Using Gmail as your Universal Inbox

Nowadays most people have more than one email account. If one of yours is a Gmail account, you can use it as your primary inbox to check all your POP3 accounts in your Gmail browser window. But do remember that you can check only other POP3 accounts only. You won’t be able to check Yahoo mail, Windows Live Hotmail, or other such web mail accounts. Also, not all POP3 servers work with Gmail.
Here is what you need to do. Open your Gmail account and click Settings-Accounts. In the ‘Get mail from other accounts‘ section, click Add another mail account. Enter the email address of the account you want to add, and click Next Step.
Enter your username, password and POP3 server. If you want to continue to access the account through a mail client or through the ISP’s own Web interface, in addition to picking up and sending mail in your Gmail account, check Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server. This allows you to read the mail in Gmail, but the mail will remain on the ISP’s server so that you can download it with your standard mail program or read it through the account’s own Web interface. On the other hand, if you plan on accessing the mail for the address only through your Gmail account, you can leave the box unchecked.
Next, check Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail to keep mail snoops at bay. In some instances a POP3 account may not work with an SSL connection: if that is the case, you will have to leave this box unchecked.
If you want all of your incoming messages from the account to carry a label, such as the name of the account, select Label incoming messages. In Gmail, a label works much as a folder does. You can view all mail that carries the same label by clicking the label. Gmail automatically creates a label for the address of the new account. You can select a different label or create a new one by choosing the appropriate entry from the drop-down list. Another option is to have messages bypass your inbox and go straight to your Gmail archive. This would be a good choice if you want to use Gmail primarily for searching through mail. When you’ve made all your selections, click Add Account.
You can compose mail in Gmail and have it appear to the recipient as if it were from the account you just added. When a message appears asking whether you want to create a custom From address, click Yes and follow the instructions.
Gmail will check your account, and any mail sent to either address will appear in your Gmail inbox. To stop Gmail from checking the mail, click Settings-Accounts and choose delete next to the account.