Part 1: Configuring your account to enable POP/IMAP access

POP and IMAP are communication protocols between the email client and the email provider. These protocols facilitate the flow of data from email servers to the email clients. POP was the first to come and IMAP was engineered later.

Both the protocols are entirely different. The major difference being, POP (Post Office Protocol) configuration downloads and stores your emails locally and making any changes to them does not affect the original content on the server. IMAP (Internet Messaged Access Protocol) setup lets you download and sync your emails across all clients and the server. IMAP is more preferred these days because of its synchronization features.

Now, check out how to enable IMAP access in a G Suite account. You may click on the images to see their larger versions.

  1. Open up your Gmail inbox for the G Suite account you want to configure.
  2. Hit the Settings icon in the top right corner, just below your profile picture. Select ‘Settings’ from the drop-down.Add G Suite to Outlook
  3. Head over to “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab. Click on “Enable IMAP” and then click on ‘Save Changes’ leaving all other settings to defaults.Now you are done with configuring Gmail, now we need to configure Outlook to receive your emails. You can now configure any other email client or add this email address to your mobile phone by following the similar configuration steps.

    Part 2: Outlook Configuration
    1. If you are opening Outlook for the first time, Add Account Setup will automatically pop out. Or you can manually select to add a new account.
    2. Choose manual setup mode and hit ‘Next’. In the next step select ‘POP or IMAP’ option.
    3. Now, enter all the relevant details like your name and the email address. Also, enter your login username and password. Now under server configuration, change the account type to IMAP.
    4. In the ‘Incoming Mail Server’ settings, enter “imap.gmail.com” and in ‘Outgoing Mail Server’ enter “smtp.gmail.com”.
    5. Click on ‘More Settings’ button and go to the ‘Outgoing Server’ tab. Check the checkbox and select ‘Use same settings as my incoming mail server’.
    6. Now go to the ‘Advanced’ tab, and exactly enter the details as follows:

    • Incoming Server (IMAP) Port: 993
    • Incoming encryption type: SSL
    • Outgoing Server (SMTP) Port: 587
    • Outgoing Encryption type: TLS
    • Server Time Out: 5 Minutes(Recommended)

  5. Finally, save the settings and head to the next step.

    Outlook will test your server settings and prompt you if anything goes wrong.

    add G Suite Email Account to Outlook

    If everything goes right, you will see a successful message and the emails would start downloading.

    Troubleshooting

    If you are not able to log in and Outlook is demanding password again and again then you may have enabled 2-step login on your account. You can disable 2-step login or generate an app password. App passwords are replacements to your normal passwords that can be used to login to apps and other devices. You don’t need to remember app passwords and they can be easily generated. Head over to this link to generate your app password.

    Select the custom name from the drop down and name the configuration whatever you wish. Hit the Generate button and copy the generated password. Now replace your original password with this password while logging in through outlook. You can save this password within Outlook for easy access.