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GMail From The Desktop
By Brick | February 8, 2008
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In a previous post regarding the consolidation of multiple email accounts into a single inbox, I mentioned that I use Gmail as my central mailbox. I also mentioned that because Gmail supports IMAP, you can use both the Gmail web interface and a desktop email client to send and receive email while keeping both in synch. I wanted to expand on exactly how I keep my desktop email client synchronized with my Gmail account.
Before we get started, one rather obvious question is, why use a desktop email client at all? After all, if you are using Gmail as your central mailbox, you could just as easily access Gmail from a web browser on your desktop - synchronization problem solved! That’s a legitimate point. Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird’s lead engineer, makes a good case for preferring desktop email clients over webmail. All I can say is that, while I love Gmail, desktop email clients just seem to feel better.
Using Thunderbird
I am going to cover using Thunderbird, Mozilla’s cross-platform e-mail application. It is based on the same technology as their Firefox browser. It has great filtering and junk mail features as well as the ability to be customized via add-ons.
The first thing you need to do is enable IMAP on your Gmail or Google Apps for your Domain (GAFYD) email account. You then need to do a basic setup in Thunderbird for fetching Gmail via IMAP. This is covered in another Google tutorial. The key is not to use the Gmail option when setting up the account in Thunderbird:
The basic setup, and also some commentary on using a desktop client vs. the web interface for Gmail is covered in the following video:
So far so good. At this point, we are successfully using Thunderbird, a desktop email client, to access our Gmail. Most importantly, our desktop and web based Gmail are completely synchronized - if you make a change in Gmail via the web based interface, it will be reflected in your desktop email client, and vice versa.
Thunderbird Tweaks
You could stop here, but that would be too easy! By default Thunderbird uses its own folders for handling sent mail, drafts and trash. We want Thunderbird to store these emails in the same place as the web based Gmail. We also want items identified as junk by Thunderbird to be tagged as spam in Gmail. All of this is addressed here in Lifehacker’s Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client article.
If you also use Gmail as a central mailbox for sending email from multiple email accounts (like me), you will need to add these other email addresses to your Gmail account in Thunderbird by using the Manage Identities feature. When composing an email, you can then select from which address the message will be sent (technically it is sent from Gmail, but the reply-to address will be the one you picked). One nice feature in Thunderbird that is not available in the web based Gmail is the ability to have different signatures for each identity - one more reason you might prefer desktop to web based access.
A lot of people might now stop here. After all, Thunderbird and your web based Gmail are perfectly synched. However, in Thunderbird, if you go to write a new email, there is no auto-complete of all the email addresses you used in the web based interface. The problem is that your Gmail contacts are not accessible from Thunderbird (yet!).
Contacts
This is a tough one. One thing you can do is export your Gmail contacts to a file and import these into your Thunderbird address book. However, this is a completely manual process. For example, if you add new addresses into your Gmail contacts you will need to re-import them into Thunderbird.
One elegant solution is to use GCALDaemon to access your Google contacts from Thunderbird. Notice that I did not say synchronize. If you go with this method, you have probably made a decision to keep your master list of contacts on the web. This is a decision I made because, I want my contacts available to me everywhere, especially when I am away from my desktop. For lack of a better solution, and mostly because of my use of Gmail as a central mailbox, I use my Gmail contacts as my main contact repository.
Thunderbird can access network based contacts via LDAP. Unfortunately Gmail by itself does not provide LDAP access, but GCALDaemon allows you to run an LDAP server locally that can access your Google contacts. Thunderbird can connect to this local LDAP source to get at your Google contacts. How to do this is covered in a GCALDaemon usage guide (assuming you have in fact downloaded and installed GCALDaemon!). Note that steps 1-3 can be skipped, and instead of modifying text based configuration files, you can set everything up in the more user friendly graphical GCALDaemon Config Editor (which can be accessed from your Windows Start menu):
In this window, select the LDAP server tab on the left. Click on the Enable LDAP server and Gmail contact importer label to ensure LDAP will be enabled. Select your Gmail 
account. You can press the Account button to add a new Gmail account (it is very simple). Now go back to step 4 in the usage guide to complete the setup in Thunderbird. One last thing, you actually have to start the GCALDaemon server. This is done from the command line (I know - very unfriendly!):
It seems like a lot, but until Gmail provides access to contacts (for example, a nice Thunderbird Add-on would be cool), this is actually a pretty workable solution. Once it is set up, you don’t have to do anything.
Managing Contacts
On a related topic, I am wondering what others are doing to manage their contacts. For me, I want to have access from both my desktop and from the web to a single contact list. I am not so sure GMail contacts is the best contact manager (in fact, it seems very under-featured). I am also having an issue with trying to seamlessly synchronize my CardScan contacts with my master Gmail contact list (for now I am doing regular imports into my Gmail contacts from CardScan, although CardScan does synchronize with their free web-based CardScan@Your Service contact manager application). How about Plaxo - anyone using that? It seems you can synch between Plaxo and Thunderbird, but I don’t think you can access your Plaxo address book from Gmail.
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Topics: Email, Gmail, Organization, Thunderbird |
February 11th, 2008 at 5:58 am
[…] GMail From The Desktop | […]
February 11th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Brick are you happy with CardScan software/device? Can it work with your own flatbed scanner?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Hi Brick,
I like the tutorial — and love your site! What a great concept, awesome (visual) theme, and top-notch info.
I’m going to add you to my ChristophDollis.com Productivity, Growth and Sales Blog sidebar under my blue ribbon “Recommended “Favourites”, yours now only one of five sites under the Productivity category and write a post about you sometime this week.
