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Jul 23

Written by: Brian Swanson
7/23/2008 10:13 AM 

If you've ever tried to use GMail or custom domain hosted email with Google Apps on multiple PCs or mobile devices, you've been frustrated.  I've typically actually pointed people to using IMAP if they wanted to check their GMail emails on multiple devices.

It turns out there is a simple trick for allowing multiple PCs/devices to check an account using GMail.  If you add "recent:" to the front of your username you enter when setting up your email account, then GMail will send you all emails that have been received in the last 30 days regardless of whether they have been previously picked up. So your username would be "recent:username@gmail.com" or "recent:username@customdomain.com"

Here's the link on Google's site that describes the same functionality.

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5 comment(s) so far...

Re: Check your GMail on multiple PCs or mobile devices

So, would you set up the accounts in Outlook or other programs as POP3 then?

By Scott on   7/30/2008 6:32 AM

Re: Check your GMail on multiple PCs or mobile devices

Correct, because IMAP supports maintaining a folder structure, if you set up multiple IMAP accounts you literally have multiple Inboxes/Sent Items/Deleted Items/etc, so I'd always RATHER use POP3 over IMAP, but that's just my personal preference.

By bgswanson@purpleant.us on   7/30/2008 6:34 AM

Re: Check your GMail on multiple PCs or mobile devices

Ok, one more dumb question...for now...In Google, there's a setting for what to do with email accessed via POP - Keep in inbox, move to archive, or move to trash. Can that be set to move to trash then? Also in Outlook, there's a Delivery option. Can the "Leave a copy of messages on the server" option remain unchecked? I'm hoping to purchase a Blackberry or some other smartphone in the very near future and want to be able to download my recent messages on there as well so I don't want to make a mistake that will prevent that but at the same time, I don't want to end up with a inbox on google that's unnecessarily large.

By Scott on   7/30/2008 7:23 AM

Re: Check your GMail on multiple PCs or mobile devices

If you set Google to move the item to trash after it is picked up by POP, then it will not be accessible by any other clients after that. Regardless of whether they are using the "recent:" tag on the username or not.

Also, the "Leave a copy of the message on the server" setting has no effect on Google's behavior, as the previously mentioned setting in your Google email account is what drives the server-side behavior.

If the GMail setting is set to Archive or Leave in Inbox, the "recent:" setting will work as explained in my original post.

By bgswanson@purpleant.us on   7/30/2008 1:25 PM

Re: Check your GMail on multiple PCs or mobile devices

Great. Thanks for the investigation and the info!

By Scott on   8/6/2008 7:43 AM

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