Configure Gmail POP account in Thunderbird 2

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open-source email client for Windows and Linux from the same community that develops Mozilla Firefox. You can download a free copy of Mozilla Thunderbird from http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/. Thunderbird allows easy configuration with many email services. This article describes how you can configure your Gmail account in Thunderbird.

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.

   

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.

   

   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 Thunderbird

1. Open Thunderbird. Select from the menu, Tools → Account Settings….
2. Click Add Account button to start Account Wizard.
3. In the wizard, select Gmail and click Next.

   

4. In the next screen, enter your name and your email address. Click Next to continue.

   

5. Next screen will show the settings you have chosen, click Finish if you think they are ok. If you found some mistake or typo you can click Back and correct them.

   

6. Now click on Server Settings in the newly created account as shown. Un-check the option Leave messages on server as shown and save settings by clicking OK.

   

7. Now you can check your Gmail account emails in Thunderbird. To check the emails, select your Gmail account on the left side list and click on Read Messages in the right pane as shown.