- Introduction
- Setting It Up
- Get a Gmail account.
- Make it
yourcompany@gmail.com
- Reflect
messages from your ISP
- CC
sent
messages from Outlook to Gmail
- Create aliases in
Gmail.
- Some Things to
Note
- Wind Up and Feedback
Update:
CNXN has released Tagle Beta
Tagle is
like
Gmail Labels, but for
EVERYTHING.
Tagle labels (Tags) allow you to link
Facebook
messages,
Twitter
Messages, Files,
Firefox bookmarks,
Delicious
bookmarks (sync'd to Firefox), and
more, all with the
SAME Tags.
Tags also do more than categorize info, they;
See more here:
... and now back to the tutorial :-)
Introduction
If you're a small business owner (or even for personal accounts) it's
essential to have access to your email on the web. Your ISP
gives
you limited webmail space so you need to frequently download it to your
hard drive and there goes your online access. You've probably
thought about just giving up on Outlook and go entirely web based, but
all of the Outlook features you've come to know and love are
just
too valuable to let go. Backup is also an issue but you never have
time. Luckily you can mirror Outlook in Google's
Gmail
very easily to solve all of these problems.
Note that Gmail's POP
access only gives you
access to Gmail via your Outlook
client. This method gives you access to your Outlook email
via
Gmail.
Advantages of Gmail?
- It's FREE
- You get 7+ GB of space so
you'll basically never run out.
- Gmail is very easy to
use.
- You can alias your email
address so you can still be your.name@yourcompany.com
(See note 1
in Some
Things To Note)
Back to the table of contents...
Setting
It Up
- Get a
Gmail account.
Register for an account at http://gmail.google.com,
or if you
have your own company domain, get a Google
Apps account. This is also free.
- Make
it yourcompany@gmail.com
or create your own email at Google Apps. See note 1
in Some Things to Note.
- Reflect
messages from your
ISP. Once you've
set up your account you'll need to have
your ISP reflect
all of your email to your gmail account. Some ISP's allow you
to
configure this yourself through their web administration portal, but
others may have to do it for you. Check their technical
support
section first or give them a call. It should only take a
minute.
You
can also do this with
Outlook's "Forward" or "Redirect" rules, but it means you'll need to
keep Outlook running if you don't have Exchange Server so it has some
limitations. If you use Forward it places your name in the
sender's address instead of the person it's from. If you
still
need to do this, here are the
instructions
from Microsoft to set it up.
- CC
sent messages
from Outlook to Gmail.
It's always nice to be able to see your sent items online as
well, but if you send them from your client, that's where they stay.
To do this you need to set up a rule that CC's everything to
Gmail (see note 2
in Some
Things To Note). If you're good with rules and don't need the
following screen shots, set it up and skip
to the next step.
- Go to Tools, Rules and
Alerts, and click New Rule
Back to the
table of contents...
- Select Start from a blank
rule, Check messages
after sending, and Next.
Back to the
table of contents...
- Click Next
again
and Yes
to apply this rule to
every sent message.
Back to the
table of contents...
- Check off Cc the
message to people or distribution list
and click the people or distribution list
link
below that.
Back to the
table of contents...
- Enter your Gmail
address and click OK. Click Next
when it returns you to the above dialogue.
Back to the
table of contents...
- Click Next
again
to forego any exceptions, name the rule CC Gmail
and click Finish.
Click OK
on the next screen after this to
exit the rules dialogue.
Back to the
table of contents...
- Create
aliases in Gmail.
Now you'll need to create all of your alias addresses to make
it
look like your Gmail came from your company. In your Gmail
account, go to Settings
and
select the Accounts
tab. Here you can add however many accounts you need to.
This is very similar to Outlook's accounts feature in that
you
can set it to reply from the same address the message was sent to.
Google's instructions for accomplishing this step are located
here
for reference.
Back to the
table of contents...
Some
Things to
Note
- When
a message is received in
Outlook from an aliased Gmail account it references the sender
as yourgmail@gmail.com;
on
behalf
of; your.name@yourcompany.com,
however when it's received in webmail accounts it shows up as your.name@yourcompany.com.
This is not a big deal though as you
can still maintain a professional image by setting up a company Gmail
account as shown in Step 2. Click here to continue
from where you left off.
- Some companies
restrict access to all webmail so if you're
a consultant working for a large corporation you may not have access to
your Gmail account. Check with the network administrator
before
hand if this is critical to you.
- Some
have expressed a desire to BCC
yourgmail@gmail.com from Outlook instead
of CC
in order to hide their Gmail address in outgoing mail.
Great news - you can use this add-in
to do just that. Click here to continue
from where you left off in step
5.
- Gmail sent items are
the only thing that is not
synchronized with your Outlook client. It can be done by
manually
by CC'ing your own domain, however we feel that it's not necessary
because it ends up reflecting your own Gmail message back to you via
the reflection rule you created with your ISP. It's also not
really critical that you have all sent Gmail in your Outlook client
because whether you're at your local computer or not, if you have
online access you can find these messages in Gmail anyway.
Wind
Up and Feedback
There
you have it. Your email is now backed up, you always have
online
access, and it's totally free. If you ever do run out of
space,
just
invite yourself to open another account and name it
yourcompany2@gmail.com,
which is essentially the same as creating another PST file in Outlook.
Google has not yet set a time limit on inactive accounts, so
this
archive should always be available on the web if you need it.
As always, if would like to provide feedback or suggest changes to make
this tutorial better, please send us a
message.
If you would like a training seminar conducted for your organization
for this and other tutorials we offer, please send us a
note
with details of your orgainization and how many students you wish to
train. We'll get back to you within one business day or
sooner.
Sincerely,
Team CNXN
Back to the
table of contents...
