Use Gmail even when it's broken

How to keep getting your Gmail even when it’s not working

Gmail had another outage which continues as we type this, at least that’s how it was reported. In fact the core Gmail system was still working, only the web interface was broken. This has happened before and Office-Watch.com has talked about how to workaround the outage.

In short, use Outlook and its IMAP feature to access your email. This bypasses Gmail’s web interface and lets you send and receive email.

Check out our articles.  To prepare for a Gmail outage in the future Activate IMAP in Gmail. Then setup IMAP in Outlook (which hasn’t changed for many versions of Office). Once it’s setup and working you can ignore the Outlook setup if you wish and only use Outlook when necessary.

If you use Gmail two-step verification you’ll need to make an application specific password for Outlook to use.

Even if Gmail is totally unavailable, you can still see all your past emails on Outlook working offline and let you reply/forward/compose messages.  As soon as Gmail is restored, Outlook can connect and send the outgoing messages.

Outlook’s automatic configuration should work OK but make sure it chooses IMAP not POP. If you want or need to check the settings, here’s a copy of the details from Gmail. Note that the SMTP port numbers are different from the usual standard.

“

• Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server – Requires SSL
  
  
  
  • imap.gmail.com
    
  • Port: 993
    
  • Requires SSL:Yes
  
  
• Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server – Requires TLS
  
  
  
  • smtp.gmail.com
    
  • Port: 465 or 587
    
  • Requires SSL: Yes
    
  • Requires authentication: Yes
    
  • Use same settings as incoming mail server
  
  
• Full Name or Display Name: [your name]
• Account Name or User Name: your full Gmail address ([email protected]). Google Apps users, please enter username@your_domain.com
  
• Email address: your full Gmail address ([email protected]) Google Apps users, please enter username@your_domain.com
  
• Password: your Gmail password

If your client does not support SMTP authentication, you won’t be able to send mail through your client using your Gmail address.

Also, if you’re having trouble sending mail but you’ve confirmed that encryption is active for SMTP in your mail client, try to configure your SMTP server on a different port: 465 or 587. “

See Also

• Activating IMAP in Gmail
• Setting up IMAP in Outlook