the data in the first place.
The only problem with running your personal email through outlook is if you do it at work you lose all privacy. When you run gmail or other email through outlook, all your gmail goes through the outlook server. Your company’s network administrator can read all those emails (trust me – I’ve done it). By running your personal email through the company’s server, you don’t have any more privacy rights to it (trust me – I’m a lawyer). You should do this only if you have personal email accounts you want to run through outlook, and do not do it at work.
How can I synchronize only 50 mails from each IMAP folder? 50 or N…?
Excellent! Thanks for the help!
this is the best web. to show you things you dont know.
I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have finally found that I CAN have categories with my IMAP emails (specifically, I am using gmail).
I first had to assign a keyboard shortcut for my categories. And, although the category menu does not appear with my inbox, I can use the keyboard shortcuts to make the category assignments. I’m not sure why it works, but it does!
awesome!
posting this for FREE is great guys!
worked perfectLy fine with my Outlook 2007.
the tutorial is so easy to follow, no hassLe.
thanks!
The best tutorial ever! =D
Congratz!
Great tutorial, thanks for taking the time to set that up.
I have one questions perhaps someone can answer. I use Google Apps, Outlook 2007 and a Blackberry (8310 on AT&T if that matters).
When I send an email (from either outlook, gmail or blackberry), I get the sent email on my blackberry
(usually two of them).
I actually don’t want any sent emails to show on the black berry (unless I hit the key combo to show outgoing mails).
I would also like to have my sent e-mails automatically kept in the folder they were sent from like Outlook traditionally does. In other words, if I have an e-mail folder called finance, and I respond to an email in that folder, typically it puts the sent email in that folder, so I can easily keep track of conversations.. that seems to be gone.
Anyone have some insight with duplicate email issues and keeping sent e-mails in their proper folders?
Thanks in advance!!!
Encountered the same problem as Ertugrul as well.
- The first mail in Spam folder is selected, and is downloaded automatically.
- That e-mail is tagged as spam by Outlook and moved into Junk E- mail folder which has been created automatically by Outlook when I first created the Gmail IMAP account.
- Then the selection changes again, the next e-mail is in Spam folder is selected, and is downloaded automatically.
- That e-mail is tagged as spam by Outlook, too, and moved into Outlook’s Junk E-mail folder.
Anyone has any idea how to resolve that?
Thanks.
Hello, I set up my moms account like this for her. THe problem is that when ever she sends a message she recievs a dupllicate in her inbox as if she sent it to her self. I assume whats happening is that outlook is downloading her sent folder (in gmail) too. any body know a way to fix this?
thanks
THANK you. I spent the greater part of the day researching how to sync Outlook and Gmail to preserve labels and this tutorial nailed it.
I was forced to migrate from Thunderbird to Outlook due to a smartphone. (Although if anyone is deleting an old gmail account, starting a new gmail account w/ a different name and want to preserve your labels, Thunderbird is the best way to do this.)
I hope windows mobile sync can preserve it from my smartphone too.
Thanks again
Great walk-through! Now if I could just get outlook to send/receive and cache better so I can work offline easier, that would just be cake.
What a wonderful tutorial! I’m so much excited that I’ve lost words to express my appreciation for guiding me to successfully set up my Gmail IMAP account.
To all those people wanting to change the location of the PST file – I don’t think it’s possible in Outlook 2007. Javier’s method certainly doesn’t work in 2007.
However, that doesn’t necessarily matter — due to the nature of IMAP email. Outlook’s PST file is merely a local cache rather than permanent storage. Google retains the permanent copy so if your C: drive happens to get wiped the worst that will happen to your mail is that you have to download your message bodies all over again.
Same applies if you plan to use outlook on more than one networked machine. You’ll have to download all message bodies multiple times but any changes you make to folders on one machine will automatically be reflected on the others.
The help was perfectly nice. All my life I never knew it could be configured by any individual.
i’ve followed the instruction given but it isn’t working…… so tension
you are the man… thanks… configured in 5 minutes… will use this website more often….
Very helpful, thanks!.
thanks a lot! it works!
Mark Lewis,
Thank you!!!
