Using gmail as a client for my POP/IMAP email account?

April 18, 2005 6:15 AM

I love Google mail, but I also love my email address. Is there a way I can use gmail as the client for my email (accessible via POP or IMAP) so I can have both?
posted by skryche to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Yep. Forward your email to gmail, and in gmail's settings (top right) set your reply-to address as your email address. It'll be transparent to people emailing you.

There's no way around having your email forwarded to gmail, though: you can't pull in other email accounts via POP/IMAP into gmail.
posted by bonaldi at 6:17 AM on April 18, 2005

It won't be transparent, since the e-mail will say:

From: [e-mail]
Reply-to: [e-mail]

I have a friend who wants to use her Harvard alumni address so she actually set her name so it looks like:

From: "Jane Doe <[e-mail]>" <[e-mail]>

I think this is both tacky and confusing.
posted by grouse at 7:19 AM on April 18, 2005

GMail supports POP mail collection now.
posted by skylar at 7:30 AM on April 18, 2005

Skylar, are you sure? I can obviously forward mail to my gmail account, but I haven't found any way to have gmail collect the mail from another account... or isn't that what you meant?
posted by HuronBob at 8:11 AM on April 18, 2005

I think Skylar means you can collect your email *from* gmail using POP, which won't help in this instance.
posted by bonaldi at 8:14 AM on April 18, 2005

This is my #1 gmail feature request. I've expressed my desire a number of times, but their responses have always left me feeling like this isn't in their interests.
posted by Hankins at 9:00 AM on April 18, 2005

It's not: it means you could upload 1G of stuff from your other accounts, and fill up their servers. The space is budgeted on receiving a normal amount of mail per user, not receiving a user's archive. Which a lot of people -- including me, heh -- would promptly do.
posted by bonaldi at 9:23 AM on April 18, 2005

Is there any web-based email that lets you spoof the "From" address?
posted by transient at 9:33 AM on April 18, 2005

Is there any web-based email that lets you spoof the "From" address?

No, but Gmail lets you change the reply-to address, which is the same thing for all intents and purposes.

I do something similar to bonaldi, but with a twist. I do it in Apple Mail, but YMMV depending on rules robustness in your client of choice.

I get a lot of spam. A lot. I set up my Apple Mail rules to first run through all my spam filters. Then I have a simple rule that says, "If this message is not spam, redirect (note: not forward, so that it preserves the From: info) to Gmail", and then the rest of the filing rules continue.
posted by mkultra at 2:07 PM on April 18, 2005

Something to keep in mind: in my experience, your average person doesn't really understand the concept of a reply-to address. When I tried using one, more than one person wrote back to my From address in a panic, saying "I don't know who [Reply-To Address] is! I think I have a virus!"
posted by Sibrax at 2:15 PM on April 18, 2005

Response by poster: No, but Gmail lets you change the reply-to address, which is the same thing for all intents and purposes.

Alas, it is not. I'm a member of a number of mailing lists that won't let me post unless my "From" field matches up.
posted by skryche at 2:16 PM on April 18, 2005

mozilla's thunderbird is a great e-mail program with many similarities (including simplistic usability) to Gmail.
posted by foraneagle2 at 4:54 PM on April 18, 2005