How to add Google Workspace (G Suite) Email Account to Outlook

Just got a new Google Workspace account? You may face some problems while accessing it through your normal email clients. This tutorial is a complete guide on how to configure your Google Workspace account so that it works with your normal email clients. In this tutorial, we will cover the configuration setup on Microsoft Outlook. The steps are almost the same for other email clients.

Add Google Workspace to Outlook

Configuring your account to enable POP/IMAP access

POP and IMAP are communication protocols that allow email messages to be exchanged between email servers and email clients. POP (Post Office Protocol) was the first protocol developed, and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) was engineered later.

Both protocols are entirely different. The major difference is, that the POP (Post Office Protocol) configuration downloads and stores your emails locally, and making any changes to them does not affect the original content on the server. IMAP (Internet Messaged Access Protocol) setup lets you download and sync your emails across all clients and the server. IMAP is preferred these days because of its synchronization features.

Enabling IMAP access to a Gmail account from Apple Mail Enabling IMAP access to a Gmail account from Mozilla Thunderbird

Open up your Gmail inbox for the G Suite account you want to configure.
Hit the Settings icon in the top right corner, just below your profile picture. Select ‘Settings’ from the drop-down.
Head over to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab. Click on “Enable IMAP” and then click on ‘Save Changes’ leaving all other settings to defaults.

Now that you’ve configured Gmail, we need to configure Outlook to receive your emails. To do that, just follow similar configuration steps. You can also add this email address to your mobile phone by following the same steps.

Outlook Configuration

If you are opening Outlook for the first time, Add Account Setup will automatically pop out. Or you can manually select to add a new account.
Choose manual setup mode and hit ‘Next’. In the next step select the ‘POP or IMAP’ option.
Now, enter all the relevant details like your name and email address. Also, enter your login username and password. Now under server configuration, change the account type to IMAP.
In the ‘Incoming Mail Server settings, enter “imap.gmail.com” and in ‘Outgoing Mail Server’ enter “smtp.gmail.com”.
You can change your outgoing mail server settings by clicking on the ‘More Settings’ button and going to the ‘Outgoing Server’ tab. To use the same settings as your incoming mail server, check the checkbox and select ‘Use same settings as my incoming mail server.
Now go to the ‘Advanced’ tab, and exactly enter the details as follows:
Incoming Server (IMAP) Port: 993
Incoming encryption type: SSL
Outgoing Server (SMTP) Port: 587
Outgoing Encryption type: TLS
Server Time Out: 5 Minutes (Recommended)
Finally, save the settings and head to the next step.
Outlook will test your server settings and prompt you if anything goes wrong.

If everything goes well, you will see a successful message and your emails will start downloading.

Troubleshooting

If you’re unable to log in and Outlook is repeatedly asking for your password, you may have enabled 2-step login on your account. To disable the 2-step login or generate an app password, follow the steps below. App passwords are replacements for your normal passwords that can be used to log in to apps and other devices. You don’t need to remember app passwords and they can be easily generated.

Select the custom name from the drop-down and name the configuration whatever you wish. Hit the Generate button and copy the generated password. Now replace your original password with this password while logging in through outlook. You can save this password within Outlook for easy access.

How does Google Workspace work with Outlook?

Google Workspace works with Outlook without any problem if you set things up correctly. To start, enable IMAP/POP access in your Google Workspace account. Then, add the account to your Outlook client by choosing the POP or IMAP option. Be sure to add the correct incoming and outgoing servers, ports, encryption type, etc.

So, this is all about setting up and adding a G Suite account to Outlook. The process involves several steps, but they’re pretty easy to overcome.