The Entourage Help Blog

Hi Rob!

You're very welcome.

Mail will not move on its own between your IMAP accounts and the "Folders on My Computer". Therefore, I believe you must either have a Rule (check Tools --> Rules) or a Mailing List Manager rule (check Tools --> Mailing List Manager) that is moving your messages. MLM rules are easy to create accidentally and often lead to unexpected behavior.

If this doesn't resolve your problem or if you have further questions, be sure to post a follow up in the Microsoft Entourage newsgroup found here . That way, others are able to benefit from your questions and the answers that you receive.

Good luck!

Hi Peter!

I've never heard of the problem you're describing but it's probably not Entourage. Test this by making sure Entourage is quit and trying to reproduce the problem. If it still happens then this must be a problem with Gmail. Subscribe to the Gmail Help Discussion list http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Discussion and post your question there.

If you find that this problem occurs only when Entourage is running then that needs to be reported as a bug. I'd appreciate knowing what you find out.

QUOTE:
except for listing "[Gmail]" in the root folder field, because I found that means I can no longer see my IMAP folders/Gmail labels in Entourage
END

I had that same issue until, in Gmail, I added INBOX/ to labels which allowed them to show up in Entourage.

Thanks for this tutorial!

--MLS

Hi Chaz!

I'm not sure what your need is to move messages from Exchange to Gmail but you can surely do it through Entourage. Just drag messages from one account to the other.

If you have access to an Outlook client on Windows you could probably set up some server-side rules (something Entourage can't do) to automatically forward, redirect or BCC messages to your Gmail account as well.

Keep in mind that copying messages from Exchange will only benefit you if you're anticipating changing schools. You can most likely access your Exchange account from outside your institution (see Connecting Entourage to an Exchange Server from Home) and your Exchange Server is most likely backed up by your administrators.

Thanks for posting your comments! They're all appreciated.

Hi Chaz!

The "Received" date will show the date received or copied but the "Sent" date is probably what you want to use instead. Right-click or Control-click the column headers area and select "Sent". Optionally, you can uncheck "Received".

Hi Shahryar!

That's actually the subject of one of my next posts. Have a look at Create Gmail labels and make Entourage folders.

In your case, since you already have Gmail labels, you will need to log in to Gmail and append "[Gmail]/" to the beginning of your labels. Then they should appear in Entourage.

Good luck and thanks for posting!

Thanks for letting me know about the next post William. I will take care of my folders following the advice there.

Sliding messages off of local folders into GMAIL isn't as easy as I thought it would be with this IMAP update. I took a message from a few months back and dropped it into my GMAIL inbox. Here's what happened:
- When I log into the web-based GMAIL, it's the 1st message there on top, even though it is a really old message.
- In Entourage, when I followed the instructions in the comments section that were given to Chaz (on changing the header from received to sent), then I was able to see the message though instead of showing me the date, it showed me the time in the messages list.

I guess this isn't too big a deal and I could live, but has anybody found the perfect solution for maintaining all message header info when moving messages from local to GMAIL?

william --

very helpful guide.

i'm getting some weird behavior, though. in particular, ever since i created this setup, gmail itself (on the server side) has for some reason been moving around 400 old messages from my inbox into the gmail spam folder. l moved them back to the inbox last night, and when i checked again today, a bunch of messages were back in there. any idea as to why that would be?

also, any theories why the status bar on the bottom of entourage constantly reads "searching folder on server" as it scans through a number of messages and then repeats?

or why on bottom left of status bar, it reads "19485 items displayed, one selected, (account name)/[gmail]/spam" when my spam folder is not selected?

thanks for any insight you can shed.

Peter -

I only tried moving one message off of a local folder onto my IMAP Gmail and then stopped when I noticed the message was appearing as a brand new message in my web-based Gmail. So you're saying this happens with some but not all messages?

I hope there's a solution for this soon because I am dying to get all my messages off of my local computer and onto Gmail so they can all be readily available to me wherever I am.

Plus I Want to be able to find them fast and with ease.

Glad to see lots of discoveries about using Gmail's IMAP. Between Entourage's rules, the general behavior of IMAP and Gmail's labeling a lot of unique problems are cropping up.

