Friday, July 13, 2012

SYNCHRONIZE YOUR LIFE


A nagging problem for many smartphone users (and those of us who use multiple computers) is that fact that the mail on your phone or computer is separate from the mail on your other desktop or laptop computers. For example, you might use Outlook or Windows Mail to check your company email. You may go to Comcast.com to check your personal email. If you use Outlook (or Comcast) and mark an email as “read” it will not be shown as read on your smartphone. If you delete an email on your smartphone, you will find the mail remains in your inbox when you get back to the office.

There’s a fix for that. Here it is in a nutshell: Create a Gmail account then use Gmail to check all your other accounts. Once you complete the setup process that I’m about to describe, whatever you do on your phone will synchronize with all your other devices such as your home desktop computer and your laptop. When you delete an email from your phone, it will be deleted on your laptop, too. When you send an email to Aunt Cindy from your desktop computer, you will see a copy of that mail in your “Sent Items” on your phone, too. Another bonus is that Gmail has an excellent spam filter so all your mail will be scrubbed of spam before it gets to you. This is all 100% free.

The first step is to create a Gmail account if you don’t already have one. If you have an Android phone, you already have one (you have to have one to activate your phone). Just visit Gmail.com and follow the instructions. Once created, you’ll notice a little icon of a gear in the upper right corner. Click on that, then “settings” then “accounts and import” then scroll down to “Check mail from other accounts.” If you use an email from a major carrier such as Comcast, AT&T, Yahoo and Hotmail, the setup process is super easy. Corporate mail users will need to enter a few additional settings. Repeat this for each of your email accounts.

Now that you’ve got Gmail configured to check all your email accounts, the next step is to configure your home computers to access Gmail. By far the easiest way would be to simply get used to using Gmail.com to send and receive email. If you still want to use Outlook or any other popular email client, you’ll simply add your Gmail account to whatever client you use. This part is really easy but will be really boring to explain here. Just call me if you need help.  

The last step is to add your new Gmail address to your smartphone. iPhone and iPad users will simply need to go to “settings” then tap ”Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” then tap “Add Account” and “Gmail.” As I said earlier, Android users will already have this done. As always, holler at me if you have any questions.

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