Using Gmail as your primary e-mail client

Several of our users have found that they prefer to use Gmail's webmail system as their primary e-mail client. This allows them to read mail sent to their personal Gmail account and their Physics e-mail in one place. We have no issue with this, but do want you to be aware of some things which will help make this experience much more reliable and user-friendly. So, if you're going to use Gmail as your primary client, there are some things you should know:

1. We do not recommend using POP from Gmail to check/ingest your Physics e-mail. POP is, at best, unreliable there's a large chance that you will eventually regret using it. POP is bad. IMAP is good. However, Gmail does not allow you to check mail fro outside sites using IMAP. So...
2. The safest thing to do is to set your Physics account to forward a copy of each message to Gmail and also keep a copy in your Physics inbox (you may need to come back and clean up periodically as it fills up). This avoids POP and also allows you to fall back on Physics webmail if Gmail goes down or you think something was deleted at Gmail prematurely. To do this, set your account to forward and, in the field where you set what account to forward to, enter both your gmail address and your physics address separated by a comma (ex. - "me@gmail.com,me@physics.harvard.edu" [without the quotation marks]) as the destination(s). You can set up forwarding here or click 'E-Mail' and then 'Enable Forwarding' in the menu to the left.
3. You cannot access remote folders from Gmail. They do no offer incoming IMAP, only outgoing (i.e. - you can check Gmail using an IMAP client, but you can't use Gmail as an IMAP client to check other IMAP accounts). The way to get around this is to set up, beforehand, a client (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc. - instructions for doing so are under the E-Mail topic in the menu to the left) to access both Gmail and Physics at the same time using IMAP (you must enable IMAP in GMail's settings first). Then copy your folders to Gmail one at a time (just drag and drop). Your local Physics copy of those folders will now be out of date, but you can always do the reverse (copy back from Gmail) if you change your mind about using Gmail in this way.

Also keep in mind that, if your intention is just to be able to read both at the same time, you can simply set up your e-mail program to check both Physics and Gmail (just turn on IMAP in Gmail's settings). Almost every modern e-mail client allows you to check multiple accounts.

And, finally, while we offer this information here as an aid to help you, please bear in mind that we do not support Gmail or using it as a client. Use at your own risk. Also, it should be noted, if you have any access to confidential materials or the personally identifiable information of Harvard students or affiliates, you should not be using Gmail to access this information as doing so would contravene Harvard policy and, soon, Massachusetts state law. Faculty and staff should not use Gmail in this way for these reasons.