(iBoyd)

Ditch Webmail2

By Boyd, June 11, 2007 1:21 am

Originally Published 2/10/2006
If you’re using Gmail you already know the benefits and if you’re like me you look at your PSU webmail account with disgust. Why can’t the Webmail2 system be more like gmail? Well actually, it CAN be gmail…

“Converting” your PSU e-mail to Gmail, as I will call it, isn’t really difficult at all. You just have to know where to look for a few settings, and I’ll show you exactly where in this guide. If you’re wondering whether or not your outgoing messages (messages you send) will still show @psu.edu in Gmail, yes they will.

First things first. If you don’t have a Gmail account, I suggest you start by getting one. Go to Gmail.com to sign up. You will need a mobile phone to get an invitation code. Once you have your username of choice and your account is set up, I suggest using it a bit to see if you like it. Some of my favorite features include the 2.6 GB of space for mail (and it increases daily), automatic labels so you can sort your mail into categories, and integrated google search so you can search your email messages. Plus, let me say that the spam filter blocks almost all of the spam mail I ever get and I never seem to get false positives (that is, mail marked as spam that isn’t really spam).

So now if you’re ready to combine gmail with your PSU e-mail, the first thing you need to do in gmail is click on the “Settings” link at the top of the page in your gmail account. In your account settings, click the “Accounts” tab and then click the link that says “Add another e-mail address”. It should bring up a window that looks like this:

In here you should enter your psu email address and your name. Don’t use my e-mail address.. it won’t work. Now you need to click the Next Step button. Gmail is going to tell you it needs to send a verification e-mail to confirm that this is in fact your e-mail address. Click the Send Verification button. Now you need to log into your Penn State webmail and click the confirmation link that it is in the e-mail that you should have recieved from gmail. After you do this, you should be able to send messages from your gmail account as *@psu.edu. You can either set your psu address as your default or keep your gmail address as your default, but you’ll be able to alternate in any message you send. Now you need to set up your PSU e-mail so you can recieve your PSU e-mail messages in your gmail account. How? I’ll give you a hint, it’s NOT in your PSU webmail settings.

If you thought that www.work.psu.edu was just for changing your access password you’re about to learn something new. If you never knew what www.work.psu.edu was to begin with, well you’re also going to learn something new. You can change your PSU e-mail forwarding address by clicking the link on the right side of the site. To save time I’m providing a direct link to change your forwarding address here.

Once you log in with your access account and password, you should see something like this:

Simply enter your gmail address as I did above and click change. THAT’S IT. You should now start recieving all of your PSU e-mail in your Gmail inbox. Two e-mail addresses, one inbox, 2.6+ of storage. What more could you want?