Scott, good to know that rules can still cause some strange behaviors. It's a common problem with Entourage, especially the MLM rules. Your .Mac workaround is genius! But you should still be able to upload from Entourage so long as you're moving messages to a folder with an equivalent "[Gmail]/label" name. This is a strange one.

Shahryar and Peter, I took a look a what you're talking about and the problem seems to be that Gmail doesn't offer a "Sent" column view like Entourage does. You're stuck with "Received" times. That would be a good feature request. Not sure how to submit it. Anyone?

Ian, no idea what's happening with your messages being flagged as spam. Rather than moving them back to the Inbox have you tried selecting them all and marking them as "Not Spam"? As for the constant searching, if you have a lot of mail (thousands of messages) then you may want to make only your frequently used labels "[Gmail]/label" and leave the rest as just "label". Doesn't look like you can do this for the "Spam" label though. :-(

The bottom left status message is a little out of whack IMHO. It's really displaying information about multiple items, not just one. It's giving you information about your currently selected folder as well as what it's working on. If you have Live Sync enabled for all your folders and not just the Inbox then that's probably why it's constantly working.

Mike, no idea about how this will work in Entourage X. I don't have it on any of my computers for testing anymore. Check what's selected under Options in your Account settings. Maybe something there can be selected or deselected to make this work for you. (Be sure to check out Diane's latest post about the Black Friday special from Microsoft!)

Thanks to everyone for their insight and experiences! I appreciate what you have to share.

Hi Bill (& Kevin)!

This sounds like a classic example of a rule moving messages. Be sure to check both Tools --> Rules and Tools --> Mailing List Manager. Most likely, you've accidentally set a MLM rule. It's easy to do without noticing.

Thank you for your tutorial, yet, I have another problem with Entourage.
I have my personal Pop email account, a Yahoo! account and both Gmail and Hotmail accounts.
When I get a new email from Hotmail, it goes to it's directory on the left pane, but when I get mails from Yahoo, and Gmail, they go directly to my primary email account!!!.
How can I separate the incoming mails to their own individual account.

Thank you for your help again.

aiman

just got a macbook. first mac ever. loce it so far. I have been trying to set up my entourage/gmail imap account. thanks for the tutorial. but, i get the message,"The IMAP server's response was missing the expected command and was not understandable." not sure what to do with that. can someone help me? looks like entourage is really cool, and i'm looking forward to using it.

Hey guys, in response to our earlier problems about maintaining the dates when moving files off of the local POP to GMAIL...

I'm not sure where I foudn this trick, but I heard that you can maintain message headers with proper dates if you pull email via pop. So I think a solution that could work is if you drop email from your pop folder onto a temporary gmail account via IMAP.. and then have your REAL gmail account set to just pull email off of that account via pop.

I'm trying to try and test this now. I'll post my results later - anyone else have any thoughts or suggestions? My dream with this whole "accessing GMAIL via imap" thing is to get all my mail off my local computer and onto the web so I can access it anywhere.

Thanks for the guide! Very informative.

For some of the issues I've been reading about above, perhaps some of them can be addressed with the recommended client settings from gmail? Link to it here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78892&topic=12815

Just a thought. I'm somewhat new to the IMAP world also.

In the "2nd part" of this tutorial, when you discuss going back into accounts to make the [Gmail] root folder change and such..

I was wondering what suggestions you would have if I was making this my temp account in which I will be dragging and dropping emails into which will be pulled by the proper destination gmail account via Pop (as mentioned a few comments above by me and ScottTF - sorry Scott, I missed your post before I gave in my solution as well)..

Would I want to do all the changes you suggest? like "always download message bodies," etc.

Thanks, this is a really helpful page.

I've been opened up to the wonders of imap.

However, I do have one question I am hoping someone may be able to help with.

I have my own domain and my own email which corresponds to that domain. I've set my email to forward to my gmail account which works just fine (and is working hassle free with entourage too!)

