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An administrators guide to configuring Gmail in Microsoft Outlook

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An administrators guide to configuring Gmail in Microsoft Outlook

Admin's guide to configuring Gmail in Outlook

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Recently, Ive seen a lot of users in corporate environments using Microsoft Outlook as their interface to Gmail. Outlook is meant
to serve as a universal inbox for many different kinds of mail services, so using Gmail in Outlook with other email accounts is
definitely in line with Outlooks intended use. However, using Gmail in Outlook can be tricky, especially since there are various
ways to do it.
If anyone in your user base is using a mix of Gmail and Exchange, and using Outlook as an interface to both, you should know
how the two can be configured if youre ever called in to fix anything. Its also possible you will be asked to set up this type of
arrangement for less technically-savvy users and even those high enough on the totem pole to demand it.
Table of contents:
Should you use POP or IMAP when connecting Outlook to Gmail?
Enabling Gmail for POP3 or IMAP clients
Local storage

Should you use POP or IMAP when connecting Outlook to Gmail?

Gmail lets you connect a mail client -- such as Outlook -- via one of two mechanisms: POP and/or IMAP. POP is the same legacy
mail technology weve used for decades to fetch email messages from Internet hosts and store them locally. IMAP is the newer
system; messages are kept on the host and the client is used to display, browse and edit the messages remotely.
Using Outlook in conjunction with Exchange is similar to how IMAP works -- and its possible to connect IMAP clients to
Exchange servers -- but Exchange and Outlook together add a good deal more functionality than IMAP alone provides, like shared
calendaring. In either case, outgoing messages that come from Outlook are delivered via SMTP.
If youre in doubt about which protocol to use when connecting Outlook to Gmail, here are some pointers:
POP is useful if you plan on keeping all email local. Basically, it treats Gmail as a glorified POP recipient. Email is always
downloaded locally; although you have the option to keep the downloaded messages stored in Gmail. Its also useful when
youre using Gmail to forward email or if youre in the process of migrating away from Gmail.
IMAP is better if you want to keep email stored remotely on Googles servers. Only message copies are stored locally;
headers and message bodies are downloaded on-demand when you access each folder.
If your users are accessing Outlook from a corporate machine in a fixed location and using Gmail from the Web while on the road,
this is the best option. They can use either one interchangeably without affecting the others ability to access any particular
message.
Note: You can add a forwarding address directly to Gmail, although in some environments, you may want to fetch mail directly
from Gmail instead of relying on it to do the forwarding.
Its also possible to enable both POP and IMAP and to use clients that access the same Gmail account via either protocol.
While there are very few scenarios where this is useful, there is one I can think of.
The user could have a copy of Outlook on a desktop and another in a notebook, with the former set for POP access (in order to
store everything locally) and the latter set for IMAP (so that mail received on-the-go can be examined non-destructively).
That said, I recommend picking one protocol for Outlook and sticking with it, using Gmails Web interface for on-the-go use and
strongly discourage mixing the two if youre ever asked to do so.

Enabling Gmail for POP3 or IMAP clients

Gmail doesnt accept email from POP3 or IMAP clients by default. This is a security measure that keeps hackers from sneakily
connecting to a users account and siphoning off email when youre not looking.
To set up Gmail to allow either kind of connection, open the Gmail account and click on Mail settings. Next, select Forwarding
and POP/IMAP.
Setting up POP
If you want to set up POP, select the appropriate option under POP Download:
Enable POP for all mail. This allows a user to connect a POP mail client to Gmail and download everything in the inbox to
the Outlook client as it if were freshly delivered there. This is the best approach if you want to begin using Outlook as your
POP mail client and grab everything sitting in the inbox.
Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on. This only allows future mail to be accessed via POP. It is handy if you
want to keep existing mail in Gmail and sift through it manually, then have Outlook pick up all future mail that arrives.
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An administrators guide to configuring Gmail in Microsoft Outlook

