Working with Email when offline?

July 8, 2007 2:49 PM

How can I get my laptop to process email when I am offline?

I used to carry around a wireless Dell Axim that included a program that would automatically download new email from my GroupWise account when I had an internet connection. It also allowed me to compose email offline and would send it next time I was online. Surely there is something like that for my XP laptop that would work with both my GroupWise and Gmail accounts? Free is good but I willing to buy a good program. Possibly relevant detail: My administrators will not allow an automatic forward of all mail from my GroupWise account.

Please answer as you would to an 8-year-old.

posted by LarryC to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Are you not able to simply compose an email in your program of choice and hit "Send"? In most programs, if you aren't on the internet, that will cause the message to go into the Outbox, where it is sent next time you are online or perform a send/receive operation.

Maybe I'm missing something though, so please clarify if that answer doesn't work.
posted by DMan at 2:56 PM on July 8, 2007

Gmail allows for regular POP3 client access - which is to say that for gmail you can use literally any existing stand-alone email client (Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora, all of em). That is, as opposed to the web based interface.

As for groupwise, I've never used it, so the question becomes, what type of protocol does Groupwise suppot... (I'm off to google...)
posted by tiamat at 2:57 PM on July 8, 2007

Well, according to wikipedia Groupwise support both POP3 and IMAP, which, again, means that you should be able to connect.

So, for the 8 year old no assumptions version, here's what you need.

1) Mail client for Windows XP. Outlook Express is built in but I recommend Thundebird which has the advantage of being free (as opposed to the full version of Office Outlook) and has a pretty decent feature set.

2) You need login info from your techs. That would be...
Server Address mail.groupwiseserver.com (or whatever)

Server Type (POP and IMAP are slightly different ways of accessing your mail, and each have pros and cons, read up above and ask your techs what they support). (You may also have to set non-standard port and encryption options--don't worry about these if your techs don't mention them. Gmail does use special settings though.

Login/Password Well, duh.

Once you've got the info you need, you'll want to setup the account in thundebird (or whatever). Here's a tutorial I found in google, if you have problems with the setup.

You also may want to look into "Leaving Messages on the Server". If you're checking your mail from more than one computer there's a setting for POP3 that allows you to download but not remove messages from the server. If you're also using webmail or another computer to access your mail, this makes it easier to have your mail be the same in every place.
posted by tiamat at 3:11 PM on July 8, 2007

One caveat-- gmail requires the POP3 to be done over SSL, which rules out some (very old) mail clients, which I ran into trouble with when I tried to use my old, old client. This is not likely to be a problem for you, however.

Since no one else has linked to it, here's Gmail's page on the subject.
posted by alexei at 5:38 PM on July 8, 2007

You can also, if you want, have GMail itself download the emails from the Groupwise server, via POP3. Go to "Settings" -> "Accounts" -> "Add another mail account," then enter the info tiamat mentioned. This has the advantage of being continuous, and allows both your work and home email to be searchable via a single interface. I think you can also have it automatically attach a label to all the emails collected this way.
posted by nasreddin at 9:47 PM on July 8, 2007