My problem being, that when I send an email out (or reply to one) it sends it from my gmail account and I want to send it through my own domain email. I set up reply forwarding in my gmail settings (which works fine when using webmail) but it doesn't work when sending from entourage. I can manually set it to send from a different account in entourage, but I'm wondering if there is a setting in entourage accounts that means I can receive via gmail but send out via my own domain name, without having to do anything. I know if I leave this unchecked I will end up sending email to people using my gmail name and not my domain name.

Sorry, I hope this makes sense.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew

P.S. I looked on the gmail forum, but it seemed to imply that I had to make the changes at my end.

I love it! I got GMAIL/IMAP/ENTOURAGE all working beautifully on my desktop, laptop, and treo phone using tips above. Has been working great for days, but I have one problem I can't seem to figure out. I have a message that I deleted off gmail (totally deleted), that's still sticking around in my inbox on my machine -- I can't get it to go away at all. Any clues on what is going on? It only shows up on my desktop, not my treo. I haven't checked the laptop yet.

Hi William! The problem is it has been totally deleted off my Gmail account - no trace of it anywhere. So, it doesn't show up on my treo or my laptop, but it's showing up on my desktop and when I hit delete or tyr to move it to my "Trash" folder, I get an error message that says:

Error:
No messages match. (Failure)

Explanation:
AN error occured on the IMAP server.

I can't make the stupid thing go away for the life of me! It is driving me crazy. :(

I tried the "Purge Deleted Items on Quit" and the darn thing is STILL there!!!

Thanks! "Repair Message List" did the trick. :)

Hi Adam!

First, make sure you're using "[Gmail]" and not "[gmail]". I'm not sure how case sensitive this will be.

Also, is the folder you've selected "[Gmail]/Sent" or "[Gmail]/Sent Mail"?

Entourage working with Gmail accounts doesn't seem to keep folders synchronized. If you select your folders then Entourage will insist on refreshing the list from the server first. It's instantaneous once you click in a folder but items don't appear quite instantly.

Hi Troy!

I too have my junk E-mail set to go to [Gmail]/Spam and I've found that I can not use the "Empty 'Junk E-mail'" feature for the same reason you mention. Instead, I look in the folder, select all the messages and tap the Delete key. This moves them to the Trash and and it is set to empty when I quit Entourage.

While I haven't tried this yet (but I've now changed this preference to test), you might try setting your Gmail account's spam to move to [Gmail]/Trash. Of course, if you're worried that the spam filter may actually give a false positive and move legitimate mail to the Trash then I wouldn't suggest this.

As for your other comment, I'm not surprised that Entourage doesn't connect to web calendars yet. But I think it will some day. Microsoft is certainly not cutting edge and for them to adopt syncing with web calendars will take a lot of user feedback. As I say often in the newsgroups: Please be sure to let Microsoft know you'd like to see this feature in future versions by using the Help --> Send Feedback mechanism in any Office application.

And thanks for the kudos!

Thanks for the guide. Now I can send/receive my Gmails on Entourage 2008. Thanks.

Hi Zane!

The best I can recommend is checking the top of your message for a link that says "Download complete message". If you see this then your attachment has only partially downloaded and you'll need to get the whole thing.

If that doesn't work then be sure to post your question in the Microsoft Entourage group so that others can offer their advice.

Good luck!

Thanks for the kudos, Nathaniel!

Entourage supports multiple accounts and they don't interact with each other. You should be able to set up both Gmail accounts with the same settings.

Sending problems are usually caused by incorrect settings in the SMTP server field or the extra settings you can access by clicking the button below it. If these are correct then I suspect your wife may be trying to access her Gmail account from a location that blocks sending through anything but their own outbound E-mail servers. This is a common practice in corporate networks.

Hi William

I noticed your posts for Entourage and Gmail and hope that you could possibly help answer and even solve my dilema. Various posts on the net seem to be conflicting.
First, can Entourage 2004 be linked to hotmail/ms live via imap to have the same emails and folders on my laptop as in my online account.
Second, if it can be done....what are the settings as i cannot seem to get it working but i put that down to being a mac type person and totally new to entourage.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Rgds

kev

Going back to the question by Andrew on January 21 re replying from the same email address an email was sent to - and the response from dianer that the settings in gmail should take care of this: they don't - at least for me. When I reply from gmail itself, it works fine, but when I reply from Entourage - Gmail/imap, the email always goes out as from my gmail address. Anyone else having this problem and/or found a solution - e.g. settings within Entourage? Thanks

Thanks! This blog has been a huge help to me transitioning from POP to IMAP. I use an iPhone a lot now and like the ability to access my mail on the fly.

