Google’s very own mail client, Gmail was launched in 2004. Ever since, we’re all in some way or the other dependent on this great service by Google. While many would love the interface in the gmail web page or mobile app, many would like to have it configured to a desktop app, a mail client like Microsoft Outlook, or Thunderbird, or even an android mail app. Using a mail client offers additional mail management options as well as better composing features. In such scenarios one has to be accurate in configuring Gmail to work with the mail client with any short-comings.
Why do you need Gmail SMTP settings:
To send an email through an email client, one has to know the SMTP settings. SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol it is the set of instructions followed by email client to communicate with the email server, in order to send emails. Gmail SMTP settings define the way the mail client is going to communicate with the Gmail’s outgoing server to ensure that the mails that you intend to send reach the recipients as expected. If an incorrect SMTP server address is entered or if the port numbers are incorrectly set the mail server would reject the request to send the mail from the mail client.
Configure the Gmail SMTP settings:
In fact to configure Gmail SMTP settings in an email client is quite easy. One has to just try the following set of simple steps.
- Open the mail client’s account settings. How you reach there varies according to the mail client you use. Once there, you will have the options to be configured for incoming and outgoing servers. Here we are only dealing with the Google SMTP settings, so we would only look at configuring the outgoing mail settings.
- In the outgoing server enter SMTP.Gmail.com
- Enter your Gmail ID (including @gmail.com) and password. Most mail client should be able to configure the Gmail SMTP settings automatically and show you the result. In event you come across any error, go to the next step.
- Click on “More Settings” or “Advanced”. Here basically you are trying to include additional Gmail SMTP settings that the mail client was not unable to procure automatically.
- If there is a setting for “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”, please enable it.
- Also, if there is an option to use the same settings as the incoming mail server, please select it.
- If you have a provision to enter the incoming port number, enter 587
- Select “TLS” as the Outgoing server encrypted setting.
- Click Okay when done.
- Your Gmail SMTP settings have been configured in your mail-client. You can try sending a test mail and checking it.
While the steps may vary a bit for different mail clients, the settings would remain the same as mentioned in the steps above. These settings hold true on a mail client in any platform be it a Windows mail client, An android mail client or iOS.
