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Connecting a parish mailbox to GMail

Parish Email > Connect to GMail

If you have a parish email account and would like to access it via GMail, here is how to go about it.

Our parish email provider, GreenGeeks, has provided a useful guide to connecting your parish mailbox to your GMail account. Their generic version can be viewed by clicking here.

The steps below have been customised to show how parish user John Doe with the email account john.doe@wivertoninthevale.co.uk would link his parish mailbox to his GMail account. Obviously, you need to change all references to our friend John to your own details!

1. Connecting your mailbox

Step 1

Log in to Gmail and click the gear icon.

Step 2

Click the “See all settings” button.

Step 3

Click the “Accounts and Import” tab.

Step 4

Next to “Check mail from other accounts,” click “Add a mail account.”

Step 5

An orange popup window will open. Enter the parish email address that you want to connect using Gmail. Click the “Next” button.

Enter the email address and click the "Next" button

Step 6

Select “Import emails from my other account (POP3)” and click the “Next” button.

(The “Gmailify” option is for linking accounts from major webmail providers like Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, and Hotmail.)

select "Import emails..." and click the "Next" button

Step 7

Next, you’ll be on the “Add a mail account” page where you enter your current incoming email server settings.

  • Username is typically your complete email address, not just the part before @.
  • Password is the password that you use to access the mailbox on the parish mail server.
  • POP Server will be pre-populated with mail.wivertoninthevale.co.uk (the mailserver name for the email address you entered earlier). This is the server name you should preferably use. However, problems have sometimes been encountered using this server, so if you have any difficulties, you could try substituting this with ams107.greengeeks.net
  • Port is 995.
  • Check the box for “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server” that will allow you to pull your mail down from another source in addition to Gmail.
  • Check the box for Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail.
  • Enter Parish (or your preferred term) in the Label incoming messages box. This will enable to you to easily distinguish your parish emails from your personal ones.

Click the “Add Account” button.

Complete the fields, check "Always use a secure connection," click "Add Account"

Step 8

The next window will verify that your account has been added.

You will also be given the option of being able to send mail “as” the new address. This enables you to send emails from your GMail account so that they appear to recipients to have been sent from your parish account. Select “Yes, I want to be able to send mail as…” and click the “Next” button.

Select "Yes, I want to be able to send mail as...," and click the "Next" button

Step 9

In the next window, enter the name you want to appear as the “sender” or “from” name of the outgoing email. This will generally be your full name.

In most cases, you want to leave “Treat as an alias” checked (see this Google explanation of the setting).

Click the “Next Step” button.

Enter a "from" name and click the "Next Step" button

Step 10

Enter your current outgoing (SMTP) email server settings and click the “Add Account” button.

Enter outgoing (SMTP) server info, click the "Add Account" button

SMTP Server will be pre-populated with mail.wivertoninthevale.co.uk. This is the server name you should preferably use. However, problems have sometimes been encountered using this server, so if you have any difficulties, you could try substituting this with ams107.greengeeks.net (see Step 7).

Step 11

Before Gmail lets you send mail from the new address, they want to verify that you can receive mail there, so they send a verification code.

You can click a link in the verification email, or cut and paste the confirmation code in the “Confirm verification and add your email address” box as shown below, and click the “Verify” button.

Enter the confirmation code, click the "Verify" button

The popup window will disappear, and you’re ready to go.

You’ll now see the address you added in the “Accounts and imports” settings.

Address you just added

Both the regular Gmail account and the G Suite Gmail account will let you add up to five outside email accounts using this method.

2. Using your connected mailbox

In future, whenever you use GMail, you will see both your personal and parish emails. Your parish emails will be labelled according to what you set in Step 7 (probably Parish). If you wish to view only your parish emails, click on the appropriate label in the left-hand pane. To go back to viewing all of your messages, just click on Inbox.

To send emails from your parish account, click on Compose to bring up the New Message window. Click on the small arrow () at the end of the From field and select the account you would like to use to send the message.