Your explanation of how to Start Outlook showing IMAP Inbox by default was right on track!
like the idea but quarks r killin me.
When i send an email with imap (outlook – google apps) it shows up in my Inbox as an email from me. Why? any help appreciated.
when sent mail shows up as an email in the inbox – to get rid of it use outlooks filter rules. create a move rule which moves the email to sent items when sender is your email address.
Hi,
I am using 2003 – I don’t see the same choices on the instructions.
So I selected IMAP instead of Exchange as shown in the instructions. was able to follow and found most settings however I dont see TSL as a choice for out going Server encrypted connection. Do I select SSL instead.
Also I had configured POP3 which was only getting my inbox. Does IMAP replace the pop3 settings or do i need both.
Thanks in advance for your help. This site is so great.
Hi. I posted a while ago and still no reply to this question/situation: I’ve configured my couple of Gmail accounts to work in Outlook 2007, but I have one question/complaint: How do I get the Favorites Gmail folders to refresh when I launch Outlook, to show new mails? It seems the only way to do this is to click on each one to wake it up. Ditto for send and receive throughout the day, there seems to be a lag or no connection with the Favorites showing new mails unless I click on each. Is there a rule or something I can create? And lastly, is there a way to point all Gmail spams for all accounts to one “review” folder that updates in my Favorites so I can see what’s being labeled as spam, etc? Oh and to make messages that are not spam as that, without having to log into Gmail web? Anyone…?
PLEASE leave your questions on the forum, and not in the comments here where they won’t be answered.
http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/
i keep getting timeout error when trying to download my gmail into oe?
Hi
Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this same issue but when i send an email through Outlook 2007 it appears as being sent twice in my gmail account. Is there any way to stop this?
Thanks in advance
Tom, it’s not being sent twice, but is being copied to the ‘Sent Items’ folder twice, once by Google Mail (which does it by default) and once by your e-mail client. You may want to disable this feature in your e-mail client as recommended here: http://mail.google.com/support.....swer=78892
Hope this helps.
Terence
Solution for the duplicate mails in your sent-items.
You have to save your sent items in the bin folder of your gmailaccount:
( go to tools>account settings>[your gmail account]>more settings>folders> …)
Each sent item is syncronised via IMAP and appears in your Sent Item Box.
I have Outlook Express, about 3 weeks Ago everytime I receive an E-mail, I receive 3 or 4 of the same E-mail. This is annoying because I have to delete so many e-mails. I would appreciate it if you could tell me what to do about this problem.
Thank you,
Donald F. Ruby druby@optonline.net
i have follow all the step by step instruction carefully, thought i will succeed since my email address finally appears in outlook, but when i hit send/receive, there’s nothing happened and when i tried the test account setting button, i’ve got this message:
using ‘imap.gmail.com’ and ’smtp.gmail.com’:
- Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): The host ‘imap.gmail.com’ cannot be found. Verify that the server name is typed correctly.
- Send test e-mail message: Cannot find the e-mail server. Verify the server information in your account properties.
using ‘imap.googlemail.com’ and ’smtp.googlemail.com’:
- Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): The host ‘imap.googlemail.com’ cannot be found. Verify that the server name is typed correctly.
- Send test e-mail message: Cannot find the e-mail server. Verify the server information in your account properties.
what should i do then? desperately need your help guys..
thanks before,
Nancy
Guris, Thank you at least I now know I am not the only one frustrated by the same problem you described! Any email showing in my Outlook 2003 GMAIL Inbox with any size attachement causes my Outlook to freeze and say (NOT RESPONDING!) I receive an average 150 emails per day to this email address as is my business adress and am so Frustrated am looking for another option such as a another mail host that uses POP and NOT IMAP to host my mail account moving forward. If anyone can help on the immediate problem will be greatly appreciated PLEASE! Merv
for those of you having trouble with Outlook being slow (or becoming nonresponsive when downloading headers/mails), I suggest using Mozilla Thunderbird. True, i’d love to use Outlook because of it’s intergration with everything else Office, plus it’s excellent task management interface, but if you only need an IMAP client for large mails and Outlook can’t live up to it, Thunderbird might be what you’re looking for.
thanks….
tooo much information. too much to read and do, for a very small thing!
but helpfull none the less!
