I thought that I would write a quick blog on what in the world is IMAP.  I get people complaining that they can't remember which PC, or phone, they sent and email from if they forget to CC themselves.  There is a simple solution and it's free.

So, my comment is, 'You should IMAP your devices'.....9 times out of 10 I get that open mouthed blank stare, followed by, 'huh?"

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol, which probably doesn't help explain what it is one bit.  What it does though is save a bunch of time searching around trying to find an email.  If you are like me and use Outlook on multiple machines and also a phone to send and receive emails, the standard POP that we use to receive emails is pretty much useless.  Google offers this feature for free through it's gmail client, not to mention a calendar that can be shared with others and you can also sync with Outlook calendar.

When you use IMAP in Outlook with gmail it copies and syncs all of the folders in your gmail and your Outlook so that you have all of the same folders (gmail calls them 'labels').   This means that if you send an email with Outlook it shows up in the sent folders of both Outlook and gmail, the same goes for sending an email with the web based gmail client. You can do this with as many PC's as you have Outlook running on, so now it doesn't matter which machine you send the email, it shows up on all of your email clients.

Now, the really neat part is that some phones allow you to IMAP, I have the iPhone so now I can send and receive email from my phone and the email shows up in gmail and Outlook.  The iPhone setup is so easy a caveman can do it; go to Settings, add account, press gmail, type in your username and password and it will do the rest.

If you are interested in trying this you can go to gmail and set up a free account with them.  Then go to settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP, enable IMAP (enable POP so that you can use Outlook).  There are very good instructions on how to setup your email clients in that area when you click on 'Configuration Instructions'.  Another nice feature is that you can have gmail retrieve your email from most email hosting companies so that you have one central email rather than have multiple email addresses to setup in Outlook.  I have 6 email addresses that gmail goes out and retrieves, it makes life a lot easier and you have over 6gb of storage so space won't be an issue.

I know this doesn't sound like it should be on a real estate blog, but I feel being able to send and receive email while walking through a house is as important as having a cell phone.