Thus far, the only thing stopping me from switching all of my email accounts to Gmail accounts was the lack of IMAP access. I have 3 different computers from which I regularly access all of my mail accounts. When I read or delete or file an email on one machine, I need the change to show up on the other machines, too. IMAP is essential for this to work smoothly.

IMAP is also essential for the smooth running of an email-based reference service in which several librarians all access questions from the same mail account.

My two main non-work email accounts are with Netzero and Gmail. Neither of these accounts offer IMAP, so I forward all mail in these accounts to corresponding addresses on an IMAP server I run myself. This accomplishes what I need but adds an extra layer that increases the risk of complication -- particularly because I run the server myself.

Starting tonight, Gmail appears to be offering users IMAP access to their mail. According to Download Squad, IMAP instructions are beginning to appear in both the settings and help sections of the Gmail site.

Armed with this information, I logged into one of my Gmail accounts (the one listed over in the sidebar of this site), but IMAP wasn't available. I then logged into a different Gmail account and was ecstatic to find IMAP available in my settings. Not only does this eliminate an extra layer of potential error to my mail, but ensures that someone better qualified than me is running the server.

This does not, however, solve all my email problems. At work, we recently switched to Exchange Server, and no one has turned on the IMAP switch yet. As a result, I can only access my email using Outlook or Entourage, two applications I truly loathe. Now, Outlook does allow me to set up a rule to redirect all my email to an external IMAP account, but for some unknown reason this process strips out all the addresses in the "To" field of each message, replacing them with the address to which the mail is being redirected. So now I never know whether a message was sent just to me, to several other people and me, or solely to someone else with me as a "BCC." More importantly, this renders the "Reply All" button in my mail client absolutely useless. Another odd quirk? Outlook redirects HTML emails as plain text, meaning any formatting in the original message is lost. The only workaround I can come up with is for someone in IT to go into Active Directory and forward my mail to an external address from there. This would eliminate my reliance on Outlook's fatally flawed redirect rule. Sadly, however, my department's IT staff hasn't been granted Active Directory access by the larger institution, so no one can actually set this up for me.

With Gmail now offering IMAP, I now know exactly where I want my work email forwarded -- assuming I can find someone to forward it.

[Download Squad] Gmail gets IMAP