Setting up Gmail Limits with IMAP or POP3

[endoftheline]

I want to setup outlook 2007 on windows 7 for my friend to access a
gmail account with a large number of messages in it.

My friend has been using gmail with pop3 for years with outlook 6 (The old
built in email client with windows XP), and all messages are currently stored
on gmails servers, ~20,000 messages in the inbox, and ~10,000 messages in the
sent folder. Total messages in the account (inbox + sent) equals ~3GB.

I'm trying to determine if it would be better to use IMAP or POP3 for her to
now access her emails from GMail using outlook 2007 as the client. IMAP could
be good, however right now she has some custom folders in her outlook,
folders for each year(like 2009-2003) and then some messages in them. Using
IMAP would bring in all 20K messages in the imap inbox in outlook, and then
for her to manage them she would want to move a lot out of the inbox, but
since it is accessed via IMAP, what will happen if she moves say 15K messages
out of the gmail imap inbox, and into say another locally stored .PST?

Will that just erase all those messages from Gmail server? Currently I think
having the massive backup of every email is good on gmail's server. I'm also
worried that IMAP may be too complex for her to use. I can set it all up, but
without me there to help with issues, It needs to just work simpley and just
get email every day.


Then I was thinking of just using POP3 like how she has been using it might
be the best. The issue I'm thinking about is that if I connect via pop 3, it
is going to download all 20K gmail inbox messages into the inbox, and also
all 10K messages stored in the gmail sent folder.
This is going to leave me with a mess of 10K sent emails in the inbox, that
I will need to somehow filter and move into sent items.Sorry for the very
long post, any idea about using IMAP vs. POP for accessing gmail will be very
appreciated.

Also I am using outlook 2007 because but it seems to not have the 2GB .PST
limit when using IMAP, and with the newer PST format like outlook 2003.

Also wondering about performance, especially with IMAP, if I have 20K
messages in the Imap gmail inbox accessed in outlook 2007, is her computer
going to cry?

The PC she is using is actually very fast at least in CPU:
Win 7 Pro 64bit, Q8200, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 640GB HD.

 

[DL]

If you set up gmail via imap on outlook, the folders will be synced with
those on the gmail server. Nothing will be removed from the gmail server.
Any pop mail folders, in Outlook will remain intact
You will have two sets of Personal Folders in outlook, one being the pop
mail set and the other being the imap set. The two are completely seperate
If the pop mail Personal Folder set is a carry over from a pre 2003 version
of Outlook, then that set of personal folders will be in the old format and
consequently be subject to the 2gb limit (but probs can occur from 1.6gb)
There isnt an Outlook 6 so you want to be sure what version of outlook was
previously used, there is Outlook Express 6, a completely different program

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Because your friend is used to pop3, I would continue to use it. POP3 will
not download the sent folder, only the inbox. I would also consider
resetting gmail so it doesn't download all the old mail - outlook will run
better and gmail has the better search. While she could download everything,
it will take days. Gmail seems to throttle the downloads - I use my gmail
as a test account in outlook because I don't have to worry about remembering
to set outlook to leave on server - and it downloads the mail approx 1000
messages at a time. About once a yr, I go into gmail settings and change it
to new mail only.

Gmail's IMAP is weird, especially in how it handles gmail labels.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

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