I have multiple email accounts coming through Gmail now for the spam filtering.

After transitioning my accounts to Gmail and IMAP, I am left with a bunch of (local) Entourage folders and subfolders. Rules set up to automatically send emails to their proper folder (from my old POP accounts which I've replaced with IMAP versions.

If I create new rules for my IMAP accounts, can they send to these same local folders and if so will these emails no longer be viewable online or from my iPhone?

Should I set up all these folders again as Google tabs and then copy the local content into those so all content is always at my fingertips regardless of the device I am accessing my mail from?

And if so is security a concern?

Thanks!

Hi William,

First of all, major thanks for all your advice, is this a hobby for you, or do you have some connection at all with the company? A very kind hobby if it is!

Everything you have suggested has worked great except..

Synching my ALL MAIL folder on Entourage. Everytime I delete all, (have tried immediate purge, purge after leaving imap, purge when leaving entourage)- they all come back when I either a) hit on the folder again, or close and reopen entourage.

What am I doing wrong?

Also-(unconnected-is it ok to ask..) If i email myself from another one of my accounts (for testing purposes), it always places it in the junk email (on my comp) folder saying "beware of the links in this message- this appears to be junk" The only link is my email address in my sig... And the add is saved in my contacts anyway. The same happens in the gmail acc. When i forward emails from my other accs (i created folders, then forwards..like you said) they goto spam and not into the folders...

Sorry for all this! It would be wonderful if you could help.

Many Thanks

Can you explain: listing "[Gmail]" in the root folder field? I'm trying to eliminate this same double tree structure in Entourage 2008 using Gmail IMAP. I guess I don't quite understand where the "root folder" resides.

Hi Richard!

In this case "root" simply means the base folder or the starting point. If you scroll back up and compare the screenshots of the two folder lists side-by-side you'll see that making "[Gmail]" the root folder simply means to make it with the top level of folders.

Error 111 is in the network error range. I would install either
tcpflow or EavesDrop to see exactly what is failing.

Have you tried toggling connect securely? Sometime checking a secured connection is not needed.

William,
I have my work email, which is not an IMAP, forwarded into a Gmail account and am using Entourage 2008. How do I get the messages I send from the Gmail IMAP (through Entourage) to have my work address in the "From" line of the message? All of the messages I send have the Gmail address to which things are being forwarded. I went into the account preferences and changed the email address in the personal information, but that didn't seem to fix the problem. Any suggestions?

Hi Jon!

I'm not sure if the Gmail servers will send mail from addresses that are not Gmail addresses.

Have a look at what I just wrote to Brooks. You want to send through your work account, have your work account forward all received mail to Gmail (preferably by a setting on the server itself), receive mail from Gmail and then send any replies again through your work account.

Messages that do not delete are an indication of database corruption. Make a duplicate of your database then do a rebuild .

Rebuild your Database

A way to test if it is your database, is to create a new Identity, enter your account info (set to leave on server for the test) and see if your mail Send & Receive works. If the rebuild does not fix the problem, you might need to manually move your data to a new Identity.

How to manually move your data

Having a Hotmail previously should not affect your Gmail account.

Hi Hanh!

Check for hidden characters such as spaces at the beginning or end of the [Gmail] root name that you entered. If you have more than one Gmail account then be sure you're entering the root name in all accounts. Also, double-check spelling. You may have entered "[Gmial]" instead of "[Gmail]" or something similar.

I have done this setup on my bosses iPhone and the messages he views on his phone are deleted from the server after they are opened, therefore they never get downloaded into Entourage 2008. Also, if they are viewed in Entourage first, they will still download to his phone.

I have not had this problem on my iPhone and we have the exact same settings in Entourage, GMail, and the iPhone.

