I’ve written about Claws Mail quite a bit (see “Claws Mail: The unsung powerhouse email client“, “Claws Mail must have plugins“, “Create Message Filters in Claws Mail“,  “Encrypting email in Claws Mail“, and “Make Claws Mail aware when you need top or bottom posting“.) In the business world most people use Exchange. Unfortunately Claws Mail does not communicate with Exchange. Fortunately there is an alternative that a lot of people use – Google Mail. And good news for Claws Mail users, it can communicate with Google Mail!

Of course it’s not terribly cut and dry, how you set up Claws Mail to work with Google Mail, but it’s not so difficult that a newbie can’t configure it. So let’s see just how this is done.

Setting up Google Mail

The first thing you have to do is set up Google Mail to allow IMAP connections. To do this go to your Google Mail account and click on the Settings link near the top. Once in the settings window click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. In this section you will want to check “Enable IMAP” in the IMAP section. Once you have done that click the Save Changes button and you’re ready to move on over to Claws Mail for the real work.

Tag you’re it!

Gmail does not handle mail with folders. Instead it uses tags. So in order to be able to use Gmail you have to have, at least, the bare minimum of tags created in order for your Gmail mail to have a place to live. In order to create tags you need to click on the Configuration menu and then click on the Tags entry to open up the Tags Window.

Figure 1

When the Tags Window opens (see Figure 1) you simply have to type the new tag in the text area and then click the Add button. The tags you need to add are the following:

[Gmail]/Archived
[Gmail]/Drafts
[Gmail]/Queue
[Gmail]/Trash

You can add as many tags as you want depending upon how many folders you need (or have) on your Gmail account.

Configure your Gmail on Claws Mail

Now you need to go to the Configuration menu and select Create New Account. In this window you need to configure the following options.

Basic section

Personal information: Fill this out as you need it.

Server section

• Server for receiving: imap.gmail.com
• SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com
• User ID: Your gmail address
• Password: Your gmail password

Receive section

Authentication method: LOGIN

Send section

• SMTP Authentication: Enable this
• User ID: Your gmail address
• Password: Your gmail password

SSL section

• Use SSL for IMAP4 connection: Enable this
• Don’t use SSL (under SMTP section): Enable this

Advanced section

• SMTP Port: 465
• IMAP Port: 993

The final step

Go back to the main Claws Mail window. If you right click on the Gmail main folder you will see an entry for Subscriptions. Under that entry there are three sub entries. You want to click the Subscribe entry to subscribe to your Gmail mail. Once you have done that you can click Get Mail to download all of your Gmail mail. You are ready to go.

Final thoughts

Gmail is becoming a standard email service for many people, and with good reason. And now, if you use Gmail you can connect everyone’s favorite Claws Mail client.

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We will utilize IMAP to transfer the local mails to Gmail which will make it possible in the end to simply move or copy mails to the Gmail account in the local email client.

The first thing that needs to be configured is IMAP support in Gmail. This is done in Settings > Forwarding and Pop / Imap. You only need to check the IMAP enabled checkbox to enable IMAP access for that GMail account.

The rest has to be configured in the local email client. Thunderbird will be used as an example but the basic settings are similar in all other email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.

Here are the values that you need to create the IMAP account in your local email client:

Email Address: username@gmail.com
incoming server: imap.gmail.com
incoming server port: 993
secure connection: SSL
incoming user name: username@gmail.com

outgoing server smtp.gmail.com
outgoing user name: username@gmail.com
outgoing server port: 587
secure connection: TLS

Google provides detailed (but sometimes slightly outdated) information about setting up IMAP in various email clients.

If the setup was successful you should check for new mail. All Gmail mail header should be downloaded to the local mail client.

To backup mails you simply move the mail folders into the Gmail IMAP folders. They will be created there with a label taken directly from the folder’s name. All folders and emails will be accessible in Gmail in the Labels menu.

It is even possible to take it a step further and delete old mails in the email client afterwards. If you need to access them again they are still accessible in Gmail. It is still advised to create a local email backup before deleting any mails locally.

If you encounter difficulties moving or copying folders you could circumvent the problem by creating the folders manually. The emails can then be copied or moved into the newly created folder easily.

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