Accessing GMail accounts with Shadowmail (2007-07-17)
"Shadowmail" is a Saildocs service which provides a method of watching a separate email account via POP3 access. Basic information about Shadowmail is available via (blank) email to: shadowinfo@saildocs.com (or see www.saildocs.com/shadowinfo). This page describes how to use Shadowmail with Google's GMail accounts, the GMail POP3 access is a bit "quirky" (some would say "distinctly odd").
The three great things about Gmail are that it is free, you get lots of space, and of course good search tools for archived email. The "quirky" part is that, depending on your GMail settings (see below), POP3 can try to forward everything in your GMail account, not just recent mail in your "inbox". The problem is that if you have a large number of archived messages in your GMail account (which may be the whole point of GMail), and you picked the wrong option in setting up GMail's POP3 access, then Shadowmail will try to send headers for a all of those messages. This is bad, so please read the following carefully.
The first step is to enable POP3 access from GMail. Go to your GMail account, click "settings" (upper-right) and select the "Forwarding and POP" tab. In the "POP download" section you can enable POP access either for "all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)", or "only for mail that arrives from now on". That first setting is the problem if you have a lot of messages in your GMail account. So we strongly recommend checking the second "from now on" box. In this case only new messages, received after you enabled POP download, will then be available to Shadowmail. You probably also want to select "Keep GMail's copy in the inbox", it doesn't matter for POP3 access but does effect how new messages are presented on the GMail web page.
The basic Shadowmail setup for Airmail is the same as for any account: The server-address is "pop.gmail.com" (without the quotes), the login name is your complete gmail.com email-address, and the password is your Gmail account password. A secure connection is required via port 995 but Shadowmail handles that automatically.
There is one more option: If you did select "all mail" in your GMail settings, then you can restrict POP3 access to only recent messages (less than 30 days old). Do this back in Airmail, by adding the prefix "recent:" to your login name in your Shadowmail settings-- for example enter the login name of "recent:username@gmail.com" instead of "username@gmail.com". This will cause GMail to only show recent messages to Shadowmail, and older messages will be ignored.
Keep in mind that (no matter what options are selected) GMail's POP3-access includes sent-messages which were sent from GMail's web-page. Also, unless you are using the "recent:" login-prefix described above, messages which have been read via GMail, or retrieved via POP3, are NO LONGER included in the POP3 index- they will disappear from your Shadowmail folder, but are accessible via GMail. However if the "recent:" prefix is used, then all recent messages are available to Shadowmail. (Like we said, "quirky").
As with other web-based email accounts, keep your Inbox tidy by archiving messages that you want to save and delete the rest. Gmail does not provide separate archive folders but you can add labels which is basically the same thing.
Good sailing,
Jim