He also has this problem in POP.

Any suggestions? I don't care whether it's POP or IMAP, I just want the emails in Entourage.

I resolved the problem (above) with entourage by deleting all the rules I had in the system. Once all the rules were deleted, the emails stopped being sent to the trash. I guess one of the rules got corrupted.

If you think Rules is part of the problem, quit Entourage. drag the Rules file to the desktop and name it Old Rules. Entourage will create a new blank Rules file. Test with no rules. If you find this is the problem, you can drag the old rules file back (omitting old) and disable each rule using the check mark to include in Send & Receive schedule and test adding them back in small groups to find the problem.

Other factors could come into play on the speed. How large is your Inbox? Have you considered moving some of the messages to other folders?

Discussion of this type of problem is handled best on the Entourage newsgroup. This way many people can contribute to the discussion to find a solution.

How to subscribe to the Entourage newsgroups

I'm not familiar with this specific error code but I do see a similar error code #114 listed on the Entourage Help Page shows a proxy problem.

When working behind a proxy you need to be sure that ports 143 for incoming messages and 25 for outgoing messages are open. In most companies they are not.

Hi Enrique!

Gmail will accept either port number per their documentation found here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=78799.

Technically, 465 is an unofficial port for SMTPS whereas 587 is official per IANA. 587 would probably be the better choice.

This sounds like you have worse troubles than Entourage not working with IMAP.

For starters, make sure you have plenty of hard drive space (several GB) available. Is your network connection reliable? High speed?

Are you trying to synchronize too much? Log on to Gmail and move as much as you can out of your Inbox. If you've followed my settings above then only your Inbox will be kept synchronized. Other folders will sync only when selected.

If you continue having problem be sure to post details in the Microsoft Entourage newsgroup. That way the public can benefit from your question and the answers you receive.

Hi giorg!

Entourage can't do anything about your connectivity to the Gmail servers. It has nothing you can adjust for timeouts.

I've personally never seen this message in Gmail but if you see it constantly then check your Internet connection. If you're on a slow connection such as dial-up then POP may be the better choice for you.

IMAP only synchronizes mail. It cannot synchronize contacts and it cannot synchronize calendars.

You'll need to log in to your Gmail account online, click the Contacts link on the left, select all your contacts and click the Export link in the upper right. I'm not sure which of the three formats you need to choose. You will need to experiment.

In Entourage select File --> Import... to import your contacts.

If you need further help, be sure to post your questions in the Entourage newsgroup . That way the public can benefit from your question and the answers you receive.

Hi Brian!

Unfortunately, the -3259 error code simply means that Entourage isn't getting its signals from the Gmail servers in a timely manner (usually when sending mail). That could be for a variety of reasons.

Your Internet connection is the only part of the many hops between you and Gmail that's in your control. If you know your Internet connection is working fine then somewhere else down the pipe (out of your control) something isn't timed well.

If you're using a laptop then take it to a free wireless hot spot (or a few) and test from there. If you're able to connect without problems then you've found a network problem exists somewhere between your home location and Gmail. If you still have problems then Gmail may be the cause.

You might also try port 465 instead of 587 in your SMTP server settings.

Great blog.
I'm trying to set up Gmail with my old email address that uses Entourage 11.4.0 and OS 10.5.4.
Do your instructions wipe out my present email address and replace it with Gmail address? I want to keep it and access multiple email accounts through my new Gmail account.
Also I heard from a friend with a Mac today, Sept 15 2008, that Gmail IMAP is no longer working for him and he switched back to POP Gmail.
Thank you.

pl.help me to create new folder in gmail.because in yahoo it is very easy.
thanks

Hi William,
I recently installed Entourage 2008 in my MacBook Pro, i'm trying to retrieve/receive ALL my emails from my Gmail account, however its only retrieving very recent and or unread emails only, Can you please provide some light on how i can Retrieve ALL my emails from day 1 thats almost 2,000 emails in total.

Thank you in advance.

When I set-up gmail IMAP in Entourage as per the instructions, the Inbox fills with email but the Drafts, Sent Mail, Trash, All Mail, Spam and Starred files do not fill. I get an Error: -17494. Can anyone help me with this.

