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

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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 6:17 pm 3 Comments
Syncing E-Mail: Photo by 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.

3 Comments

Comments

Milkweed110
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 04/08/08 at 12:31 pm

How do I sync my email between multiple Macs?

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seamountie
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 04/13/08 at 12:21 am

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.

R

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

1 out of 1 people found this comment helpful
Yumfy
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 04/15/08 at 4:13 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

1 out of 1 people found this comment helpful

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