I have one question.
can we have more one gmail account in outlook 2007
I need help. No matter what I do, I cannot get Outlook 2007 configured to send mail. I can receive fine, but no sending. Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks for this tutorial. Works great and is way better than the original GMail help page even today.
I was wondering, though: Has anybody tried to migrate eMail from a Courier eMail Server to Google by means of the GMail migration tool of the professional version of the Google Apps?
I did yesterday with all accounts on my domain. The mail showed up in the GMail web interface and I was able to access the mail with Outlook 2007 using the exact settings described on this site.
BUT there was a major problem: when accessing my mail through IMAP, ALL mail had the same sent-date: the date of the migration. In the GMail web interface, the eMail dates were correct. Only when I access the GMail account via IMAP do I get this strange behaviour.
Any idea?
Thank you guys,it was totally worth it.Its working like a charm..Am even sending myself messages.Thanks alot
using XP Pro and Outlook 2003 I have been able to move IMAP folders from the defualt folder as described but after moving them I could not get Outlook to download the entire message, just the header. And it would not send as part of my send receive profile. I moved folders back to the default location and once again I can autodownload the entire message.
After a message has a label applied to it in Gmail (web-based) then it appears in the relevant ‘folder’ in my gmail outlook imap.
However, if there are any follow ups to to the conversation, the additional messages do not appear in the imap folder. The only way I can get them to appear is to unapply the label on the web-based gmail and then reapply. This would then add all current messages in the conversation, but agin not any future ones until I do the same method again.
Can anyone help?
Thanks
Thanks a mil Guys. Excellent write-up and guide. Keep up the good work!!!
I’ve set this up through IMAP numerous times and the program keeps encountering an error and has to restart. I’m wondering if this is because i got the program of my brothers hard drive and installed it from there? All the other Office programs work. Any thoughts?
HI,
Thanks for helpfull tips. I tried to in my pc to fix gmail in outlook 2007It will not work properly, it’s showing some message [Log onto incoming mail server (POP3): Your incoming (POP3) e-mail server has reported an internal error. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).] when I check test account setting.
pls fix my problem
How do you get the “Spam” folder in Outlook?
I have set this up using your directions on several machines and never seen this folder show up in Outlook.
This would be great since Outlook’s handling of spam is less than desirable.
I came across the following post on another website and thought it might help those who find using Outook to access Gmail to be very slow:
“# Andrew commented on Jul 9, 2008 8:19:13 PM
I think I figured this out….my outlook is screaming fast with over 20,000 email is gmail.
(In Outlook, go to) Options/mail setup/ send receive button, select your gmail group and click edit.
uncheck get folder unread counts.”
I haven’t tried it but if you do, then please post a comment back here to let others know if it works.
This all works fine for me and has done for more than a year. But there is a big missing piece of the jigsaw.
When I send an email from Outlook, I have to manually copy it to a Gmail folder. Is it possible to set things up so outgoing Outlook mails are automatically sent to the Gmail sent folder?
I am sorry if this was covered and I missed it.
My wife and I use the same outlook 2007 file for our two gmail accts.
These accts replace the “Inbox” associated with our prior ISP email.
What I want to do is move the two Gmail IMAP accts to the top of the folder chain and not see the old inbox.
Whenever I try to move the folders Outlook says you can’t drag and drop these folders.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
Mark
Hello, thanks for this great tuto.
It works very well in imap. But at each time I start Outlook, I have this annoying message about a gmail certificate which cannot be verified and I have to manually accept it.
Any ideo to fix this ?
Thanks in advance.
Best Regards.
Remi
thanks for the talkthrough, worked first time for me.
Great and informative content.
The GMail and Outlook option is now a very good solution for home/mobile email solutions.
Yes, this will really help me to do my business work in single option and that is Outlook with Gmail.
Wow
Bye
Make sure that in advanced settings you select “My Outgoing serevr requires authentication.”
Otherwise you will get 530 5.1.1 errors.
