Gmail offers free IMAP access to it’s users. If you prefer to read your mails on an email client, you need to choose between POP and IMAP. In my view, IMAP protocol is better than POP. But problem is not all mail service providers offer free access to their IMAP mail servers. Anyway your favorite Gmail from Google allows IMAP access. And just like Gmail POP access, it is FREE! Want to start using Gmail IMAP? Don’t know how to start or enable the service? Read on and find detailed instructions on how to enabled IMAP in Gmail.
Steps to enable IMAP access in Gmail:
- Log in to your Gmail account.
- In your Gmail account area, look on the right side of the screen and press the gear icon.
- A menu will appear. Select Settings from the menu.
- In the Gmail settings page, go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
- Go to IMAP Access section and select Enable IMAP under the status headline. Keep the defaults for next options.
- Press the Save Changes button.
Gmail IMAP options:
The default setting for “When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted”option is Auto-Expunge. It means when you delete an email on your desktop or mobile device, the same will be removed from the Gmail server. If you turn that off, you’ll get more options to customize the actions. For example: if you select Auto-Expunge off, you’ll be able set what will happen if you delete messages from your local IMAP folder. You can choose to archive messages, move messages to trash or permanently delete them from Gmail. For ease in organizing, you can choose to limit size of your IMAP folder. For that go to heading Folder Size Limits, check second option and pick a value from the drop down menu (1000, 2000, 5000 and 10000 messages).