How to Make Gmail Work Properly with Outlook in 3 Steps

TIP: Latest version of Topalt Sync for Google and iCloud allows to sync your Outlook calendar and contacts with Google automatically.

Just in case you use Gmail as your email back-end but prefer a great old-fashioned background e-mail client for managing your day to day email, you're likely aware that Outlook doesn't play fine with Gmail. Here's how to fix that in 3 simple steps.

  1. Enable IMAP:
    Go to the Gmail web interface and go to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP, enable IMAP access to your account, and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. Now when you enter your Gmail credentials in Outlook, it should automatically detect and configure IMAP account for you.
  2. Fix sent mail folders:
    Any email you send in Outlook will automatically go into Gmail's "Sent Email" folder, but you'll also be in possession of duplicate in Outlook's "Sent Items" folder. Therefore in outlook, you should enable "Do not save copies of sent items" option under accounts settings (Advanced tab). This way you only have sent items to Google sent mail folder.
  3. Turn off email archiving when you delete it:
    Go to Settings - Mail - Gmail - account - Advanced - and then select 'Delete' instead of Archive.

Now once you've completed these three steps, your Outlook will work far better with Gmail