Hi Mick!

If you've tried both outgoing ports 465 and 587 (mentioned earlier in the comments) then I suspect your connection is getting blocked by something outside of Entourage. If you're at work then that could be a company firewall. If you're at home this could simply be your Mac's built-in firewall.

Test disabling your computer's firewall and try again. If that works then you'll need to tweak your settings there. Also, if you're using a laptop, try moving it to a completely different network such as a local coffee house, a friend's house or some place that should be relatively unrestricted.

If this doesn't answer your question then I suggest asking in the Entourage newsgroup or on our YouTalk mailing list. That way the public can benefit from your question and the answers you receive.

Hope this helps!

Hi Angelo!

You've most likely entered the Sending server information incorrectly or you have not entered the extra options under the "Click here for advanced sending options" button.

If you're connecting from a company network then they may also block outgoing mail, requiring you to use its E-mail server instead.

Finally, read up through the comments about using a different port number for sending.

If this doesn't resolve your question then I suggest asking in the Entourage newsgroup or on our YouTalk mailing list. That way the public can benefit from your question and the answers you receive.

if you're having trouble sending outgoing messages, like I was, and getting error message 111, just change your outgoing port to 587. That worked for me.

i am so, so happy i found this blog. thank you william, you are a godsend! i switched successfully from gmail POP to gmail IMAP in my entourage 2004. after i few hiccups i got it working properly.

the only issue i seem to be having now is the notify feature no longer works properly in entourage. i don't get the mail envelope over the "e" and i don't get the pop up with the preview anymore when i get new mail from gmail. it has also stopped working for the 2 exchange server accounts i have set up in entourage as well. any idea how to fix this?

Hi William,

Thank you for all this info!

However I like some others are attempting to start setting up Google Gmail's IMAP with Entourage 2008 clients (they are currently using POP email from the current Web host, but will slowly migrat email to Google).

My question is there an updated article that is specific to Entourage 2008 as opposed to 2004?

If no, is there any list of specific items/differences in 2008 that I should understand, that are different from what you've summarized in your 2004 article?

Thank you!

Thanks so much for this. I've been tearing my hair out. I'm currently working with the newest version of Entourage and am trying to change the name of the account, or the "root folder field" that you have suggested but the format is slightly different in the 2008 version. Can you provide any insight?

Very very good!

I understand I still will have the "Folders on My Computer" folders and the associated inbox.
I got 5 years of mail there, and I do not plan to go through it.
I will still receive some mail there, so I guess I will still need to check daily in that folder.

As for organizing, I have found that the CUSTOM VIEW folders will show items in both the Gmail and the "Folders on My Computer" locations.

Thanks for this tutorial. It's good to know, though, that if [Gmail] is set to the root folder, and you hit delete, that message ends up in [Gmail]/trash. If it's in there for 30 days, it's gone for good. So if you've gotten used to the [deleted messages] label being applied when you hit the delete key (which essentially becomes an "archive" key) and the message just moves from "inbox" to "all mail," you might accidentally delete something that you end up needing later.

The way I worked around this (I like my delete key to archive things) was

A. set [Gmail] as the root folder.

B. right clicked on the Gmail root in the left hand column of the main screen of Entourage --> clicked "new folder," and called it "deleted items"

C. tools --> accounts --> open account --> advanced --> changed the "move messages to the deleted items folder" setting from [Gmail]/trash to [Gmail]/Deleted Items

Pain in the ass, but definitely worth doing.

It's also probably a good idea to uncheck "store sent mail in [gmail]/sent" sent gmail stores everything that passes through smtp anyway

This was great information. However, I still have the "double tree" problem. I have followed the directions exactly and shut down multiple times. Please help me.

Thank you!

Bless your soul. Thanks for this info, you saved me from my gmail frustration! Only problem that still remains is the double tree effect with the folders--it seems your [Gmail] command does not work for Entourage X, do you have an updated fix for this?

Infinite thanks,
Dana

That was extremely helpful, thanks! Even though it was written for Entourage 04, it still applied equally to 08.