Easy-Email

Gmail can download email from webmail accounts provided they give you POP access to your email. POP is short for Post Office Protocol and it is the feature that allows an email program to download emails from a mail server. This is the case for most webmail providers with one exception being the free Yahoo Mail. 

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Use your favorite email software and work with your email offline.

Watch the quick video Gmail Sync.

 

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Gmail can also transfer all of your contacts and email from another webmail account. Most webmail providers are supported, such as Hotmail, Yahoo (both Plus and free!), and AOL. For the latest list of supported email providers check here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=117173.

First we will transfer your contacts and email, then we will setup Gmail to automatically download new email coming in to your webmail account.

Note! The steps in this guide are for Hotmail. If you use another webmail provider you will need to follow the same steps.

Transfer contacts and email from your webmail account to Gmail

For John we will transfer from his Hotmail account to Gmail.

In Hotmail John has:

Note! Click on the images to see a larger version.

• Three emails in his inbox, one of which is unread:
  

• One sent mail:
  

• One personal folder, Party Invitations, with one email:
  

• And one contact:
  

Gmail's Import mail and contact function does not transfer Sent Mail for some reason. To work around this we create a new folder in Hotmail and move all the sent mail into that folder. Once the sent mail has been transferred to Gmail we can move it back to the sent folder in Hotmail.

Follow these steps.

• Log in to your Hotmail account.

• Click Manage folders
  

• Click New.
  

• Give the folder a name – for John we use Hotmail Sent Mail.
  Click Save.
  

• Click Sent to go to the Sent Mail folder.
  Click the check box below New to select all email in the folder.
  Click Move to and select the folder you created in the previous step.
  Note! If you have more sent emails than will fit on one screen you have to repeat the Move to exercise for each screen.
  

• Log in to your Gmail account.

• Click Settings at the top right hand corner of the page.
  

• Click Accounts and Import.
  

• Click Import mail and contacts.
  

• Enter your webmail address, for John this is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
  Click Continue.
  

• Enter the password for the account.
  Click Continue.
  

• Click Start import.
  

• Read the message and note that the process can take a while to complete.
  You can continue with your email setup while this is going on in the background.
  Click OK.
  
• Back in the main Gmail window you will be notified when the import has completed.
  
• Under the Send mail as heading, the hotmail address has automatically been setup, so we can send email from Gmail using this email address.
  
• Once the Account Import has completed, go back to Hotmail and move the sent mails back to the Sent folder.
  Click Hotmail Sent Mail (or whatever name you gave your folder).
  Click the check box below New to select all email in the folder.
  Click Move to and select the Sent.
  Note! If you have more sent emails than will fit on one screen you have to repeat the Move to.
  

In Gmail we can see the transferred emails and contact:

• Three emails in the Inbox:
  Note! The unread status is not transferred.
  

• One sent email:
  

• One personal folder, Party Invitations, with one email:
  

• And the transferred contact:
   

Setup Gmail to download new email from your webmail account

We want Gmail to collect new email coming in to our old webmail account automatically, and download it to our Gmail inbox.

Follow these steps:

• Go to Settings → Accounts and import.

• Under the Check mail using POP3 heading click Add POP3 email account.
  POP3 or POP is short for Post Office Protocol and it is the feature that allows an email program to download emails from a mail server. For an explanation of POP and IMAP see www.Easy-Email.net.
  

• Enter your email address.
  Click Next Step >>.
  

• Enter your password.
  Check Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.
  Check Label incoming messages.
  Note! Gmail will typically guess the right settings for your POP server – but if you have problems, please verify the name is correct.
  Click Add Account.
  

• Gmail will now check Hotmail for new email. Since this is the first time Gmail checks Hotmail this way it will download all the email from the Hotmail inbox to your Gmail inbox. If you have many emails this might take a while. This is actually repeating the import of email from the previous step for the inbox only, but Gmail is smart enough for the emails only to appear once in Gmail.
   

If you would like help with synchronizing Gmail on multiple computers you can download and follow the Easy-Email Essential Guide. See how this brilliantly simple solution will simplify your life by watching the quick video at sync gmail.