Would you like to access your Gmail account while traveling in a train or while being at a place where there is no Internet access available? It is possible. You can access your Gmail offline and work on it like you do on any normal desktop software which does not require any Internet connection.
You can access your Gmail inbox through your browser and use almost all features of Gmail such as search, labels and conversation threading even at a time you don’t have Internet access. Offline Gmail is made possible by Google Gears that is an open source browser extension which allows a web application to run offline by caching and serving application resources locally. Offline GMail will work on all major browsers such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (6.0 and above) and Mozilla Firefox (1.5 and above).
Since Offline Gmail will download your email messages on your computer, you should make sure that you don’t enable Offline Gmail on a public or shared computer. Moreover, when you enable Offline Gmail on your computer, your mail is stored only on that particular computer and not on all the computers that you use; therefore, you’ll be able to access offline mail only on that computer where you’ve enabled the offline access.
How to enable Offline Gmail?
At present Offline Gmail is not enabled by default. It is available as an experimental feature of Gmail Labs and you can enable it easily by signing into your Gmail account. Please note that you may have to enable Google Gears and also allow Gears to access Gmail site, depending upon whether Gears is already installed on your computer and also whether Gears is already enabled for Gmail.
To enable Offiline Gmail, proceed as under:
(1) Login to your Gmail account.
(2) Click Settings link at the top-right corner of Gmail screen. Then, on the Settings bar that appears on the screen, click on Labs link.
(3) All the Gmail Labs features will now become visible on the screen. Find the Offline feature of the Labs. It appears as under:
Click on Enable radio button to enable the Offline Gmail, and then click Save Changes at the top of the Labs screen to save your changes.
(4) Now, Offline Gmail has been enabled for you. As a confirmation of this fact, you’ll notice the Labs icon and the Offline link in the top-right corner of the Gmail screen:
(5) After enabling Offline Gmail as above, to enable the downloading of the messages on your computer and to create settings for offline access, click on Offline link in the top-right corner of the Gmail screen. Following dialog box will appear on the screen, asking you to Install offline access for Gmail:
(6) Click Next on the above dialog box. In the next dialog box shown below, you’ll be asked to allow Google Gears to access Offline Gmail site; allow it:
(7) In the next dialog box, you can select which shortcuts you want to create for Offline Gmail:
(8) When you click OK button on the above dialog box, Gmail will show you the following status in the top-right corner of the screen about finishing the installtion:
(9) After that, Offline Gmail will download your messages onto your computer and will synchronize them with your online message:
(10) Once this process is over, you’ll be ready to access your Gmail offline even when you’re not connected to the Internet.
How to access Offline Gmail, i.e., when I am not connected to Internet?
When you’re offline and not connected to Internet, to get to your Offline Gmail, open a browser and type googlemail.com into the address bar / location bar or otherwise use the desktop shortcut or Start menu shortcut that you’ve created earlier during the installation of Offline Gmail. Gmail will automatically detect your connection status that you’re offline and accordingly you’ll be connected to your Offline Gmail.
What features are available in Offline Gmail?
With Offline Gmail, you can read your mail, star and label them and do almost all the things that you can do when reading mail online. You can also write a new mail / message; for this purpose, click Compose Mail and write your new message. In the Offline mode, when you click Send on a new message, it will go to your Outbox and will remain there till you’re offline; as soon as you connect to the Internet the next time, this message will be sent to its recipient automatically. However, in Offline Gmail, you cannot attach a file with your new message that you’re writing.
How can Offline Gmail be disabled?
If you want to disable Offline Gmail, click on the Settings link in the top-right corner of the Gmail screen, and then from the Settings bar that appears on the screen, click on the Offline link. Now click on Disable. This will disable Offline Gmail on your computer and delete the messages that you had previously downloaded. At a later stage, if you again decide to enable Offline Gmail, you’ll have to download only those messages that you’ve received since you last synced and you won’t have to start afresh from scratch.
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