The Entourage Help Blog

Thanks for sharing this information!

Is there a solution that prevents the imap inbox directly be tranferred to the regular inbox?

Rob

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!

Thank you for this helpful tutorial. I've set things up just as you describe (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). I have the folder mappings correct, but something strange keeps happening.

In Gmail.com, when I "Archive" something, it ends up in Gmail.com's Trash. That never happened before, of course, so I think it must be the result of something with the folders in Entourage. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Peter

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.

Thanx a billion !!!

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

Thanks for this helpful tutorial!

In addition to Gmail, I use an Exchange account for school. I want to transfer all my .edu emails to my Gmail account. Should I do this through Entourage?

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 William,

Thanks for the response. I should a bit clearer. I'd like to switch to gmail entirely, for a number of reasons, one of them storage capacity. My Exchange account let's me redirect all future mail to a gmail account, but disables my Exchange inbox. I want to transfer my e-mails from my Exchange inbox to Gmail, but the problem is that the dates of the e-mails aren't preserved. I tried a few tests, and my gmail account says the transfered e-mail was received in the gmail inbox on the date I transfered it, not the date the e-mail was sent to me originally. Is there a way to preserve the dates when transfering e-mails?

Thanks!

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".

Just followed all the instructions here and everything's up and running.

My two complaints:

I'm not seeing my GMAIL "folders" (or labels as they are better known) within Entourage.

Now when I log into GMAIL, I see Entourage labels created.

Thoughts?

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!

Hi William,

I am not having any luck uploading messages from my local inbox to my GMail IMAP inbox. It seems to upload the messages but when I check my webmail/imap folder nothing is there. Any ideas?

By the way I had the same problem as Rob above and after an hour and 15 minutes with MS tech support I found out it was my mailing list manager that was the culprit. Check that and your rules.

Thanks,

STF

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 --

I posted above about the weird problem I was having with messages I'd moved into Archive ending up in the Trash. I finally figured out it was due to a rule I'd forgotten about. Deleting the rule solved that problem.

Shahryar, I have the same question and problem as you. Why do messages that are years old, that I am moving from local folders into Gmail, show up in Gmail as if they were recently received? This doesn't seem to happen with all messages I've moved, but it definitely happens with some. The dates in the message headers seem to be fine, but Gmail shows different dates in the list view.

-- Peter

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.

Thanks for the into on setting up Entourage for gmail IMAP.

I followed the instructions (Entourage X) but have hit a snag.

My inbox comes in fine, but I get the bird chirp and the message "mail can't be received at this time" and "The IMAP server's response was missing expected command and was not understandable" when trying to download the sent messages or all mail folders.

I also have a pc laptop and the gmail IMAP setup is working fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

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.

By the found a workaround for uploading messages to gmail imap through Entourage 2004. I uploaded them to my Mac.com email address via IMAP and then set Gmail to pull down my email from there. It preserved all the headers and times. Hope that helps!

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.

I configured Gmail IMAP in Entourage 04 for myself just fine, then helped my cousin configure on his computer and for some reason his Gmail Inbox is not showing newly received email - rather it is showing up in his Inbox within "Folders on My Computer" and there are 2 copies of each newly received message.

Furthermore, once these messages are "moved" from Gmail to the Inbox in Folders on My Computer, they are disappearing from the Gmail inbox - as if they had been manually dragged from the IMAP to local inbox.

Same thing is happening with messages that he SENDS using Gmail IMAP (from Entourage) appear in the Gmail IMAP sent folder momentarily, but then get a red "X" and slash through the message and disappear from the IMAP sent folder, then reappear in the Inbox, with 2 copies of each - and disappear from Gmail.

As far as I can tell our software is configured identically.

We're both using Entourage 11.3.6. I'm on Lepoard 10.5.1, he's on Tiger 10.4.11.

Any ideas why this is happening?

Thanks...Bill (& Kevin) Swersey

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.

this is all very helpful, thanks! i am up and running except fot one thing...

when my gmail/entourage tries to send mail and says "connecting securely to smtp.gmail.com" it cannot establish a connection and send out my mail, and then error 111 pops up and says the server may have timed out, etc.....so my mail just stays in the outbox.

perhaps, something is wrong in my security tab area???---that is the only area you do not show an example of above, so i may have it wrong. currently, i have the 2nd and 3rd boxes (out of 4) checked on my security page.

i would really appreciate any possible help. thanks!

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

Hi Aiman!

Only three things will move messages in Entourage. A rule, a mailing list rule and the junk E-mail protection.

I suspect you have accidentally created a mailing list rule, which is easy to do. Check Tools --> Mailing List Rules and delete or disable anything that looks suspicious.

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.

Re Scott's post on Nov 21 - when you said you "set gmail to pull down mail" from your .mac account, what do you mean by that and can you post instructions. Thanks!

