How to check any email address in Gmail

When we set up email addresses for our clients that we host, we typically recommend one primary method of checking your email, and that is through Gmail.

The great thing about Gmail is that you can check it at any location, on any computer, and on any internet-capable device. When you check your mail through a mail client such as Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird, you have to change some of the settings in order to check your mail in a new location. Kind of a pain, right? Well, Gmail can help solve that problem! Let’s look at how to set up our email through Gmail.

Create Gmail account

The first thing we need to do is make sure we have a Gmail account. You may have an existing one that you check regularly, and we can use that. If you have an account with any of the Google-owned websites, you already have a Gmail account. Those sites include:

• Google Search
• Google Maps
• Picasa
• Google News
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs
• Google Sites
• YouTube

If you don’t have a Gmail account, now is the time to make one. You can get started on making your Gmail account by clicking here.

Receiving emails

After I’ve made my email address (tandstest@gmail.com) with Gmail, we need to continue on to the mail overview. There should be a button on the right side of the screen with a gear on it. Click on that, and go down to Settings.

By default, the Settings page starts out on the General tab. There’s quite a few options along the top, now, but we only need to worry about one of them. Click on Accounts and Import.

Once you are under Accounts and Import, go down a few rows, and click on Add a POP3 mail account you own. Clicking this will pop a new window up.

On the first screen of this new window, it will ask you what email address you want to set up. Type out your new email address. Click Next Step once you’ve done that.

The next screen has a lot more going on. First, if you’re a T&S client, you need to change Username to your full email address. If you’re not a T&S client, it may just be the first part, or it may be your full email address. Your password should have been sent to you by T&S, if you’re setting up a T&S email address. The POP Server is generally, “mail.YOURDOMAIN.com“, but if you are a T&S client, it is, “mail.tandsgo.com“.

There are several other boxes that you can check, as well. The only one you may want to think about is the third option, “Label incoming messages: tandstest@tandsgo.com“. What this will do is assign a label (Gmail’s form of a folder) to any emails that come through this email address. Pretty handy if you have several email addresses funneling into one Gmail account. If you’re only going to be checking one email address, I would leave it unchecked.

After you’ve entered all that information, click Add Account. If everything is right, you should get an awesome screen that tells you your mail account has been added. If you receive any errors, double-check all the fields and make sure everything is put in correctly. If you still run into issues, feel free to contact us, and we can help you straighten things out.

Sending emails

On the confirmation screen, it now asks you if you want to able to send mail with your new email account (tandstest@tandsgo.com, in our case). Let’s go ahead and do that, and hit Next Step.

It will then ask you to put in your name, which should be pre-filled. Not much to do on this screen. Hit Next Step.

The next screen gives you a couple of options. We recommend picking, “Send through Gmail“, so let’s make sure that option is checked, and click Next again.

Now, Gmail wants to verify your email address. Go ahead and click Send Verification. Gmail should then send you a verification email. But since we have set up our Gmail to check our new email account, it should come right to our Inbox on Gmail. This can sometimes take a while, so don’t worry if you have to wait a few minutes. Once you receive the email, all you need to do is click the link in the email, and it will automagically verify your account.

You are now ready to go forth and have one awesome Gmail account to check your email.