Email Clients

An email client is a computer program that is used to read and send email.

It is your own responsibility to back up your mail, contacts and addresses etc. It is not uncommon for email profiles to get corrupted beyond repair or get lost due to viruses or hard drive crashes.

Configure your email client

Note: If you are a student in the 'GSD Google Mail Pilot F2007', you should refer to the special GMail instructions. )

To configure your email client for GSD email account, you will need the following information:

your GSD email address
your email password
outgoing (send) email server*: smtp.gsd.harvard.edu
incoming (receive) email server:
- POP: pop.gsd.harvard.edu
- IMAP: imap.gsd.harvard.edu

*Note: you will NOT be able to send email using our SMTP server when you are outside the GSD network. You must change the outgoing settings of your email client to the address provided by your Internet Service Provider (Comcast for example).

Supported email clients

It is a matter of personal preference what email client you choose. Email users at the GSD use a variety of different clients including Eudora, Netscape Messenger, Thunderbird, Outlook and Outlook Express. All common mail clients are accompanied with extensive Help files about how to configure and use them as well as how to back up your mail.

Computer Resources will help you with the most common problems with email clients.

POP or IMAP: How to choose

Short answer:

If you frequently use webmail or check your mail from several computers, and would like all your email to be organized on the GSD server, available anywhere, choose IMAP.

If you have a lot of email you need to save on a single local computer, and do not need everything available via webmail, choose POP.

Need more info?

POP

How it works: Using POP, your client will download all your messages from the server to your computer, then delete them from the server. When the download is complete, you can access them locally. All your mail folders and messages are stored on your local computer and you cannot access them from another computer.

Caveat: You can select an option to have your mail "not deleted" when you POP it. However, it stays on the server unsorted, in the order it was received, and it means you will download these messages again each time your check your mail.

Why to choose it: Since you're always deleting the mail when you grab it, you don't fill up your mail quota.

IMAP

How it works: IMAP stores and manages your email and folders directly on the server. When you first connect, you download only the message headers (to, from, subject, date), which means that large messages don't come down until you try to read them. Once you do, a copy stays on your local computer until you delete the message from the server.

Since messages stay on the server, you can use webmail to read all your messages from any computer. You can also set up several computers with email clients and be sure of seeing the same mail with both of them. Also, since our mail server can't be lost or stolen like your local computer (especially a laptop), you do not run the risk of losing all your mail without a trace (unless you delete it all from the server: see Backups and Archiving for the best ways to keep copies of your work and correspondence).

Caveat: Because all your mail is stored on the server, you may fill up your quota. Once you have stored enough messages to fill your quota, email may be "bounced" or returned to the sender. See How to check your quota and What is my quota? for more information.

Why to choose it: Since everything stays on the server, you can access it from any computer and won't lose everything if your computer is lost or stolen.