Zimbra: How to add external email accounts
Want to centralize and organize email from multiple email accounts, without losing the flexibility of replying “from” anyone of them? The external email account feature in the Zimbra web client allows email to be retrieved from multiple accounts without having to log in to each of them individually, and when combined with Zimbra’s Personas feature, enables convenient centralized access to all your email from one place.
To setup external accounts in Zimbra, contact your email provider for account IMAP or POP settings:
- Account type: POP or IMAP
- Account username: ex. kelly@yourdomain.com
- Email Server: ex. imap.emailprovider.com
- Advanced settings: Standard IMAP/POP ports or custom port numbers? Is SSL required?
Once you’ve retrieved your settings from your email provider, login to the Zimbra web client and navigate to Preferences > Accounts:
Click on ‘Add External Account’ in the lower right of the Accounts window:
In the External Accounts settings window, enter the email address of the account you would like to add:
In the Account Name field enter a name for your external account:
Choose the account type (POP3 or IMAP):
Enter the Username (often your full email address) of the account:
Enter the email server address, then enter your account password:
Under Advanced Settings, configure your external account IMAP port & SSL preferences:
When finished, click on test settings. If your account is configured correctly “Success” screen will appear in the Test Settings window:
If authentication with your external mail server is unsuccessful “Failed” will appear. Please verify that your account is configured using the correct settings provided by your email provider:
Under ‘Download messages to’ choose whether you would like messages to automatically download to your Zimbra Inbox or to a new folder. Also select if you would like to automatically delete messages from your external account after downloading the messages to your Zimbra account. Note: If setting up your account using IMAP you can only download to a new folder and the option to delete messages off the server is not selectable:
Next, under ‘Messages sent from this account have the following settings’ you may configure Zimbra to use your new external account email address as a Persona (mail identity) when replying to or forwarding messages sent to your external account. Your Zimbra email address will be automatically pre-filled in these fields.
If you would like to set your new external account as the send from address when replying to or forwarding messages sent to your external email address, you may delete and modify these fields:
Once complete, scroll to the top of the Zimbra web client and click ‘Save’:
The test settings window will appear one more time. Click ‘OK’ if the account successfully authenticates. If not, please review your account settings provided by your email provider:
Clicking on ‘OK’ will return you to your Zimbra Inbox. If you have selected new messages to be downloaded into a folder your new external account will appear on the left side of the Zimbra web client as IMAP folders below your Zimbra account folders:
To retrieve messages in your external email account at any time, highlight one of the folders that contains your external account and click ‘Get External Email’:
Used with Personas, Zimbra’s external account feature allows you to send and receive email from many accounts at once within the Zimbra web client interface.
Tags: check pop imap zimbra, external server, zimbra external account, zimbra web client preferences, zimbra web interface
October 6th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Be careful, these accounts won’t be avalaible for use if you use Zimbra Desktop software
April 17th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
thanks very helpful post