I really got into GTD® (my take on it is here) and it’s really simplified how I feel about information and commitments. I used to feel overwhelmed and didn’t want to take on more… and now I’m eager to… specifically in the field of sales and marketing, using Getting Things Done work flow processes to make sure nothing falls through the cracks and both my end customer and employer are excited if not satisfied.
You know… I tried to implement your system and got as far getting all my accounts set up for GMail and getting it into Thunderbird. Somehow, I got error messages when I tried downloading the contacts from GMail with GCALDaemon.
Also, I’d only just imported them to GMail, and the results were less than impressive. Few of the fields were like those in Thunderbird. Everything was there, but it was all in the contact “notes” and would have to be moved to the proper Google fields by hand, which seemed overly time consuming.
I’m not really a fan of GMail’s labels — I prefer folders. But when I followed Lifehacker’s instructions to install a Greasemonkey script for special GMail plugins, wouldn’t you know that I ceased being able to open individual GMail contacts in Firefox anymore? Something addressed on the Google forums.
At this point my spirits were pretty well draggin’.
Then I remembered what you said about Plaxo, a company I knew little about aside from a Google search earlier in the day. Doing some research, I realized they were a real company. Heck, they may be subject to a Google bid if rumour has it right.
Google contacts seemed clunky. Plaxo contacts are beautiful. It is so easy to use online and everything maps to the right place from Thunderbird. Quick, feature rich, and downright pleasant looking.
The calendar was another matter. Plaxo doesn’t sync to Lightning, so what to do? Well, use Provider to sync Lightning and GCal, and sync Plaxo Calendar with GCal.
It works very well. The only thing is you might have to press the link for a manual Gcal ↔ Plaxo Calendar sync.
Whoop de doo. 95% of the time at least I’ll be using Thunderbird for all the great reasons you mention here, especially since it can be carried portable on a thumb drive with extensions — try that GCALDaemon!
You can sign up for a Plaxo account and sync with GMail and GCal just to test it. You have to configure the Plaxo Calendar to get rid of pretty background photos if you’re so inclined (I was), but once done, it’s comparable to, if not quite as good as, GCal. But the contacts are so dramatically easier to use I’ll score this as a win for Plaxo.
I read on the forums Plaxo is planning (bidirectional) sync support for GMail contacts in the future.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
@Sotos: I really like the card scanning device, and of course, it integrates very well with their software as one would expect. As far as I can tell, the software only recognizes their own (card) scanners, so I don’t think you can use an existing flatbed scanner.
It also seems that there is no synching available between CardScan and Thunderbird or Gmail (they do synch with Outlook). I mentioned their web based CardScan@Your Service which synchs with their client software very nicely (as one would expect), but that does not appear to synch with Thunderbird or Gmail either. After waiting 25 minutes on hold for customer support before giving up, I now have an email into CardScan on this topic. I have not heard back yet. In the end, I simply collect so many business cards that the positives of the scanner is outweighing the (significant) negatives for now.
@Christoph: Thanks for the kind words and I am really glad you like the site! Thanks for including me in your favourites and I am looking forward to your post. I visited your site and it looks very interesting - I have made an appointment with myself to go back to it this evening and spend a little more time there.
I agree about Gmail contacts, they seem very lacking. The first thing that causes me problems is how they just have “name” instead of “first” and “last” name like everyone else! Having a single name field is actually probably better, but a de facto standard already exists! I find there is a bunch of little things like this. I would love to find a better on-line repository for my contacts that synchs with my on-line and desktop email.
Therefore, thanks for the feedback and comments on Plaxo. I have not had a chance to really investigate, but now it seems promising. I did open an account, but it looked a little too much like a social networking site at first blush - it kind of turned me off. I don’t know why it would turn me off, but I guess I liked the idea of someone focusing strictly on being an on-line contact manager and not trying to be more (”stick to your knitting” - was that Tom Peters?). Perhaps my initial reaction was unwarranted. Based on your feedback, I’ll go back and give it a try!
February 13th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
No worries, Brick.
You’re right about the social network look and feel. And the online handling was so good I like it anyway.
Here’s a brief Plaxo review I agreed with and learned some more details from. Since I’m looking for a sales position and don’t know what environment I’ll end up in: work from home, corporate, small business… I like that Plaxo syncs with Outlook and plays nice with MS Exchange Server in addition to my beloved Thunderbird.
If you want to drop by and say hello sometime, try my personal blog: Loving Jacqui. Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Update: I heard back from CardScan technical support. Specifically:
1. They do not support an automatic data transfer/synch between CardScan and Thunderbird and it appears they do not plans to add this support in the near future.
2. They do not support an automatic data transfer/synch between CardScan and Gmail contacts, however they appeared warmer to the idea and agreed to “pass along” the suggestion.
3. In their own words: “We have a service called At Your Service so no we do not support Plaxo”.
4. CardScan@YourService is not accessible via LDAP but they did agree to pass along this suggestion as well.
@Christoph: I watched this Plaxo demo, and you are quite correct - Plaxo (the latest version at least) is all about synch:
February 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
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May 6th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Hi Brick -
I sync my Thunderbird contacts with Gmail using the Zindus Thunderbird Google contact sync addon.
It gives you the same level of sync as IMAP - change on one side is reflected on the other and vice versa. No muss, no fuss.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Thanks Tiller! After Google exposed the contacts API I figured it was only a matter of time. I’ll be checking (and trying) out Zindus soon.