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December 9, 2006

Retrieve POP3 Mail in Gmail

A mail fetcher is a software that retrieves mail from one or more POP3 mailboxes and sends it to another mailbox. Gmail includes a mail fetcher, but this new feature is not yet available for everyone.

"Gmail allows you to fetch mail from any of your other, non-Gmail accounts. You'll be able to read email from up to 5 additional accounts, all in one place, and take advantage of all of Gmail's great features."

A new mail account will create a label with the same name, so all mail received from that account will have an easy-to-remember label. If you don't like that, you can change the label.

You can choose to leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server, use a secure connection (SSL) when fetching mail and automatically archive new mail.

The feature should be available in Settings / Accounts. If you have it, some screenshots would be appreciated.

{ Via Digg. }

Update: Don't confuse this with other Gmail features: POP3 access (retrieve your Gmail messages with a client that supports POP3) and customization of the From address (send mail from a different address). Also, it's worth noting that Yahoo Mail has this feature.

35 comments:

  1. "Yahoo Mail has this feature." I think only in the paid version, correct?

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, Yahoo lets you add POP3 accounts in the free version (not even the beta version). To change the From address so you can just use Yahoo Mail to manage all your accounts, you need Yahoo Mail Plus.

    In my Yahoo Mail Beta, I can find this in Options / Accounts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is confusing, because already Gmail has an option that it says you can forward the messages from another e-mail to gmail and also use reply as an option to send e-mails with the same e-mail address we are forwarding from. This is already there, so what is the difference in this new feature? I thought it will be like Outlook, with each accounts shown separately.

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  4. Any idea when gmail will have this rolled out to the rest of the world?

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  5. This is great news!
    Although there are pop3 forwarding emails Gmail would be nicers, since it becomes all-in-one solution.
    Interesting matter will be the spam filtering. As of now all services extracting external POP3 DO NOT scan for viruses or spam.

    ps
    I still don't have the feature enabled

    adrianski

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  6. Fetch or retrieve, the dog does the same thing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. # Click Settings from the top of any Gmail page.

    # Click Accounts.

    # In the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account.

    On a Mac Powerbook I see no text "Get mail from other accounts"

    Not available yet on Mac?

    If so, mention it on your blog page.

    And the information page:

    ReplyDelete
  8. this is really great!!!
    a feature i have always wanted.
    now i have forwarded my mail to my gmail account and have set gmail to send as that account. this solves that workaround.

    only problem is, i don't have it yet :(

    ReplyDelete
  9. When will I get this feature?

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  10. I don't have this feature either, but someone from Google said it is slowly rolled out to everyone.

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  11. Need the mail fetcher, try changing your Language preferences to English (US) I was using English (UK) and was missing many options but after the switch got lots more.

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  12. ionut, you can still access pop3 accounts from yahoo beta. under the yahoo logo, click the arrow beside the check mail button, and you will have the pop3 accounts listed to check and fetch the mail.

    what i don't like is that you have a maximum of only 3 accounts, and no spam filtering. also that you have to check the mail on demand instead of it coming automatically. i'm sure there's a way around.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Alex,
    I think Yahoo only allows POP3 in yahoo.co.uk domain. I got an Yahoo account with .co.uk and I was able to use Forward and POP3 to my Gmail.

    However, my girlfriend uses yahoo.com domain. And, that forwarding and POP3 functions are disabled. So sad.

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  14. Alex:

    I know Yahoo has the POP retrieval feature, but Gmail's "Mail Fetcher" functions differently.

    In Yahoo, you have to manually hit the "Check Pop mail" or some extra button whereas in Gmail it checks and pull the email periodically without you having to click the check pop mail button.

    One big advantage is the new email will automatically be there when you log on to gmail without worrying that sometime you'll forget about the extra "check pop mail" button.

    Shrestha

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  15. I would truly love to see gmail be able to check another gmail account via pop3. Now you can send emails as if they came from another gmail account, but you can not check a gmail account via pop3 from another gmail account.

    This would be nice so that i do not have to sign into two different accounts, sign into one and it checks both, other than that gmail is the bomb!

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  16. I was surprised to find this added to my gmail account, and was more surprised when I couldn't find it on a friends account...
    here are a couple screen shots...

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  17. I tried to set up POP3 retrieval in my Yahoo account and it didn't work. I got a message about the mail server not accepting the "last" command. Then I went and checked Gmail. Lo and behold, it has it and it works. Beautifully. I'll be surprised if it isn't widely available soon. There is still some room for improvement though. Right now you can't sethow often gmail checks the other accounts. I think it's once an hour. You can check manually but that's a pain. LOL. Overall, it's a great feature.

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  18. Anonymous said:

    "Need the mail fetcher, try changing your Language preferences to English (US) I was using English (UK) and was missing many options but after the switch got lots more."

    Thanks, I tried this and it works!

    ReplyDelete
  19. HI, i tried this lovely feature but it is not working, i set it up correctly, i see that the mails are being sucked into gmail as they disappear from my other account but i dont see these mails in my account, they just disappear into thin air. Whats happening? Did i do something wrong? Any help wud be great.

    Thanks

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  20. I only wish I could set the number of minutes between each time it checks the incoming POP3 mail accounts - sometimes it is 20 minutes apart or more.

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  21. I would like to know how to retrieve mail from Archived mail. I need to look back at some e mail but don't know how to get to us. Clicking on "Archive" doesn't do it. Can someone tell me? Thanks, Emilie at
    EmilieLaFave@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  22. emilie, you need to click on "all mail" on the left side. they should all be there, and there should also be a button that says "send to inbox"

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  23. How to activate gmail in microsoft outlook express

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  24. How about pull out "Check mail now" for POP3 to the 1st page of Gmail?

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  25. I'd also need a button "Check mail now" for POP3 on the 1st page. It would be great!

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  26. Any ideas on fetching mail from iopener? It's on an IMAP system.

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  27. yea allow the users to set a timer for auto-check and also a check now button, please.

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  28. I set up an account using pop3 with gmail and outlook live and everythink seems to be fine but none of my mail is being taken from the outlook live account. I can't figure out what's wrong. Anybody have any ideas?

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  29. can i send r retrive the messages by using yahoo pop3s and the port addrsss if having related information means send me

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  30. why not have a button on the main page that would allow the user to check all POP3 accounts without having to go through settings -> accounts -> check now on each and every account the user have on Gmail?

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  31. @Basem: Have a look @ this Greasemonkey addon: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/51516

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  32. Just tested it, works perfect on my account: new mail arrives AND I'm able to send it as if sent from the "POP3" account.

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  33. Feature not in settings section any more and can't find it anywhere. Infuriating.

    ReplyDelete

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