Tech Marshal

Gmail users previously were able to backup their emails offline using Gears, a Google plugin allowing web apps to run offline. But recently in May, Google announced that it shifted focus to HTML5 and stopped the development of Google Gears. As a result, those users who installed the versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome released after May could no longer backup their Gmail account using Gears.

The good news is that Google has brought back the ability for Gmail users to access their emails even when they are not connected to the internet.

The functionality can be achieved by installing “Offline Google Mail”, a new chrome web-app based on HTML5 that updates in the background while you’re online.

Incase the internet is not available, simply open a new tab in chrome and launch the app. From there you can compose, read, search and archive emails. Offline Google Mail will automatically sync the changes once internet connectivity is available.

The streamlined user interface, based on Gmail’s popular tablet interface, provides an extremely fast response time with a pure, email focused experience.

Install - Offline Google Mail

For most of us, a compromise on an email account could mean a compromise on a dozen connected accounts. Its always a good practice to have separate public and private email addresses. A public email address that your would use to subscribe to online services such Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Quora and several other sites and a private one that can be associated with Bank Accounts, Hosting Company, PayPal, Amazon, Online file hosting service and any other place where account security is even more critical.

Having separate email addresses combined with a strong password maybe the best security measure but if you are a Gmail user there are other basic, yet important steps that you can take to make your Gmail even more safe and secure.

Here are two videos from Google. One providing the very basic Gmail security tips and the other about the recently introduced — 2 Step Verification method.

Basic Gmail Security Tips:



2 Step Verification:

POP e-mail fetching is a great feature of Gmail to retrieve messages from your other emails accounts via POP and display them in your inbox alongside the emails that come directly to your Gmail account.

Anyone who has been channeling emails from various addresses to one master Gmail address, knows that Gmail uses a timing algorithm to retrieve messages from POP accounts. The problem, however is the time lag. Often you would want to instantly check whether the email you were waiting for has arrived or not.

Quickly Check If a New Email Has Arrived or Not :

To check or retrieve emails at any desired time, head to your email settings and under Labs, enable the “Refresh POP Accounts” option. Then save changes.

From now on you will see a refresh link at the top of your inbox. Whenever you refresh, Gmail will check and retrieve any new message from any of your associated accounts.

The latest browsers: Chrome 12, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 no longer support Google gears. Gears was required for browsers to enable the offline feature of Gmail, where all the necessary emails could be downloaded for viewing anytime without the internet.

However, there are alternate free tools to download selective emails for easy offline access. MailStore Home is one such tool. It maintains an archive of all your emails for easy and immediate retrieval.

Lets walk through the steps to download selective or even archive the complete mail box to view offline using MailStore.

1. Create a new label in Gmail.

a. Select dropdown menu under labels on the left pane and click ‘Create new label’.

b. Give it a name: ‘Important Emails’ or any other name that you desire. (Choose a name other than “Important”, it’s a reserved system label).

2. Tick all the important emails you wish to save and click the labels tab on the above or below the email list.

3. From the Labels dropdown menu select the label you created for important emails and apply. The emails will now be available under the new label.


4. Go to Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Select ‘Enable POP’. Make sure you choose ‘keep Gmail’s Copy in the Inbox’ for messages accessed with POP if you want to maintain a copy in Gmail as well.


5. Download and install MailStore Home, a free email archiving utility for private users.


6. Once installed, go to Archive Email and Select Google Mail. Now enter your Email ID (include @gmail.com) and Password.

7. From the ‘ Archive Google Mail’ window, Untick ‘Also Archive Unread Messages’ and click the browse button next to the folders options. If you wish to download and archive your complete inbox, skip this.


8. Click Add to include folders/Subfolders and select the newly created label and proceed. MailStore will download the emails specified and will archive it for viewing offline.