Q Can I use Mozilla Thunderbird to send and receive emails from a Googlemail account?

A Googlemail can work just like an ordinary email account with an ISP, except for the very generous storage allowance. Using Thundbird is a very good idea because it then also works as a local backup. Although rare, there have been some reports of emails being lost by Google so it is a good idea to keep a copy.

This is not enabled by default for Googlemail accounts so it must be activated first. Log in as normal and click on the Settings link in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Click on the Forwarding and POP link in the main part of the window and then in the option ‘Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)’. Make sure that the option below is set to ‘keep Googlemail’s copy in the Inbox’.

Download Thunderbird and follow the installation wizard. Left-click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings. Click on the Add Account button to start the wizard. Select the Email account option and then click on Next. Enter your name as you want it to appear to people in the first box and the email address in the second box.

Click on Next. Select POP as the incoming server and then enter pop.googlemail.com in the text box. The Outgoing server should be entered as smtp.googlemail.com. Click on Next.

Enter the googlemail email address in both of the next fields and click on Next. Type Googlemail in the email account filed, click on Next and then on Finish.

The process is not quite finished ­ there are still a couple more steps. Click on the Server Settings option in the left-hand column in the section for the new email account. Change the first Port value to 995 and select the option SSL from the Use secure connection section.

We would recommend selecting both the ‘Check for messages at startup’ and ‘Automatically download new messages’ options. Now the settings for sending emails must be changed. Click on the ‘Outgoing Server (SMTP)’ entry in the left-hand column and then on the smtp.googlemail.com entry. Click on Edit.

The Server Name should be smtp.googlemail.com and the Port should be 587. The username should be your googlemail email address. Select TLS from ‘Use secure connection’ section. Click on OK twice to close all the windows and save the changes.

Depending on how long the account has been active, downloading all the emails may take some time.