Simplify your communications by getting all your messages in the same place
How many email addresses do you have? At the very least, most people have one for work, and another for home. Add in a "throwaway" address you use for shopping online, and another for your blog about puppies in Star Wars costumes and you're juggling four different inboxes. You could set all those accounts in Mail, but then you've got separate accounts to check, and separate folders to maintain for filing messages. Sparrow on your Mac and iPhone makes it easy to consolidate everything--and still maintain different addresses. Here's how.
1. Get everything into Gmail
The easiest way to grab your mail is to use Gmail's handy Mail Fetcher feature to download messages from all your email accounts. In Gmail, head to Settings > Accounts and Import. Click the link for Add a POP3 mail account you own. In the popup window, enter your password and POP server address.
2. Pick your options
From this popup, you can also set a few important options. You can choose to leave a copy in your original account, or delete them once Gmail downloads the message. Another handy trick is applying a label to all incoming messages from an account. It'll give you an easy way to see all the messages to each account individually. When everything is set how you like, click Save. Repeat this process for each of the addresses you'd like Gmail to fetch.
3. Configure Sparrow
Head to Sparrow's Preferences and choose Accounts. Click + to add an account. Enter your Gmail credentials and click Create. Over in the General tab, make sure to check Make Sparrow the default mail reader. Sparrow is now set up to receive all your mail.
4. Set up aliases
In Sparrow Preferences, click over to the Aliases tab. Click the + and add a name and address that you want to use when sending mail. Click Done. You'll now be able to select that address when sending messages. Add an alias for every address that you want to send messages from.
Some mail clients (Microsoft Entourage in particular) will still see your main Gmail address in the headers, showing your recipient that the message was sent by "main-address@gmail.com on behalf of your-return-address@yourdomain.com." For close friends, you might not care if your recipients see your gmail address, but in professional situations, you'll probably want to make one more tweak.
5. Configure outgoing servers
Select the Alias from the list, and click More…. Choose Use a custom SMTP for this alias and click Done. In the next screen, fill in your outgoing account's server information, login, and password, then click Next. From now on, any mail you send using that alias will be sent from the original account's servers, rather than Gmail's servers.
6. Use Sparrow on your iPhone
Sparrow's iPhone client is fantastic. And you can add the same aliases and outgoing mail settings on your iPhone for a totally seamless experience.
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