Setting up Gmail IMAP Support for Windows Vista Mail
We've already showed you how to use Gmail's IMAP support in Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and even KMail, but what about the built-in mail client in Windows Vista… how could we leave that one out?
It turns out that it's quite a usable application, not entirely full-featured or extendable, but it handles the job with a lot better performance than the others we've looked at so far… not to mention being rather slick looking.
If you haven't already enabled IMAP in Gmail, open up the settings page and choose Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and then select to Enable IMAP.
Open Windows Mail and choose Tools \ Accounts from the menu and then click on the Add button.
You'll obviously want to select E-mail account and move to the next screen…
Enter your name.
Enter your email address, using your Gmail email address here. You'll note that mine is not @gmail.com because I'm using Gmail hosted for your domain.
Finally, more than one option on the wizard page… choose IMAP from the drop-down, and then enter in the following values:
- Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com
- Outgoing Server: smtp.gmail.com
- Check "Outgoing server requires authentication"
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.
On the next screen enter in your Gmail email address and your password.
Very important: Check the box for "Do not download my e-mail and folders at this time".
Click the Finish button to get back to the Internet Accounts dialog, and then select your new account and choose the Properties button.
On the Advanced tab, you'll want to first check both options for "This server requires a secure connection(SSL)", and then verify that the ports are set to the following:
- Outgoing mail (SMTP): 587
- Incoming mail (IMAP): 993
Now choose the IMAP tab and remove the checkbox for "Store special folders on IMAP server".
Informative Note: If you do not remove the checkbox here you will end up with duplicated sent items, and your deleted / junk mail will just end up being archived in a label. Your choice. If you don't use labels in Gmail you could enter [Gmail] as the root folder path, and then adjust the values in the special folders section to match the Gmail folder names. It's also worth noting that you cannot use [Gmail]\Spam here because Windows Mail will not accept the "\" or "/" characters in folder names.
Important Setting
Now you can close out of the account settings dialogs, but before you start Sending/Receiving you'll probably want to click on the "imap.gmail.com" item in the left hand folder pane and adjust these settings so Windows mail doesn't try and download everything:
- Remove the checkbox from [Gmail]
- Remove the checkbox from [Spam]
- If you have a lot of messages, you should consider removing the checkbox from [All Mail]
- Change all other folders to "Headers only". (You could leave the Inbox set to All if you'd like)
Now that you've made these changes, you can go ahead and hit the Send/Receive button, and hopefully everything should work perfectly now:
Creating New Folders / Labels
Gmail Labels are represented as folders on the Windows Mail side. You can easily create a new folder by right-clicking on the imap.gmail.com entry and choosing New Folder.
You can even create subfolders, which will show up in Gmail named "TestLabel/Subfolder!" for this example:
Dragging a message to the folder will assign the label in Gmail.
Deleting a Message from Gmail
If you want to delete a message from Gmail you can't just hit the delete button, because while it will delete the message from view, it simply archives it on the Gmail side.
To delete the message drag it to the [Gmail] \ Trash folder.
Marking a Message as Spam in Gmail
Because we can't synchronize the spam folders, if you want to mark a message as spam in Gmail you'll have to drag that message over to the [Gmail] \ Spam folder. Otherwise it'll just end up being pushed into your All Mail archive.
Using the Conversation View
One of the nicer features in Gmail is the conversation view, and you can somewhat emulate that in Windows Mail by going to View \ Current View \ Group Messages by Conversation.
The threaded view is pretty nice, the only problem is that you won't see your replies in the list, the way it works in Gmail.
Starring a Message in Gmail
To star a message on the Gmail side, just click to "Flag" the message in Windows Mail.
Obviously it works the other way too.
Are We Done?
We sure are. Everything should be working quite well… unlike most of the other clients Windows Mail seems to work quite well for me in terms of performance. It's not as integrated as Thunderbird can be, but very usable.
The note about the special folders was especially helpful, thanks!
Great info. I've been meaning to setup IMAP for sometime - just haven't found time. Thanks for the resource, worked great.
Dear How-to Geek,
thanks for your article on how to set up IMAP on gmail. I have a very old yahoo account which I started long before gmail came along. Throughout many years I have accumulated a lot of information in my yahoo account. But I am feed up with all the advertisement of yahoo and started to wonder if there was a way for me to read my yahoo e-mail using thunderbird. Is that possible?
Thanks again!
JV
Here is a link for running free Yahoo mail with Windows Live Mail (versions 1365 and 1606). http://ypopsemail.com/
Here is a link for running Gmail with WLM (same versions). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....pcmech.com
Of course there are no ads with WLM, and you get notification (icon and sound) in the lower taskbar/ notification area, plus no more sign-in and no toolbars or iGoogle or Yahoo homepages to annoy you.
It's nothing but plusses!
