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I recently penned an introductory piece about ONLYOFFICE, where I described how the platform could be a nice internal replacement for Google Workspaces. The one thing the deployment of ONLYOFFICE misses out of the box is a pre-configured email account. Fortunately, the developers have made it fairly simple to add an email account to ONLYOFFICE so that you can bring just about all of your productivity needs into one place.

Below I will walk you through how to add an email account to your ONLYOFFICE deployment. First you'll need an instance of ONLYOFFICE running (which I demonstrated in the previously-mentioned article) and the details for the email account you wish to use. ONLYOFFICE supports both IMAP and POP protocols (which means you can also add your Gmail Account, as long as you have IMAP support turned on and an app password created).

Let's walk through adding an email account to ONLYOFFICE.

Access the email account add wizard

1. Log in to ONLYOFFICE

Open ONLYOFFICE in your web browser with a user account that needs to have the email account added (you don't have to be the admin user to do this). 

2. Open the mail account wizard

Once you've logged in, click the email icon near the top right of the window (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The email icon is the third from the right in the main toolbar.

Image: Jack Wallen

This will bring up the email account wizard tool (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The email account wizard explains some of the features found in ONLYOFFICE email.

Image: Jack Wallen

3. Configure your email account

Click Add New Account and, in the resulting window (Figure 3), click Advanced.

Figure 3: The basic email account tool probably won't be enough (unless your account supports autodiscovery).

Image: Jack Wallen

You can try to just type your email address and password to see if your email account works with autodiscovery. If so, type your credentials and click Add Account. If it doesn't work, you'll have to open the Advanced window (Figure 4) and add all of the necessary information for the account.

Figure 4: Here's where you configure your email account.

Image: Jack Wallen

After filling out the details for your email account, click Add Account, and ONLYOFFICE will connect with your mail server and popup to let you know the account has been added (Figure 5).

Figure 5: My email account has been successfully added.

Image: Jack Wallen

Click OK, and you'll be directed to the ONLYOFFICE email app, where you can start working with your email. 

For Gmail accounts

For those who want to add a Gmail account, you'll need to first enable IMAP in Gmail > Settings > See all settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > IMAP access. Once you've taken care of that, here are the settings you need to use.

Incoming email:

• imap.gmail.com
• Port: 993
• Authentication type: Simple password
• Login: Gmail address
• Password: Your Gmail password. If you have 2FA enabled for Gmail, you'll have to use an App Password (create one in your Google Account under Security > Signing into Google > App Passwords).
• Encryption for IMAP Server: SSL

Outgoing email:

• smtp.gmail.com
• Port: 465
• Authentication type: Simple Password
• Login: Your Gmail address
• Password: Your Gmail password. If you have 2FA enabled for Gmail, you'll have to use an App Password (create one in your Google Account under Security > Signing into Google > App Passwords).
• Encryption for IMAP Server: SSL

Click OK, and your account is ready.

Congratulations, you've just added an email account to ONLYOFFICE, so now you're closer to having a drop-in replacement for Google Workspaces on your local network.

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