Since the introduction of IMAP access in Gmail I’ve been toying around with several e-mail clients.
The clients I tested out were Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook Express and Opera. These are all free mail clients that support IMAP.
Opera does actually have some really decent IMAP support and it works well. Google provides good instructions for setting up Outlook Express and Thunderbird but not Opera so I’ll give you the 101 on that.
IMPORTANT NOTE: IMAP must be enabled in your Gmail account prior to following the instructions below. Login to your Gmail, click Settings at the top right, then Forwarding and POP/IMAP, then tick the option for Enable IMAP, then click the button labeled Save Changes. If you do not have the IMAP option in your Gmail yet, it should be available to you soon.
This is how you set up Gmail in Opera 9.24 (Windows specific but probably works the same in other OSes):
Download and install the Opera browser. The e-mail client is built-in and not separate. If you already have Opera, you’ve got the mail client.
Click Tools then Mail and Chat Accounts.
You will see something similar to this:
(click image for larger view)
Click Yes.
Select IMAP and click Next. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
In the New Account Wizard screen, enter your name and Gmail e-mail address, then click Next. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
Enter your Gmail username and password. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
Enter your Incoming server as imap.gmail.com. Then check the box for Use secure connection (TLS). Set your outgoing server to smtp.gmail.com. When finished, click Finish. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
WE’RE NOT DONE YET. The protocol being used to contact Gmail is still incorrect so we have to fix it.
Click Tools then Mail and Chat accounts. You will see a list of all e-mail accounts. There will only be one listed (your Gmail account.) See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
Click the e-mail account once, then click the Edit button. On the next screen that appears, click the Servers tab and change the port number to 993. The rest can be left as is. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
When finished, click OK. Then close the Manage Accounts window by clicking Close.
At the top left of the browser, click the Check/Send button. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)
The Opera mail client will then connect to the Gmail mail server, get the mail and all the tags (which show up as folders.)
And that’s it.
Notes:
- If you have a ton of mail in your Gmail account, it may take a few minutes to download all the mail headers. There is a progress bar (a very nice touch) that will show the status of the download. Be patient – the mail will get there.
- Your e-mail signature can be changed by clicking Tools, Mail and chat accounts, highlight your Gmail account, click Edit, then click the Outgoing tab. Your signature is there. See image below for example.
(click image for larger view) - To unsubscribe from certain IMAP folders, click Mail (at the top) then IMAP Folders. Uncheck the ones you don’t want to show up (such as Spam.) See image below for example.
(click image for larger view)Unchecking folders DOES NOT DELETE THEM. It just means they won’t be seen.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
Hi!
just the article I was looking for!:D
It’s wasn’t so difficult.
But I have a little problem, you see, each time opera downloads my messages, they appear Twice
on the Unread section of the mailclient
if i scroll down to my gmail folders it’s ok there..
any idea what th problem might be?
I have same problem. Anybody sae solution anywhere?
I believe this is happening because you have filters set up. The unread folder in M2 pulls all the unread messages from Gmail, so if you have an unread message in your inbox that is labeled with, for example, “Work”, and “Fun”, it will show up three times. IMAP treats labels in Gmail as folders, so if you have unread messages with several labels, you will get those messages several times. The “solution” would be to check the folder “INBOX”, rather than checking your Unread.
Also setup your SENT folder to use gmails sent folder.
It is found in the opera email account options under:
Outgoing>IMAP sent folder
You should set to: [GMAIL]/Sent Mail
I tried to set Opera to get mail from gmail as you said. but i was unable to download mails. Pls Help me.TNX.
Hi frustrated getting double-emails from Gmail!
I was one of them, how to solve it is very easy:
First of all, do -NOT- set “IMAP sent folder” to “[GMAIL]/Sent Mail”, make it blank. Using gmails SMTP-server automatically sends “Sent” mails to “Sent Mail.”
Second, and whats mainly makes double mail:
Unsubscribe “All Mail” and “Sent Mail”
Third, “Check/Send” mail usually will be done automatically right after clickin “OK”, if not, do so.
Now it should be smoothly working.
cant get opera 10 beta to work i get this message all the time checked all settings are correct
The connection with the IMAP server was unexpectedly interrupted.
I get the same thing as seaq. Anyone found a workaround?
I had my POP server pushing email to Gmail IMAP and everything was working perfectly, including mail sorting into Opera mail folders. The only problem was that my POP serving kept storing everything even after pushing it to Gmail. Yesterday, I switched from pushing to Gmail to having Gmail pull mail from my POP provider’s server. This successfully emptied my POP mailbox, but now I can’t get the mail into my Opera folders, only into the Unread folder.
Anyone got any ideas on how I might fix this.
Steve D