Thanks — This was really helpful.
This was really helpful. But does anyone know how/if you cant make the outlook defult inbox your gmail/imap inbox?
I have to use IMAP for my iPhone and i sync at multiple locations. So i cant use pop3.
thanks
Hi folks,
I have the same problem as Natalie had (see previous comments above) back in June ‘08:
I have my MS Outlook 2003 program set-up to process via Gmail. But just recently whenever I send off an email via Gmail the same message then comes right back into my outlook In-box TWICE, ie I get 2 copies of the same email sent BACK to me for some strange reason. How can I fix this very annoying problem and why did it suddenly start doing this?
Thanks much,
Norm
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post.
I’d like to add a helpful hint to anyone still having issues setting up Gmail IMAP with Outlook 2007.
It did not work for me until I changed the outgoing smtp server to read:
smtp.googlemail.com
Hope this helps someone out there!
Natasha
I am trying to configure g-mail to send e-mails from my g-mail account directly to my verizon e-mail account which I use for business.
I am positive that all the info asked for is correct, yet i keep getting these error messages
Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): The connection to the server was interrupted. If this problem continues, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).
Send test e-mail message: Your e-mail server rejected your login. Verify your user name and password in your account properties. Under Tools, click E-mail accounts.
What do I do???
Please advise…..
Frank
Thank you very much. it was very helpful for me to configure GMAIL IMAP in Outlook 2007.
Does gmail work with office xp prof 2002? If not, can I upgrade to 2003 free?
Hi,
This tutorial works great for new email I receive, thanks for posting it!
But what about exporting old Outlook email, with attachments, up to GMail? Do you know of any way to do this?
Just curious – does anyone reply to these comments? I see questions posed but no replies…
@Mark:
Sometimes you will find answers in our comments but the best way for anyone to get answers is to post your questions in our Forum.
http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/
Dear sir,
I would like to download some pdf file that say about how to use outlook 2007. where i fine it?
please tell me to find and download it
thank you very much!
Thank you for an easy step-by-step tutorial. It took me about 3 minutes to set up Outlook and it works great. Thumbs up!
This was easy and worked great to upload my old mails from Outlook to Gmail. Great job! Thanks!
Hi, Really many many thanks for your tip, it worked very good and I don’t have any thing to say, might be it bit slow but doing the job what I expected. Really it’s a great JOB…
It is very useful for to follow your tip. after done it make me move my job faster. thanks
when i click TEST ACCOUNT SETTING why it show: Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): The connection to the server failed.Send test e-mail message: Outlook cannot connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).
I use my gmail to fetch email from my outlook2007. I can see all my outlook email in Gmail. but why alll my mail in the inbox of outlook are mark as READ. this make me unidentifiable of my new email in outlook.
I follow the instruction, when I clik the Microsoft Exchange Server and clik “next”, the message come up say “You cannot add a Microsoft Exchange Account to this profile while Outlook is running….” I am stuck!
I set up my Outlook 2007 with my gmail account using imap according to the instructions given. I have set my gmail for 5 different email accounts. My problem is with Outlook that i am not able to change the account when trying to send a new email. Outlook does not give the option to change the account and thus sends from my gmail account.
In Thunderbird I could add the accounts by hand and then send emails from all my accounts using gmail imap.
Could someone help me?
Shaun – a good inexpensive mail server would be MDaemon from AltN. I’ve been using it at work for our production mail server for 8 years. It’s great, also has the special folders functionality you’re looking for (a la Exchange) via Outlook Connector.
@Vasu
@Alex
I fond out the solution at this blog: lytebyte com/2009/04/11/how-to-change-or-move-the-location-of-gmail-pst-file-in-outlook-2007/comment-page-1/#comment-81849.
It worked with me…
CU
thanks
THANKS A LOT……HELPED ME
A little more than a year ago (May 2008), Greg wrote:
“My messages are all in outlook 2007 from gmail but a lot of them are duplicated. At gmail.com not all of my messages are in the inbox. I think they are in All Mail, I want all my messages back on gmail.com in the inbox. Like normal, incoming mail in inbox and sent mail in sent mail.
