Read Gmail messages on other email clients using POP

If you can't sign in to your email client, you might see one of these errors:

• "Username and password not accepted"
• "Invalid credentials"
• You're asked to enter your username and password over and over

Step 1: Check your password

If you have these problems or can’t sign in, first check to make sure you’re using the right password.

Step 2: Try these troubleshooting steps

• Update your email client to the latest version.
• Use an App password: If you use 2-Step Verification, try signing in with an App password.
• Allow less secure apps: If you don't use 2-Step Verification, you might need to allow less secure apps to access your account.
• If you recently changed your Gmail password, you might need to re-enter your Gmail account information or completely repeat your Gmail account setup on your other email client.
• If the tips above didn't help, visit https://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha and follow the steps on the page. If you use Gmail through your work, school, or other organization, visit https://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/UnlockCaptcha In the web address, replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.

It's easiest to use Gmail on multiple email clients using IMAP. If you need to use POP instead of IMAP, set up "Recent mode." Recent mode shows your last 30 days of emails from Gmail.

Step 1: Turn on Recent mode

1. In your email client's POP settings page, find the "Email address" or "User name" field.
2. Add recent: in front of your email address. For example, recent:example@gmail.com.

Step 2: Change your POP settings 

Change your POP settings so that your emails are left on the server.

• Outlook: Go to your Accounts, click Advanced  Leave a copy of messages on the server.
• Apple Mail: On the "Advanced" tab, uncheck the box next to "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message," if available.
• Thunderbird: On the "Server Settings" tab, check the box next to "Leave messages on server."

If you see the "Account exceeded POP command or bandwidth limits error," it's usually because your POP clients have been accessing your Gmail account too frequently.

To fix this, change your client's settings so it won't check for new messages too frequently.

If emails you sent in your mail client are stuck in your outbox, try these fixes:

• If you're sending email through Apple Mail and you currently have 'smtp.gmail.com:username@gmail.com' in the 'Outgoing Mail Server:' field of your settings, try changing the field to 'smtp.gmail.com' instead.
• Make sure your SMTP settings don't have recent: on your email address.

If you create automatic responses on your mail client, like an out of the office response, it might cause issues, including:

• If you're using your mail client on a computer and the computer goes offline, your automatic response won't be sent.
• When you receive emails that are sent to you indirectly, like through a mailing list, the automatic response might show your email address when it replies to the sender.

To avoid these problems, try using Gmail’s out of office or vacation reply instead of the one in your mail client.

If the emails you read in your other email client are getting deleted from Gmail, check your POP settings.

1. Visit the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings page.
2. In the "POP Download" section, make sure "Archive Gmail's copy" or "Delete Gmail's copy" aren't selected.
3. At the bottom of the page, click Save changes.

After you set up POP in your Gmail settings, your emails become available in batches. It might take a while to see all your emails.

Note: Gmail downloads a copy of every email you send or receive, except for emails in Chats, Spam, and Trash. To avoid duplicates, Gmail doesn't download emails sent within your mail client, but you can still see them if you log in to Gmail.

If you continue to have problems downloading emails, try using recent mode:

1. In your email client's POP settings page, find the "Email address" or "User name" field.
2. Add recent: in front of your email address. For example, recent:example@gmail.com.

If that doesn't fix the problem, try deleting your Gmail address from your email client, then re-adding it.

After you change your POP setting, the update needs to complete before you can change your settings again. When this happens, a status message displays in the Gmail POP settings menu.

If you attempt to download emails in windowed mode using POP while Gmail is still configuring POP for your account, this error message shows in your email client:

“We are still working on enabling pop for your account so windowed mode is not available. Try again later or consider using POP3 in recent mode.”

To use POP while the setup is still in process, you can:

• Change your email client to use recent mode.
• Wait until the process completes.
  • To check if the process is complete:
    1. On your computer, open Gmail.
    2. At the top right, click Settings  See all settings.
    3. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
       • If the process is incomplete: In the "POP download" section, the option to enable POP is unavailable. You get a message that POP enablement is still in process.