If you have a Gmail account, you might be wondering how you can access this account in Apple's Mail program. In this tutorial, I'll walk you through the steps for adding a Gmail account to Mail.

Set Gmail Account Preferences

1.  Go to your Gmail account with your web browser, sign in and open the Settings window. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Click in the circle in front of "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)" or "Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on." Click on the button next to "When messages are accessed with POP" and decide what you want Gmail to do with messages that have been downloaded to Mail. Sign out of your Gmail account.

Create Gmail Account in Mail

2.   Launch Mail, open Mail's Preferences Pane and select the Accounts tab. Click on the plus symbol in the lower left corner to create a new account. Select POP account in the pane that opens and fill in your name and Gmail address (yourname@gmail.com). Click Continue.

If you are using Mac OS X 10.5, Mail will automatically configure your Gmail account for you and you can go to Step 5. Continue with Step 3 for Mac OS X 10.4.

account-type-pop

3.  On the next pane, type "pop.googlemail.com" as the Incoming Mail Server and fill in your Gmail user name and password. Click Continue.

incoming-mail-server

4.  On the next pane, type "smtp.googlemail.com" as the Outgoing Mail Server, type your user name and password. Be sure and type your user name as an email address: yourname@googlemail.com or yourname@gmail.com. Click Continue.

outgoing-mail-server

5.  You should see an account summary pane that gives information on your new account. Click the Continue button to add your Gmail account to Mail.