Prelude: This is a new series of tip contents that we’ll be adding onto our blog. We’ll be covering topics like OSX, iPods, Internet, software and hardware topics that’s more closer to home (localised stuff). If you have any suggestions or feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments!
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Tip summary
- Address the issue of having too many email accounts
- Use Gmail to check all other POP3 emails and for storage/search purposes
- Set up Leopard’s Mail to check only Gmail’s IMAP instead of all other emails
- Pros: send and receive using only Gmail servers even with other email addresses
- Cons: none really, other than initial setup is rather fiddly
Issue: Too many email accounts!
If you are like me, I have more than one email accounts (one too many!). Setting up these accounts individually on each device can be a mind-boggling matter, and troubleshooting each account issues can be a nightmare.
For example, let’s say I have these email addresses @itfusion.my, @mac.com, @streamyx.com – totalling three accounts. For every machine and device that I want to see those emails on, I’d have to create three entries. Three entries on iPod touch, three entries on Entourage, three entries on Outlook! What if you have five email accounts and six computers?!
Consolidate all into one
Fret no more. There is a simple solution: Google’s Gmail to the rescue. Why?
- most importantly: allows you to receive other mail accounts;
- it’s free, and gives you more than 7GB of mail space and growing;
- searching and archiving of your emails;
- supports of IMAP, POP3 and webmail;
This is actually quite a common tip, but not everyone is aware of its advantages or the possibilities. And since it’s free, most people would already have a Gmail account.
Consolidating all your email accounts into Gmail means you can send and receive all your other emails. That means, for example, in Gmail, you are reading your emails that were sent to moorey@itfusion.my, and you can reply as moorey@itfusion.my!
The basics
- Make sure you are logged into Gmail. On your top right, go to Settings, Accounts, and select Add another email account.
- Follow the instructions all the way through and make sure you verify the code so you can send your emails using that address. For easy sorting and convenience sake, use the label option to label your emails so you know where they were sent to. Once you’ve gotten that right, you should see your emails start trickling into your Gmail’s inbox!
- Under Forwarding and POP3/IMAP, make sure Enable IMAP is selected.
That’s it, for every other email accounts, just repeat step 1 and 2 until you’ve added all your accounts. If you are having issues, make sure your username’s format is correct and double check the incoming port number. Most default values will work, and your other email accounts should support POP3.
(Yes, I have email issues…)
Common emails that do support POP3 (some even IMAP):
- Streamyx, mac/me.com
- most work emails
- fastmail
- Gmail (Gmail may not allow you to check other Gmail accounts)
- most hosted web accounts (ie, from CDC, Hive, exabytes, Site5 etc)
Common emails that do not support POP3:
- Hotmail*
- Yahoo!* (though the paid version supports it)
- most free webmail accounts
Leopard Mail (and other devices)
Now that you’ve setup your Gmail account, it’s time to get into Mail to… well, check your mails! Follow this instruction from Google: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81379 and you’re done!
For other types of OS/devices, see here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12913
Wait for the sync and you should see all your mails in your Inbox! Congrats!
Advanced Settings (Leopard Mail)
But wait, there’s more! There are a few settings you could make your Mail more powerful. Try these:
- Smart Mailboxes: sort your emails according to which accounts they were sent to;
- Multiple from: addresses. Since you’ve setup your Gmail to allow sending from your other email accounts, you can set the from: addresses to reflect them. When you are replying or composing a new email, you can choose which email address you’d like to show it’s from;
- In Mail’s Preferences, you can save and store sent messages on the server (Gmail).
As a disclaimer to this tip, we make not guarantee of the accuracies and service availabilities provided by any companies listed here. YMMV! 
* Javed Mandary :: Dodo Unleashed: Reading your Hotmail email directly from Gmail
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