There is no denying that businesses started moving towards cloud computing solutions, especially Office 365. But, that doesn’t mean organizations need to abandon their other email service providers. For example, many companies heavily rely on Google applications like Gmail for managing their emails, appointments, and meetings. Many of them use G Suite as well.

Knowing Gmail

Gmail is a popular web-based email service offered by Google with GBs of data storage for messaging and data storage. Any user can easily access this storage at no cost by creating an account with Gmail.

What else makes Gmail a better email service provider is its capability to detect spam emails, which means all the spam emails automatically go to trash without you opening them. And like other email services, Gmail can be configured in email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

Why Configure Gmail with Outlook?

For individuals who use multiple email accounts, configuring Gmail with Outlook can be very beneficial. Some other reasons that ask for Gmail configuration with Outlook are:

• Organizing messages and emails in Gmail is a bit tricky
• It’s not easy to manage multiple email accounts with Gmail, whereas with Outlook you can manage multiple email accounts without any hassle
• You cannot work in offline mode with Gmail

Methods to Configure Gmail with Outlook

Configuring Gmail with Outlook is very simple if you follow the guidelines correctly. But, before setting Gmail with Outlook, make sure IMAP/POP is enabled in your Gmail account. To enable IMAP/POP in Gmail, follow the below steps:

• Log in to the Gmail account and click the gear icon on the top-right corner.
• Click Settings, and then select Forwarding POP/IMAP to open the POP/IMAP settings.
• Click enable IMAP, and then click Save Changes.
  Note: You can also configure Gmail with Outlook by enabling POP.

After enabling IMAP settings, you can configure Gmail with MS Outlook. Here we configured Gmail with Outlook 2016.

1. In Outlook go to the File tab and click the Add Account button in the info section, just above Account Settings.



2. Click Manual Setup in the opened wizard, and then click Next.



3. From the options, select POP or IMAP option to configure Gmail account and click Next.



4. Now, this is the most critical section. Here, you’ll have to add details for IMAP account for configuration, such as:
   • Your information and Host Server information
   • Account type – POP or IMAP (Select IMAP)
   • Incoming mail server – imap.gmail.com
   • Outgoing mail server – smtp.gmail.com
   • Gmail id and its password

   

5. After filling these details, click More Settings and select the Outgoing Server tab. Check the checkbox My outgoing server requires authentication, and then select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
   

6. In the above window, click the Advanced Tab and fill the following details:
   • Incoming server for IMAP – 993 or 143
   • Incoming server encrypted connection – SSL/TLS
   • Outgoing server (SMTP) – 465 or 587
   • Outgoing server encrypted connection – SSL/TLS

   Click OK to save, and then click Next from the previous windows that will appear again.



7. If you’ve entered the correct details related to outgoing and incoming server, then the status of both the tasks will be completed as shown below. Click close to continue.



8. The You’re all set page will appear on the screen, click Finish to end the process.

Open MS Outlook; you’ll find your Gmail account in the side tab. Using a similar method, you can add other IMAP, POP, Office 365 or Exchange accounts to your Outlook profile.

Some users might need to change their security settings of Gmail to configure it with MS Outlook properly. Generally, you’ll have to enable Allow less secure apps in Connected apps and sites settings.

However, there are many Gmail users who want to migrate their mailbox data to Office 365. If you also want to do the same, then consider using Kernel IMAP to Office 365 –third-party software that is specially designed to migrate IMAP email account to Office 365. Thus, you can have your Gmail data in Office 365.