Gmail IMAP - how to synchronize your email across multiple computers

POP stands for Post Office Protocol.  This is the technology that allows Gmail to pick up emails from your other email accounts. In Gmail you can POP up to five addresses into the one Gmail address.

For example Gmail POP3 will go to Hotmail's server and pick up any emails addressed to your Hotmail address and download them to the Gmail server. This means you can read emails addressed to you at your Hotmail address while working in Gmail. You could do the same with a company address and any other email account that allows POP.

Once you set up Gmail to POP all of your emails from all of your addresses you:

    * save the hassle of logging in and out of various email accounts
    * manage all of your emails in one window
    * can choose to send your emails from Gmail as if they come from e.g. your hotmail address

The two key types of email protocol are POP and IMAP. IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and it is the function that allows you to synchronize your email between different accounts.Gmail supports both which allows it to manage all your email addresses (POP) and to synchronize your emails (IMAP).

The Easy-Email solution is based on using Gmail IMAP as a synchronization hub for all your email addresses and all your email clients.

Once Gmail IMAP is enabled, and your email clients are set up to synchronize with Gmail, the Gmail server acts as a synchronization hub.

The emails, whether sent, received or in folders, remain on the Gmail server where they can be accessed from any computer. You then setup your email client e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird or Entourage to synchronize with Gmail.

This means you can access all your emails from your own computers using your favorite email client, or from any other computer with internet access via Gmail.

You can also choose to download a copy to your computer so that you can work offline using your email client.

The video below shows you how Gmail and Thunderbird are synchronized using IMAP to give you this solution.