When messages are accessed with POP. This option lets the user choose which action is taken when Outlook downloads
messages via POP:
Keep a copy. Useful if the user is only using Outlook provisionally to access his mailbox. This way, the contents are
left as-is and he can use Outlook and Gmails Web interface interchangeably without losing any info.
Mark it as read. This is the same as the previous option except that the email message is marked as read. This is
useful if youre accessing Gmail from both the Web and Outlook, and have so much mail that you forget what youve
looked at and what you havent.
Archive it. This is the same as Mark it as read, except that the email is moved into Gmails archive when
downloaded. This is a good alternative if the user doesnt want to keep previously accessed email messages in your
inbox, but still wants to access them through the Web interface.
Delete it entirely. This should only be set if you plan on immediately moving all the users mail into Outlook. For
safetys sake, I suggest using the Archive it option in the interim, unless youre confident that mail is being piped into
Outlook without issue.
After selecting an option, the Configure your email client link will give you detailed instructions on how to connect Outlook to
Gmail. The instructions cover Outlook 2002 through Outlook 2007; Outlook 2010 is functionally the same as Outlook 2007 in this
respect.
Setting up IMAP
To set up IMAP, go to the options under IMAP Access. Select Enable IMAP, then set the rest of the options:
When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted. This controls the auto-expunge function. When a message is marked as
deleted in Gmail via IMAP. There are two options:
Auto-Expunge on. The deleted email is immediately moved to the trash.
Auto-Expunge off. The deleted email is handled one of three ways (controlled by the next option).
When a message is marked as deleted: This controls what happens when auto-expunge is off and a message is deleted via
IMAP:
Archive the message. The deleted message is moved to the server-side Gmail archive for the mail account.
Move the message to the Trash. The deleted message is moved to the Trash folder. In Outlook, this folder is
labeled Trash under the [Gmail] folder for the Gmail IMAP account (Figure 1). It is not the client-side Trash
folder that is automatically created for the Outlook data file and used in conjunction with the Gmail IMAP
account.
Immediately delete the message forever. This is exactly what it sounds like.

Figure 1. The Gmail folder hierarchy is what is actually on the Gmail server. The highlighted Trash folder is Gmails own
trash, not Outlooks.
Folder size limits. This lets you control whether or not the IMAP folders in the users account have constraints on how
many messages can be stored in them. Folders with a lot of messages can take a long time to update in the client.
For example, if your users access Gmail through Outlook installed on a notebook -- and using slow or flaky wireless connections - you should set a limit to prevent Outlook from responding slowly if it polls a Gmail folder thats filled with email. This is also a
good way to prevent your own internal networks from getting bogged down by similar actions. There is no default message limit,
but you can set it to 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000

Local storage
Because Gmail gives you a few choices about how users remotely access it, you should also figure out whether to store messages
locally in Outlook when connecting a users Gmail account. This decision depends entirely on your existing policies for local mail
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An administrators guide to configuring Gmail in Microsoft Outlook

storage.
When you add a Gmail POP connector to Microsoft Outlook, you can choose where incoming email is delivered. If the user is
using Gmail as a simple forwarder or if youre in the process of aggregating several mail accounts down to one, you should set up
Outlook to deliver Gmails mail directly to the main message stores inbox.
The end user also has the option to use Outlook rules to assign a special category to such email. For example, if the user wants to
give Gmail content either lower or higher priority, or if he wants to move it to a designated subfolder in a message store.
Another option is to assign Gmail its own message store. This allows for more thorough segregation and also makes it possible for
users to handle Gmail stuff in a totally separate inbox. Some users like having one store per account as an organizational tactic;
they deal with everything in their main inbox, then switch to the other one and handle it at their own pace.
Also, this makes it possible to reply to incoming Gmail messages from that Gmail account if they need to, instead of using an other
email account set up in Outlook. If Gmail is the only account set up in Outlook, this is a moot point, but its still helpful to know
how this behaves if youre using other services side-by-side.
The exact reasons for enacting a no local PST files policy in your own organization is worth exploring.
One potential problem is if your organization has a strict no local PST files policy. If its a local storage management issue, the size
of the PST file in question will not be a problem, since its just a local cache for any messages open in the current session.
You can specify which message store to use when youre first setting up the Gmail POP account. In the Add New Account wizard,
select Manually configure server settings, then choose Internet Email. Next, use the Deliver new messages to selector to
choose whether to send new mail to the existing (default) message store or to a newly created Outlook message store (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Gmail POP accounts can be configured to deliver email to a new message store or an existing one.
If users access Gmail via IMAP, a local PST file is automatically created for that account. Also, messages from the remote server
are synced locally so that they can be read offline. If you see an icon in the Header Status column for a given message, it means
that only the header is available locally; you must open the message with a live connection to Gmail to read it.

Figure 3. Outlook syncs IMAP Gmail messages locally. The icon to the right of the envelope indicates that a particular
message is not locally synced yet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Serdar Yegulalp has been writing about computers and IT for more than 15 years for a variety of publications, including
SearchWinIT.com, SearchExchange.com, InformationWeek and Windows magazine.
ModernInfrastructureEzine:Accessthiscollectionofmonthlyissuesthatexaminesthe
impactthatcloud,virtualization,andendusermobilitytrendsarehavingastheyconvergein
thedatacenter.

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