How to Set Up a Universal Email Inbox Using a Gmail Account

Practically everyone today has more than one email account. I have more than most people I am sure. Visiting all of the individual email accounts is a pain and time consuming. To make an easy job of checking my multiple email accounts everyday, I configured my Gmail web based email account to become my universal inbox. Combining Gmail and my other POP3 email accounts made it possible for me to read and response to all of my email account messages via each system interchangeably.

Unfortunately, other web based email accounts such as Squirrel, Hotmail, MS Live, and Yahoo is not interchangeable through the Gmail email browser but most ISP POP3 email accounts are. To set up my universal Gmail inbox I logged into my Gmail account and clicked on Settings, then Accounts. In the Get Mail From Other Accounts section I clicked Add a mail account, entered the email address of the account I wanted to add and clicked Next Step to enter that account's user name, password, and POP server information.

Because I wanted to continue to be able to access the email messages on my original email account as well as my Gmail account browser, I clicked the Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server box. Next I selected the Always use a Secure Connection (SSL) when retrieving mail box to keep unwanted eyes from reading my email messages, then selected Label Incoming messages so Gmail will create a label so I know which email account the message originated from. Labels are the equivalent to folders in the Gmail account browser window. By clicking on a label you can access all of the messages which carry that same label. After completing all of the steps necessary to set up my account I clicked Add Account.

I followed these procedures for each ISP based POP3 email account I wanted to set up. After a short period of time, I had created a universal inbox using my Gmail account. When I response to messages in my universal Gmail inbox which originated from my other POP3 accounts, Gmail asks whether I want to create a custom From: address before I send them. By clicking yes and following the instructions, the recipient of the message will see my POP3 email address listed in the message they receive instead of my Gmail email address.

I have been using my universal Gmail inbox for sometime now and have had no problems. Gmail continues to check my accounts and display the results in my Gmail inbox as well as the originated ISP POP3 account. I discontinued a few ISP POP3 email accounts since I originally started my universal Gmail inbox and to stop Gmail from continuing to check those email accounts I deleted the accounts by logging into my Gmail account, selected Settings, then Accounts, and clicked the delete box next to the account I no longer needed.

My universal Gmail inbox has been a time saver and a great convenience. You may discover the same thing. Setting one up is not that difficult.

Resource: Get mail from other accounts - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288

Tags: gmail, mail fetcher, google email account, gmail pop3 settings, gmail imap