Also I dont know how to get rid of the duplicates in Outlook 2007 inbox because there are 300 duplicate emails in my inbox. First I set up POP gmail then went to IMAP, I dont know where the duplicates came from in that process and why my inbox and at gmail.com is incomplete. I want my inbox at gmail.com to be normal again. Any help?”
Was anyone able to help him with this problem? Greg, did you figure it out?
I ask because having set up my outlook 2007 with IMAP I am now finding that every email that passes through either of my two google-apps gmail accounts (sent, received, or even refiled) ends up in my personal inbox as unread, slowing things down and making it hard for me to find the actual new emails amidst the chaos.
I use a domain name and two emails for every send or receive.
How do I fix it?
Setting your IMAP Inbox as Default Folder
To set up your IMAP Inbox to be the default starting folder:
1) Click on the Tools menu
2) Choose Options
3) Choose Other
4) Choose Advanced Options
5) Click Startup in this Folder
6) Choose your IMAP Inbox
Maybe I’m missing something
Hi, I hope someone can help! I have email hosted through Google Apps and just upgraded my office suite from MS 2003 to 2007. And now I’m unable to set up IMAP access in Outlook 2007. I’m following the instructions given by Gmail Help, but it’s to no avail. I receive a message saying: “Log onto incoming mail server (IMAP): the connection to the server failed.” and also “Send test e-mail message: Cannot send the message. Verify the email address in your account properties. The server responded: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. 7sm16864255qwf.8″
I’m in a jam, because I need to use my Outlook for meeting invitations! Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Hi
I m thankful to Google.com.I get start the outlook 2007 with all features and right now i m comfortable to use this.
Awesome guide. Better than the one from Google – they neglect to mention the international setting of imap/smtp.googlemail.com (for shame). Just what I needed.
Nice guide – good tips. Even with the tweaks though having performance issues with IMAP+Gmail+Outlook. Outlook hangs. Folder layout is troublesome – also – has anyone found out how to suppress the “processing new headers” dialog box that pops up as the top window everytime Outlook syncs with Gmail? I’ve found this to be an unforgivable interruption to my work throughout the day.
I tried to set this up with an AT&T account (Yahoo email) and it doesn’t work for me. I’ve got about 6000 emails on Outlook I want to send to my gmail account. When I try the test account settings, it says, “Outlook cannot connect to your outgoing (SMTP) email server. If you continue to receive this message, contact you server administrator or ISP.”
Any ideas?
This is the BEST information!! There are no glitches in this information; it’s perfect. THANKS ! Five Stars, Geeks!
Thanks for the tip. It seems to be working just fine. My question is now that my gmail is coming into my Outlook client, will my employer be able to see this activity? If it matters, we are using Microsoft 2008 Small Business Server with Exchange.
- Thanks V
Excellent. finished setup in 3 minutes
up up all the way V go!
Finally!!! Great tutorial, thank you.
same problem as Stephen any help?
Hello! This seems likea great system. Unfortunately I have followed the directions to the letter several times and it will set up the folders for me in my Outlook. But for whatever reason, it keeps giving me a screen on the main folder that says “Cannot display the folder. The folder ‘[Gmail]‘ cannot contain items. This is most likely a limitation of your IMAP server. In order to create a folder that can contain items, be sure not to append ‘/’ to its name as you create it.” And it won’t let me copy folders or messages into my gmail account. I’ve been troubleshooting this for some time now. Help!
Liked this dialog about trying to use Outlook with Gmail…though I assume most of us have an ambivalent relationship with outlook. My problem is I cannot get any Gmail folders to show and so cannot see any received Gmail messages because they go into a different folder that that which the inbox displays. Any ideas on who to fix this? HELP.
now,I only want to know:how to change the storing positon (of Microsoft outlook account’s data files) in PC!!!
I followed all the instructions and I see all my gmail folders and emails that were currently in my gmail inbox transfered over to my Outlook, however I can send, but can’t receive from my Outlook. What am I missing?
(
This one worked like a charm thank you very much…..
Especially using googlemail as the smtp resolved my issues
i was not able to figure out this earlier
Very Superb thx