Retrieve Emails from other accounts using Gmail

Google made two major changes to its online email service Gmail in the last week. They are both positive changes that should make a lot of users happy. First, Gmail is no longer invite only. That's right, if you do not have a Gmail account yet hop over to the official website to create one right away.
It is no longer necessary to be invited to join, which is great news for all users without account yet and for the service itself as usage will certainly go up quite a bit as a consequence.
The second change may be interesting to users who have to work on different computers. Gmail now offers the option to access mail accounts that support the pop3 protocol from within the Gmail interface. What this means is that you can configure the service to retrieve mails from other providers as long as they are accessible via Pop3.
This new feature does not seem to be available to anyone yet, just check your settings in the Gmail account and click on accounts.
If the option Get mail from other accounts is visible you can add other accounts to your Gmail account. I'm however not yet convinced to use Gmail as my go to email program as I have several concerns in regards to the service, and especially online storage in particular.
I do not trust companies enough to have important mails or files stored online on a server. There is always the possibility of misuse and I don't want to take any risks. Maybe I'm a little paranoid about this whole thing. I also do not want to risk the chance that mail gets lost because it is only hosted online.
Still, I will continue to download my Gmail emails using Thunderbird and I'm happy with the solution. Mainly because I only work on one computer. I can see the advantages if you work in more than one location or on multiple devices as it is more complicated then to keep everything accessible and in-sync at all times.
How to add pop3 providers to Gmail
- Open the Gmail settings page.
- Switch to the accounts tab here.
- Locate the "Check mail from other accounts (using Pop3) and click on the "ad a Pop3 mail account you own".
- Enter the full email address of the account on the next page.
- Gmail tries to populate all important settings automatically, if that works, enter the password and decide on a couple of settings next.
- If that does not work, you will have to enter the server information manually instead.
- If you are retrieving the mails using another program as well, make sure to enable the "leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server" option.
Update: Four years later and Gmail is still offering to retrieve mail from other providers. Providers like Hotmail have in the meantime started to offer similar options so that their users can also retrieve emails via Pop3 from other mail providers. This is handy for users who only use a website to do email.
Advertisement
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!