Dear How-to Geek,
Man you are great
All your tips are outstanding
Thanks for sharing them for 52 year olds non-geeks like me
All the best
Carlos
Thank you! This is the only set of instructions that worked.
Thank you so much for this step-by-step guide. I've just got Windows Vista and had heard lots of rumours that Gmail just wouldn't work with it. You're a lifesaver!
Missy x
Thanks for your help !
I'm now up and running.
I was struggling until I came across your site.
The instructions available in Gmail weren't any help.
I'm now off to browse round the rest of your site to see what else you can help with
Thanks. That was very useful
Very informative post.. Thanks! I have just started using IMAP, and even though its much better than POP, I find all the GMail labels and sync settings very confusing. Your post helped a lot!
Thanks a million. I had almost given up.
Thanks for the info. I thought that I would post what I found to be some other good settings, at least ones that will make Windows Mail work just like it should (i.e. you can send mail without duplicates, and delete items using the delete key)…
-As the Geek mentioned, go to to your mail account settings and set the "Root folder path" to "[Gmail]", then check "Store special folders on IMAP server", and name the folders according to the Gmail folder names ("Deleted Items path" = "Trash", "Junk path" = "Spam").
-Under the "Tools" menu in Windows Mail, go to "Options", and then the "Send" tab, and uncheck the "Save copy of sent messages in the 'Sent Items' folder" option
-Under the "Tools" menu in Windows Mail, go to "Options", and then the "Advanced" tab, and make sure that "Use the 'Deleted Items' folder with IMAP accounts" option is checked.
If you follow these three additional steps, ***you will not be able to use labels through Windows Mail*** (even though you will still be able to view labeled messages in the "All Mail" folder). But you will be able to send items without causing duplicates in the "Sent Items" folder, and you will be able to delete items normally, and they will be moved into "Trash" on Gmail
side note - It seems to still keep an "Inbox" label on it (on Gmail) even though it's actually in the trash. It doesn't seem to affect anything, the message is not actually in the inbox, and when you empty the trash through Gmail, it still gets removed.
Thanks for guide how to transfer gmail into windows mail for vista. Could do it myself
The "special folders" problems between Windows Mail (likely Outlook Express as well) and Gmail have been resolved here:
http://email.about.com/od/wind....._gmail.htm
Pay special attention to their instructions beginning at “Go to the IMAP tab”, which comes right after entering the IMAP and SMTP server ports.
What do these instructions resolve? Read on.
When I set [Gmail] as my root folder, Windows Mail tries to create regular folders (labels) inside this root, which Gmail doesn't like and are difficult or impossible to actually use. When set up this way, the special folders work, but regular folders don't.
Next, I tried leaving the root folder blank and using the full path for each special folder. However, you cannot insert something like "[Gmail]/Spam" as a special folders store, because Windows Mail won't accept the forward slash as valid.
So, I could either set it up so that special folders *or* regular folders worked correctly, but not both. After finding the link above, the problem is finally fixed to my satisfaction. It turns out that Windows Mail will indeed use "[Gmail]/whatever" as a folder path, but only if its inserted manually into the account settings text file. Though this may sound intimidating to many users, the instructions at the link above do a good job of telling you exactly how to do it. Remember, you should only have to do this once, so it's not that bad.
- I don't use “Deleted Items” in Windows Mail with Gmail IMAP. If you go into “Tools>Options>Advanced” in Windows Mail, you can uncheck the “Use the 'Deleted Items' folder with IMAP accounts”. Assuming that you've also set your Windows Mail Gmail account to use “special folders”, this setting will help to avoid unintentionally deleting mail from Gmail. You can manually move messages to the “Trash” folder if you really want them deleted, but pushing “Delete” on messages in your Inbox (or elsewhere) will instead work like the “archive” function in Gmail: the message will be removed from that folder (label will be removed on Gmail), but the message won't be moved to the “Trash”. Anything labeled “Trash” or “Spam” in Gmail will be deleted after so many days, even if the message has other labels as well (ie. message also exists in non-trash folders in Windows Mail).
Good luck!
Thanks so much,
going to save this and try it when I get home.
I have vista at home, and it is a lot differenct from windows xp
thanks again
Lucy Di Guglielmo
I have [Gmail] and GMail folders, which confuses gmail.com and gives errors when mail trys to sync.
I followed your instructions step by step to the letter for setting up IMAP gmail with vista windows mail. When I tried to download the folders from Gmail I get the error message "connection to the server has failed your IMAP command could not be sent to the server ". What do I do now?
I was just looking for it
Incoming ports were wrong
But i correct them now
it workssssssssssss
i still get an error that tells me my imap command can't be sent over server
Hi, thanks for putting this guide together. I've used a few of your guides, and they are universallly excellent.
I found the "official" guide at http://mail.google.com/support.....opic=12920 and it has a different port set to you. Also, it has a different smtp address, but yours is correct. I've sent a message to google, as I'm sure many others have.
Keep up the good work!!!
J