Configure Gmail account in Windows Live Mail

Microsoft offers free Windows Live Mail for Windows XP, Vista and 7. In Windows Vista it comes pre-installed but in Windows XP and 7, you have to download it separately. You can visit http://download.live.com/wlmail to download your free version of Windows Live Mail. Installing Windows Live Mail is very easy. Once you have installed, you can configure it to use an email account. This article discusses how to configure an Gmail (Google Mail) account in Windows Live Mail. The procedure is explained for Windows 7 but it is same for all Windows platforms.

1. Enable POP in Gmail

  1. Visit http://mail.google.com/ and login to your gmail account.
  2. Go to Settings by clicking on Settings in the top-right corner as shown.

    open gmail settings

  3. In the Settings, select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP section. In the POP Download sub-section select Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on and click on Save Changes.

    Configure Gmail POP

    You can also select the option Enable POP for all mail. The difference is that by enabling this option all the emails would be downloaded in the Thunderbird no matter how old. This may cause you to download a huge amount of emails dating back to many years. If you enable Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on option, then only new email would be downloaded.

    You can also set the option of what to do after downloading the email to Thunderbird in the option When messages are accessed with POP. You should let it to the default setting keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox because Gmail offers so huge storage. But you can set it to delete or archive the Gmail’s copy.

  4. You can log out of Gmail now.

2. Configure Windows Live Mail

  1. Open Windows Live Mail from Start Menu shortcut. When its window opens up, select from the file menu, Tools → Accounts… as shown.

    Windows Live Mail

    If you are running Windows Live Mail for the first time, it would ask you to add an email account, so you can skip steps 1 and 2.

  2. In the Accounts window, click on the Add button as shown.

    Add a new account

  3. It would ask you which type of account to add. Select Email Account and click Next.

    Select Email Account

  4. In the next window, you have to enter Gmail account information. Enter your email-address, password and display name. The display name would be used as a signature at the end of email when you would send an email. If you check Remember password, Windows Live Mail will not ask for password when fetching emails and store it in database for future use. Click Next when done.

    Enter email address

  5. In the next window, you have to enter POP3 server information. Copy the entries exactly as shown in the picture below except your Login ID. The Login ID is same as your email address with @gmail.com removed.

    Server entries

  6. Click Next to get a message that you have successfully set up an email account. Click Finish to close the wizard.
  7. You would see your new account in the left pane of Windows Live Mail main window. Right-click on your newly created account and select Properties as shown.

    Right-click and select Properties

  8. In the account properties window, select the Advanced tab. Move the Server Timeouts slider to right to make it 5 minutes. Un-check the Leave a copy of messages on server check box. Click OK to save the settings.

    Account Properties

Congratulations! You have just configured Windows Live Mail to send and receive emails from your Gmail account.