Do you find yourself repeatedly looking up the same map info at any of the various online map services like Google Maps, MapQuest, or Yahoo! Maps? Here’s a Tip submitted by "Andreas" that lets you maintain a simple Map Repository within Gmail. It’s builds on the concept introduced in the Gmail Tip #3: How to maintain "Notes", but it’s application is different. Read on for details…

Create a Contact with a Name of "Map" and an Email Address of username+map@gmail.com (replacing username with your Gmail username.)

Then, create a new Label called "Map".

Finally, create a Filter to add the "Map" Label to any email addressed to username+map@gmail.com. Check the "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)" checkbox to bypass the Inbox.

Whenever you look after a online city map of a friend or location you visit repeatedly. Save the map as gif-Image and send it to username+map@gmail.com. Include the Name and address of the person or location in the subject line.

Using Gmail’s Search, you can later find the map much faster then by using an online map-service.

Like Gmail Tip #3: How to maintain "Notes", this can be adapted for many other applications by simply changing the word "Map" in the Address, Label, and Filter to something more specific to your need.

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Gmail is an excellent service, but I sometimes get concerned about the security of keeping all my messages in one place. It’s not a "privacy" concern, but a "data integrity" concern: If my Gmail account somehow gets corrupted or blown away, I don’t have anything to fall back on…until now. By simply using Gmail’s POP3 access, you can download your entire account for offline storage! Read on for some instructions and Tips inspired by "Edwin" and "Zavie" on backing up your entire Gmail account…

The thought of the possibility of losing over 3500 messages certinaly doesn’t sit well with me, so I decided to investigate Gmail’s POP Mail account options. By better understanding just how it works, you can leverage it to backup your entire Gmail account, and maintain that backup on an ongoing basis. I use the Gmail’s Web interface exclusively because I like the flexibility of being able to access Gmail from wherever I am. But setting up an email client to automatically download any new email permits me to retain the Web access I love while maintaining a backup repository locally.

The first things to do are to activate Gmail’s POP Download feature, and configure your POP3 email client to work with Gmail. See Gmail Tip #44: Using An Email Client for details.

This Tip has some repeated elements of that Tip, but it looks at using POP access from a different angle: Backups.

Here’s the key to this Tip: In order to download ALL email from your account when you initiate a Send/Receive on your email client, you need to reset Gmail’s POP settings. In Gmail’s "Forwarding and POP" settings page, select the "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)" option and click the Save Changes button. This ensures that when you do your first download, ALL email will be sent.

If you have previoualy enabled POP Email, select the "Disable POP" and click the Save Changes button, and then re-select the "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)" option, and click the Save Changes button. This will reset Gmail’s POP settings so that ALL email gets delivered via POP.

Please be aware of a few potential issues:

1. If you already have POP access enabled, resetting the account will re-download EVERYTHING, so you may end up with duplicates. Move any existing messages in your email client to a backup folder prior to resetting Gmail and downloading everyting.
 
2. If you are setting up yout email client for the first time and want to retain the email on Gmail’s server, be sure that the setting "Delete email from server" in the Account setting is UNCHECKED, otherwise the email will be deleted from Gmail after it is downloaded.
 
3. When I initiated a Send/Receive session in both Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird (I didn’t try Outlook Express) it only downloaded about 300-400 messages. Initiating another Send/Receive session downloaded another block of 300-400 messages. With over 3500 messages, I had to initiate about a dozen Send/Receive sessions, but when they all completed, everything downloaded. Over a broadband connection, it was quite fast.
 
4. When downloading with Outlook 2003, a number of the emails that were received had Today’s date instead of the date the email was sent. It looks like this only applied to email that I sent, but I’ll have to verify that–it was quite a few. The majority of messages, however, appear to have the proper dates. Thunderbird retained all dates properly.

Once all your Gmail messages are downloaded, your email client will be "synced" such that when you initiate additional send/receive sessions, only new email will download. To maintain the backup on an ongoing basis, just periodically initiate a send/receive session to bring in any new email. If you have a PC that is always connected to the Internet, leaving your email client running and setting your email client to auto-download any new messages will keep things always backed up locally nicely. If you use the email client as your primary method of Gmail access, then set the auto-download to something frequent like every 10 minutes. However, if you are using the email client like I do (as a backup tool) set the auto-download to initiate every few hours or just once or twice per day. In that case, you don’t need to have it download frequently, just regularly.

Again, Gmail is an excellent service, but it’s nice having the peace of mind that you can always have a backup.

Thanks to "Edwin" and "Zavie" for prompting me to look into this!

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Gmail's POP3 access lets you leverage third-party Email Clients like Outlook or Thunderbird, giving you the flexibility you want. Read on to see some quick tips inspired by "Edwin" and "Zavie" on configuring and accessing Gmail's POP3 access…

POP3 email clients are common, handy tools to enable you to manage your email online or offline. Here are several examples:

1. Outlook Express
Outlook Express is included with just about every Windows installation. Setup is simple, and though its interface is basic, it works well with Gmail.

2. Outlook (various versions)
I used Outlook 2003, and it worked like a charm with Gmail. It's robust, a business standard, and you have all of Outlooks advanced features available to you. The only down side is that for the personal user, it can be expensive, either standalone or as part of Microsoft Office.

3. Thunderbird
Thunderbird is an excellent solution. It's Open Source, free, cross-platform compatible, very stable, and feature-rich. I used the "Portable Thunderbird" version because of its portability, and it worked very well. For personal users, Thunderbird has probably more features than you will ever need.

4. Other Email Clients
Just about any modern POP mail client whould work, provided ot allows SSL connections. There are numerous examples that can be found with a Google search.

In all cases, the key to setting up your email client to work with Gmail is to ensure that you can connect using a Secure SSL Connection. These settings are typically found in the client's Accounts settings screens where you must define specific ports to access Gmail's POP3 server. Gmail has an excellent Help section that details the setup for most popular POP3 email clients. This is found by clicking the "Configuration instructions" link found in the "Forward and POP" screen of Gmail's settings.

OK. To setup Gmail to allow POP3 access, click on the "Settings" link in the upper right of any Gmail page. Next, click on the "Forwarding and POP" tab. Depending on how much email you want to manage via POP, choose the appropriate selection:

1. "Enable POP for all mail"
This will let you download all messages you have in your email account as well as any new email that arrives.

2. "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on"
This option lets you download only new email that arrives since the time you activate the POP setting.

The second setting, "When messages are accessed with POP" lets you determine how Gmail will handle the messages you download. How you use your email client and Gmail wuill determine the setting you want:

1. "keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox"
This option will leave all new email in Gmail's Inbox with "read settings" intact. This means that regardless of when you use your email client to receive messages, Gmail's Web client settings will always remain independent. Email messages are retained in your Gmail account. If you rely mostly on the Web client and use a POP3 clinet only occasionally, then this is the setting of choice. Think of this as a "parallel" setup with messages managed on both sides.

2. "archive Gmail's copy"
This option will automatically "Archive" the message (remove it from the Inbox and retain it in Gmail's All Mail view) when you download it using your email client. This is useful when you use your email client more then Gmail's Web client. The advantage of this setting is that it leaves the message on Gmail's server as a backup. You still have full Web access should you ever want to use Gmail's Web client.

3. "trash Gmail's copy"
This option deletes the email from Gmail's server once the message is successfully downloaded to your email client. This is useful if you use an email client exclusively, and don't want any email retained on Gmail's server.

Once you have selected your appropriate settings, click the "Save Changes" button. When you fire up your configured email client and receive messages, they will be downloaded seamlessly!

One point of note: When I initiated a Send/Receive session in both Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird (I didn't try Outlook Express) it only downloaded about 300-400 messages. Initiating another Send/Receive session downloaded another block of 300-400 messages. With over 3500 messages, I had to initiate about a dozen or so Send/Receive sessions, but when they all completed, everything downloaded. Over a broadband connection, it was quite fast.

 Update:  Note that you must set up "secure POP" access for all email clients in order to access Gmail from an email client. Follow Gmail's HELP instructions foud at this URL:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=1555

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