How Do I Sync My E-Mail Between Multiple PCs?

Our geek learns that routing e-mail can be a snap thanks to a certain Internet giant

By Rick Broida Posted 04.07.2008 at 5:17 pm 3 Comments

Syncing E-Mail Peter Hoey

It’s a common problem: You have Microsoft Outlook at work, a different e-mail program at home, and a smartphone in your pocket, all with independent inboxes and outboxes. Ideally, all your devices should communicate, so that when you receive or reply to a message on one, it’s reflected on all of them. But they don’t do that.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. It’s called Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP for short), and it allows for two-way communication between your e-mail account and your PCs. That means whatever program or computer you use to access your e-mail, you’ll always see the same thing. There are several ways to set it up, but the easiest is to use Gmail, Google’s free e-mail service, which recently added IMAP support. And because Gmail can pull messages from most existing e-mail accounts, it’s a cinch to route everything to one inbox.

Just open a new account at mail.google.com, and enable the IMAP setting (it only takes one click). You can even create a custom “from” address so that outbound mail will appear to come from any domain you choose (e.g., john@johndoe.com), rather than from your Gmail address. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?

Got a question for our Geek chorus? Send it to us at h20@bonniercorp.com.

Rick Broida is the author of CNET’s Cheapskate blog.

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3 Comments

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Milkweed110

04/08/08 at 11:31 am

How do I sync my email between multiple Macs?

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seamountie

04/12/08 at 11:21 pm

Milkweed110

Try this

Set up an email account for each computer + a general email account. Have each email client (or webmail account) pull in the general account and its own account, then auto-forward anything from the general account to the other computers.

Example: You have 3 computers 1,2 & 3, plus a general email account of 0.

Computer 1 pulls in email from 0 & 1 and auto-forwards any email coming in on 0 to accounts 2 & 3.

Computer 2 then pulls in email from 0 & 2. It gets all the previous email in on account 2, and any email coming in on 0 is auto-forwarded to 1 &3

ditto for Computer 3, except it forwards to 1 & 2.

This is easy to set up in the Mac equivalent of Message Rules in you email client.

All computers get all the mail from the general account.

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.

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Yumfy

04/15/08 at 3:13 pm

Good article. I am also a big fan of IMAP. One caveat however.
I used to use G mail. I find that my current email address at EnterTo has better IMAP support than G mail. It also has technology that eliminates spam without a spam filter. Which is both nice from a never seeing spam standpoint as well as helping from a IMAP angle.

BTW. Pop Sci, thanks for keeping me up on new trends and new technologies. I haven't missed an issue since, I think it was 1981.
LOVE you guys.

Religiously reading Popular Science since the early 1980's