Foward mail to Mail.app AND Entourage?

[M@lew]

I currently use Mail to receive my Gmail email, and I'm thinking of having a look at Entourage and setting up my gmail there. If I do, would it only forward my messages to Entourage/Mail? Or would it send to both?

Also, in Gmail I have set it up so that it archives my mail that gets forwarded. Would that make a difference?

 

[mad jew]

Okay, we need to get a couple of things established. Forwarding your email implies you're getting your GMail account to send your emails on to a second email account somewhere. If this is the case then you should still be able to use that second account in both apps but setup will depend on what mechanism your account has - POP3 or IMAP or something else.

Now, assuming there is no second email account, then we can start talking about getting GMail to download messages to both Mail and Entourage. GMail (to my understanding) has POP3 access which means you can put the details into both apps. However, you must ensure they are both set to not remove messages from the server immediately. When I had a POP3 account on two machines (effectively two apps), I had one machine never delete the messages from the server and the other machine would delete them after a week. Assuming I used both machines in a week, this meant all new messages were downloaded to each machine/app. Of course, sent messages were not kept synchronised.

So, sorry for the long bits, but in short we need to know if you want GMail access from both apps or if you want to forward GMail emails to another account which can be accessed from both apps.

 

[M@lew]

I'm wondering if Gmail forwards the mail to both applications or just one? Thanks for the long reply though.

 

[rdowns]

Gmail will not forward mail to an "application" but to an email address. The first app that launches and downloads mail will receive it. The other will not.

 

[M@lew]

Ah ok. So basically I shouldn't set up my mail in Entourage unless I want to commit to it?

 

[mad jew]

However, GMail has POP3 access (to my understanding) which means you should be able to get new messages on both Mail and Entourage.

 

[hopejr]

However, GMail has POP3 access (to my understanding) which means you should be able to get new messages on both Mail and Entourage.

Not quite. GMail's POP3 implementation is weird, and acts as if all retrieved messages have been deleted. In other words, whether or not you have the "delete messages on retrieval" or equivalent setting on in your email client, GMail will not tell the email client about previously downloaded messages. This then will cause the issue where once downloaded in Apple Mail, Entourage won't see the message, and vice versa. This is something that I really hate about GMail. I can't have it set up on two computers at once.

 

[mad jew]

Weird. Doesn't that mean it doesn't adhere to POP3 standards then? Thanks for the info.

 

[iMeowbot]

Weird. Doesn't that mean it doesn't adhere to POP3 standards then?

The GMail POP3 behavior is allowed by RFC 1939.

 

[mad jew]

Ahh, okay, but it's not POP3 UIDL. Gotcha.




...I think.

 

[iMeowbot]

Ahh, okay, but it's not POP3 UIDL. Gotcha.

...I think.

It's actually the (ab)use of UIDL as a poor man's IMAP that the spec allows operators to break The spec does warn

It should be noted that enforcing site message deletion policies may be confusing to the user community, since their POP3 client may contain configuration options to leave mail on the server which will not in fact be supported by the server.

But in the next sentence, it proceeds to explain exactly how to implement such a policy…

Now I want to find the list archives for that working group, the arguments leading up to that wording must have beenn nasty!