I received several emails lately that asked me how to setup email clients so that they could retrieve Gmail emails using the POP3 protocol. The Gmail POP3 configuration is fortunately not that complex: The major problem that most users run into is that POP3 has to be enabled in the Gmail web interface before they can actually retrieve their emails in another email client.
Enabling POP3 in Gmail is therefor a two-step process. POP3 needs to be enabled on the Gmail website first before the other email client is configured to connect to Gmail using the POP3 protocol.
Enabling Gmail POP3
Open the Gmail homepage, log into your Gmail account and click on the [Settings] link in the top right corner of the screen to open the Gmail configuration. Now select the [Forwarding and POP/IMAP] link which should open a page just like the one you see below on the screenshot.
You basically got two options here to enable POP3. The first [Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)] enables POP3 in Gmail for all email messages even those that have already been retrieved while the second [Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on] enables POP3 from that moment on which means that old emails cannot be retrieved. A click on the Save Changes button will save the changes and allow POP3 connections.
Gmail POP3 Data
It is time to create the accounts in the email client now that POP3 has been enabled in Gmail. The procedure is different depending on the email client at hand. Below are the values that need to be entered into the email client.
Email Address: Enter your full Gmail email address
Password: Enter your email password
Incoming Server: pop.gmail.com
Incoming Server Port: 995
Outgoing Server: smtp.gmail.com
Outgoing server (SMTP) port: 587
Encryption: TLS
You can check out the help pages over at Gmail that contain configuration walkthroughs for various popular email clients.
