Better Email Management, Gmail, Thunderbird, IMAP
Most recently, the biggest time saver for my daily routine has been to move my personal and freelance email domains to Google’s Gmail, part of the Google Apps package (from my current hosting account, Dreamhost, who actually encourages you to use Gmail to handle your email), specifically using the IMAP setting, and then setting up the free Thunderbird program to handle mail on your computer.
- Old Set-up: Eudora, POP, Dreamhost webmail (Squirrelmail)
- New Set-up: Thunderbird, IMAP, Google webmail (Gmail)
See resources below for further explanation, especially of acronyms.
Issues Solved, Benefits
- Great Mail Syncing with IMAP: I’d been checking email from up to four places (work, home, phone, travel) via a combination of POP (via Eudora, no longer being supported, from what I saw) and IMAP (via webmail and Palm smartphone). IMAP syncs (and stores) all your mail on the mail server, so that if I read email in one location, all other locations know what I did. However, rather than just using one webmail account, I needed Thunderbird to archive/save all my old POP mail from Eudora (saved since 1997, across two computers!), and to manage forthcoming archives, in case I ever wanted to avoid exceeding Gmail’s storage limit (currently at 6 GB and counting) or to move my mail elsewhere.
- Serious Spam Filtering: Gmail has the best spam filtering I’ve ever seen! Virtually all spam gets sent to their spam filter! This means that I was able to resuscitate two old email addresses at my JoeBanks.com domain that had been made unusable due to spam! (Nearly 500 spam mails a week!) As a result, I was able to receive an old friend’s recent wedding invitation notice that otherwise would have bounced or never been properly received.
- Email at My Own Domain: Just convenient. Plus, if you wanted to use Gmail’s features, why would you bother having two email addresses and corresponding accounts, for example, a Gmail account (such as yourname@gmail.com) and your domain’s email account (such as PappaBear@joebanks.com). Or having to forward all mail from your domain account to your Gmail acount. Google Apps combined all this nicely.
- Google Tools: Can use Gmail’s online applications, such as Docs and Calendar, although I’ll be on the lookout to see how Microsoft’s online tools compete. However, I’d also like to be able to use Google’s online RSS feed reader (simply called “Reader”) via logging in with my domain’s Gmail account, rather than using a separate Google account.
- Free, Enough Storage, Remote Back-up, Access Previous Archives: Currently, my 11 years of email that I archived on my home computer does not even equal Gmail’s current free storage limit of 6 GB. So starting fresh with Gmail was an easy decision from this point on. Plus, having mail always on their server means, I know I’ll always have a remote back-up of my email, and I can use Gmail’s search tools (online) to find that freelance contact’s or relative’s email from way back. And my 11 years of archives remain usable locally on my computer through an import from Eudora into Thunderbird.
- Filtering, Labeling: I like Gmail’s process of how email should be labeled as it comes in and automatically sent to folders based on the sender or subject criteria (for Gmail, a label is essentially the same as a folder, you just have to set up a filter to label and “folderize” it as it comes in). Every one of my clients, friends, relatives or specific mail list email address has been assigned a filter and label (done via Gmail’s web interface); as mail comes in, it arrives in the Inbox AND gets filtered by having a label assigned to it. At some point, as mail in the Inbox gets too large, I hit the “archive” button online for all or selected message(s), and mail goes out of the Inbox (essentially, the “Inbox” label is removed) and then properly labeled mail remains in its folder (e.g., Banks-Sheryl). And my Inbox stays tidy! Any unlabeled mail goes to their all inclusive “All” folder.
- Free, Cross-Compatible: Like I said, Gmail and Thunderbird are both free and work on Windows, Apple and Linux. Done, since I work on all three platforms, for fun and profit.
Resources & Steps
- What is IMAP?
- Gmail, for just getting a Google account for email and to try out their online applications, or skip to next step:
- Google Apps, for setting up your domain to use Gmail and other apps.
- Thunderbird
- Thunderbird Settings for Gmail
- Additional Recommended Thunderbird Settings for Gmail (and recommended IMAP settings overall for Gmail
- Import old POP email on your computer into Thunderbird. It stays local, but at least it’s not lost! Importing from another IMAP account can also be done with Gmail.
- Configure other email clients
Time Invested: 6-8 hours over 2-3 days. And that included time to import all my email and re-set-up about 30 email address aliases at two domains.
Time & Life Savings: 2-3 hours a week (about 20 minutes a day). Less time diddling with the smartphone and even less time spent in front of the home computer! And less of a chance that I’ll waste time at work!
Would Like
- To be able to sync not only Google’s calendar with my Palm or future smartphone (iPhone? Google phone?) calendar, but my other Palm data (tasks, contacts, memos), via a trusted, reliable (and free?) method.
Final Tip: I find it best to have two email accounts for each domain. For example, for both my personal email and freelance email domains, I have two email accounts and corresponding addresses: one for personal email and the other for shopping and mail lists. Therefore, when I check email from my smartphone, I can just check the personal mail and ignore the other, which gets the bulk of emails.
This is another reason why I use Thunderbird, because it ties together all my email accounts into one view. If I were on travel and needed to use Gmail’s webmail, I would have to log into 4 different webmail accounts to check all my mail, at least by using the free version. However, that’s not usually the case, since I check all my mail on my smartphone (using Snappermail), checking all accounts at once or individually, as needed.
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Update to Post:
I’ve been using Eudora since about 1994 and am finally considering the switch to gmail. I found your article and just wanted to see if you are still happy with your set up before I essentially do the same thing.
Best,
Don
Hi Don!
To answer your question: I’m still happy, my wife is still happy with hers, and I’m nearly done, gradually copying [pertinent] email from my local Thunderbird folder (the email I imported from Eudora) to corresponding Gmail IMAP folders (by simply selecting all attachments in a folder, then right-clicking “Copy to Folder” [NOT "Move to Folder"], and selecting the corresponding Gmail IMAP folder/label on the mail server). Therefore, I have a copy on Gmail’s servers, too!
For example, all emails from my brother since 2000 have been copied from the local directory to the remote Gmail one.
Note: Old email attachments did NOT get transferred (there’s only a text reference to Eudora’s attachment folder path and the file name in the converted email).
I haven’t yet figured out the source, but I suspect it’s from the conversion from Eudora to Thunderbird, or maybe a re-install/upgrade of Eudora over the years that ended up changing the attachment folder location (and losing reference to the original attachment)!
However, I archived my entire Eudora attachments folder, so at least I can track back to the attachment that way. Where to put these online for archiving is another issue….
Perhaps the imapsize application may help?
http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/index.php
I’ve used it with my clients with good results, including attachments.
[Joe Banks approved comment: I will check this application out! --JB]