For those of you out there who choose to use a traditional email client with IMAP to connect to Gmail (of which there are many of you), you may have noticed that checking your Gmail can at times be a bit on the slow side. A reason for this may be because you’re subscribed to all IMAP folders in "full download" mode.

If you unsubscribe from specific folders and/or set them to download headers only, this makes checking mail and overall use of the system much speedier.

For this article I’ll show you how to do this with the Windows Live Mail client. Remember, this app is not just for Hotmail. It can easily do POP and IMAP as well.

The default view in Windows Live Mail is that the menu bar is hidden. Show it by clicking the icon to the far right next to the blue help icon and select Show Menu Bar, like this:

When you do this you will see File, Edit, View, Go, Tools, Actions and Help appear at the top of the mail client.

Select your Gmail email account on the left (clicking Inbox is fine). You should see a button labeled IMAP Folders, like this:

If you do not see this button, make sure your Gmail account is selected.

If it is and you still don’t see it, click View then Customize Toolbar.

Looks like this:

Make sure IMAP Folders is listed under Current buttons as shown above. If not, select it from the left and place it on the right.

When done, click the IMAP Folders button. This will show your currently subscribed list.

Looks like this:

I suggest double-clicking the Starred folder so you can unsubscribe from it. There’s no reason to have it there when using an email client (unless you specifically want it there). On double-click the folder next to the word will disappear, meaning it is unsubscribed. If you want to subscribe again, double click again. Click OK when finished.

Setting a folder to download headers only or not download at all

With IMAP there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to fully download spam, so that’s the example I’ll use here.

Right-click the Spam folder, select Synchronization settings and choose Don’t synchronize or Headers only, like this:

All spams that on mail check from now on will now download just the header and not the body of the message. This will significantly speed up overall use just from doing this alone.

Bear in mind this can be done with any IMAP folder – even the inbox.

In addition, if you encounter Gmail IMAP server timeouts even if only a semi-regular basis, setting folders for headers-only should cure that ill in short order.

This tutorial will instruct you how to do one of the following (depending on which e-mail you like best):

• POP to Hotmail (including Sent Mail and folders)
• POP to Gmail (including Sent Mail and folders)

It’s easy enough to move everything in the inbox to a Hotmail or Gmail account. But what’s more important is your sent mail and mail you have stored in separate folders. There are many instances where you will need to get access to this, and without the ability to move everything, the move simply isn’t worth it. Continued

One widely unknown feature of Outlook Express and the Windows Live Mail client is how easy it is to backup your mail locally (to which you can then burn to CD/DVD, put on a USB stick, etc.) Even if you’re not using Hotmail, you can easily back up any POP or IMAP account by a simple drag’n'drop to a local folder. You could even backup Gmail easily using the WLmail client.

See video below for details.

Name an e-mail service – any e-mail service – that offers both a web interface and a mail client, by the same company, that syncs mail, address book, calendar, instant messenger, and allows you to connect it directly to your domain…

…all for free.

As you can tell from the title of this article, Microsoft and its Live Services is the only one.

For those that say “Hey! Google does all that!” Not quite – they don’t have a true-blue mail client, and this is important. More on that in a moment. Continued

A while back I got some questions about how to *exactly* set up e-mail with Opera so I decided to put together a video showing how it’s done. Some people aren’t aware that the e-mail client within Opera isn’t too shabby (it does OperaMail, POP and IMAP). See video below for details.