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.

Hey guys,

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 had heard that you can maintain message headers with proper dates if you pull email via pop. I just tested it out and it works. So here's what you do..

1) Set up a temporary gmail account and set up Entourage to access it (so for my srizvi1, a good example would be srizvi1temp)
2) You drag and drop email from your pop folder onto your temp gmail account via IMAP.. (here, the date will show innaccurate as today's date)
3) Then have your REAL gmail account set to just pull email off of that account via pop without leaving anything behind (in this final place, your date will show properly both on the web-based gmail and your entourage.

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.

on November 22, 2007 20:40 ruby: posted
"when my gmail/entourage tries to send mail it cannot establish a connection and send out my mail.....so my mail just stays in the outbox."

I have this same problem but my error message is:-3176 Entourage cannot find the server. Mail could not be sent.
The Entourage/Gmail accounts cannot send mail...but the non-Gmail account addresses can be used by Entourage to send mail.
AppleMail and ThunderBird do not have this problem...so I need to setup Entourage correctly so Gmail can be sent using Entourage!
Thanks
DB

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.

Hello,

I followed your tutorial and I love it but I am having one major problem and that is I am trying to send email from entourage 2008 and my sent message are not going to my sent mail folder like any other email would go. Instead it is going to my Junk E-mail How can I fix this? I am using gmail IMAP Settings.

Thanks

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.

Hello, Andrew, In the Gmail Settings-Accounts, you can select "Reply from the same address the message was sent to". I believe this will get you the behavior you want.

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 Nora!

What's unique about IMAP accounts is that when you "delete" something you're really "marking" it for deletion. Different E-mail clients handle this is in their own ways.

If I delete a Gmail message from my iPhone then it disappears from my list. But the iPhone is really hiding it from my view. The message is still in my Inbox. Later, If I check my Gmail account with Entourage I clearly see the message in the Inbox but it has a red "X" and strike-through indicating that it has been "marked" for deletion.

You'll either need to specifically move the message to your "Deleted Items" (or similarly named) folder or find if your client can purge those deleted items when you quit. Entourage allows you to edit your IMAP account to "Purge Deleted Items folder on quit" in your account's Advanced settings.

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!!!

Hi Nora!

Log in to Gmail using a web browser. Can you delete it there?

You might also try right-clicking or Control-clicking the folder with the problem message and selecting the "Repair Message List" option.

If that doesn't work then delete your account from Entourage and set it up again. Since this is an IMAP account your mail will download again (we hope without the problem).

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

Hi:

When I set up Gmail IMAP with Entourage 2008, exactly as described above, I can't see any of the mail from my account except those in the Inbox. For example, when I send an email, there is no copy in the sent of the client although it appears in the gmail website. The root folder is [gmail], with the sent mails being routed to [gmail]/sent, etc.

Any ideas??

Thanks,

Adam

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.

I am having one problem with Entourage 2008 and Gmail.

I have set [Gmail]/Spam to be the Junk E-Mail folder in Entourage and that is working correctly, but when I select "Empty Junk E-Mail", all the email in [Gmail]/Spam will go away, only to return a few minutes later. I have to go to the Gmail web client to delete the Spam.

I like to look at my Spam several times (if not more) a day to make sure nothing is getting caught that shouldn't. Letting hundreds of spam email build up over several days makes this much more difficult to sift through.

On an unrelated note: Is it just me whose mind is *boggled* by the fact that E2008 does not support sharing calendars via WebCal or the like?

Thanks for all the good information,
-troy

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!

Thank you so much for the instruction,
I finally configured it successfully, thanks to you. Thank you, man
Don B.

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

Hi

Entourage can download attachments fine through gmail but when i try to open them in entourage it always comes up with en error eg. word files say it cannot open document file might be used elsewhere or just doent open at all but i can open them fine through my gmail page
Any ideas?
Thanks
Zane

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!

Thank you for this extremely easy to use guide, I wish that the user manuals looked a lot like this! I have a mac for my wife and I both and I setup her email and mine with no problems, however, she has a work email with gmail too so I was wondering if you have any tips on using multiple account with Entourage, b/c she can receive the email, but not send. Thanks for the help!

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.

Mr. Smith, just wanted to say thank you again and I went back through and "carefully" looked over your instructions and saw that I had put the incorrect SMTP port number. I guess I rushed through the second email account setup, thanks again for the quick feed back. I will make sure to post your web site were ever I can to get the word! Great job, top notch, can't say enough great things...need less to say, "happy wife, happy life." Have a great day Mr. Smith!

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

Hi kev!

I'd like to keep comments on topic with Gmail as much as possible. For Hotmail I suggest you have a look at Diane's instructions on the Entourage Help Page for setting up a Hotmail Account.

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!