Configuring Gmail POP3 Access

Once you have an account, you need to configure Gmail POP3 access. Doing this tells Gmail how to behave when Outlook contacts it. There are only a couple of settings, but you should give it a minute's thought before you start.



You can tell Gmail to enable POP3 for all mail, or only mail that arrives from this point on. It doesn't really make a difference if you have just created your Gmail account.

If you have been using Gmail for a while, you could already have dozens, even hundreds or thousands of messages stored in your Gmail account. If you enable POP3 access for all mail, when Outlook connects to Gmail for the first time, it will download all those old messages. This could take quite a while and clutter up your Outlook Inbox tremendously. In this case you probably want to enable POP3 access only for messages that arrive from now on.

The other thing to consider is what you want Gmail to do with messages once Outlook downloads a copy of them. The default is to allow Gmail to keep a copy of each message even after Outlook downloads them to your computer. If you like the idea of keeping a copy of all your messages in Gmail forever, then this option is right for you. If not, and you wish to have Outlook as the place where your messages are stored, you can have Gmail archive copies of the messages, or trash (delete) them after Outlook downloads a copy of them.

Now that you've had a chance to consider those issues, follow these steps to configure your Gmail account for POP3 access:

1. On any Gmail page, click Settings. The Mail Setting dialog box appears.



2. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link. This displays the page containing the POP Download (POP3) options.
   
   
   
   
   Set Gmail POP3 download options here.



3. In step 1, POP Status, select an option to enable POP3 and tell Gmail which messages are available by POP3.



4. In step 2, tell Gmail what to do with messages after Outlook downloads a copy of them.



5. Skip step 3 and click Save Changes.

• Return to the top of this Gmail POP3 page.



• Close this page to return to the Gmail Outlook Connection
page.