How to Configure Microsoft Outlook 2010 for your Gmail Account

Gmail from Google is one of the widely used free Web based email services. You may require to use Gmail on a different third-party client. Using MS Outlook helps you use several email addresses in one interface. You might for example be having 2 or 3 Gmail email addresses, you company email address (e.g. david.kande@mycompany-name.com.

This post will help you configure your Gmail email address. I will be using my Gmail user ID dkipkulei

Configuring the Outlook Gmail settings.

 You can configure Outlook to handle your Gmail account as a POP3 or as an IMAP account. Depending on your choice, you have to enable the related account option in your Gmail account (Gmail Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP).

Step I - Add Account

Go to File > Then click Info the click "Add Account"

Step II

When you click "Add Account", the Account details dialog box pops up, where you are required to populate the various fields as seen in the screen below:

After populating the fields (Full Name, Email Address and Password fields, click on "Manually Configure server settings or additional server types, then click "Next" then select "Internet Email" then click "Next Again to go to Step III

Step III

In step three above, you will be required to select the Account Type (Whether IMAP or POP), the incoming mail server, and the outgoing server ((SMTP).  

On the Server Information section, enter the Google Gmail servers:

• You may select either POP or IMAP (below are the server settings)    

POP Gmail servers for Outlook:

• Incoming mail server: pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing mail server: smtp.gmail.com. 

IMAP Gmail server for Outlook:

• Incoming mail server: imap.gmail.com
• Outgoing mail server: smtp.gmail.com.

As an alternative, you may setup any other outgoing mail server that you have access to, such as your ISP's SMTP server or your own hosted outgoing server. However, if you setup a 3rd party outgoing mail server, you will not have access to sent emails via your web based Gmail account panel. 


Below the server setting, enter your full email address on the username text box and your gmail password. Then click "More Settings"

Step IV 
When you click "More "Settings

For both POP and IMAP, you also have to enable the option "My outgoing mail server requires authentication" from the Outgoing Server tab.

You can also change the server timeouts period: this defines the time interval for which Outlook will wait to establish a Gmail connection, before triggering a connection error. The slower your Internet connection is, the greater period you should put.
The "Delivery" options are not important for an Outlook Gmail account: no matter what you would change here, Gmail will always keep a copy of each email on the Gmail server.

Click on Advanced then enter 995 for incoming server and 465 for outgoing server. Also check the button "The servers require an encrypted connection"

Click OK to return to the account settings. You may want to use the same data file.

Finally click on "Test Account Settings". If you followed all the steps correctly you will receive a test email

This is what you get after successfully testing your account: