Filed under: Business, Internet, Security, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Productivity, Web services, Google
Backing up your Gmail locally
by Jason Clarke Jan 3rd 2007
If you're one of the folks that saw the story about Google having some trouble with a few Gmail accounts, and wondered what you could do to protect yourself from such an unfortunate eventuality, you're in luck. It's a simple tip, and one that can be implemented in a number of ways, but the gist of it is that you're going to want to download all of your email out of your Gmail account using the POP download functionality in your account.Now, if you're wanting to use an email client that you already happen to use for other mail (for example, your work email), you may not want all of that Gmail spilling right into your inbox. So to prevent that, make sure that your email client supports message rules based on the incoming mail account. In Outlook 2007 (I remember seeing it in 2003 as well) there's a rule called "through the specified account" that allows you to choose which incoming account it should act on. That way you can move all mail coming through a specific account to a folder, which can then be moved to a different PST file for archiving.
Once you've determined how you're going to keep from mixing up all of your email, go ahead with setting up the connection.
To back up ALL of your Gmail, simply navigate to the Forwarding and POP section of your Settings in Gmail, and in the POP Download section click the radio button beside "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)".
Then configure the email client exactly as described on the Configuring instructions link at the bottom of the POP Download section. There are instructions for virtually every major email client out there, and even if your client isn't listed, it should be fairly simple to see how to configure yours from looking at instructions for a similar client.
And that's it - now all there is to do is wait, and wait, and wait. If you're like me and your Gmail box is already well over half full, it can take quite a while to download close to 2 Gigs of mail. But think of the peace of mind you'll have knowing that your mail is safely in your hands.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
