How do I connect my Gmail to my Outlook 2003?

Gmail and Outlook Are Not Friends

• Why did my Outlook inbox empty when I started forwarding messages to a new account? Posted for SO: In September I set up my work e-mail (uses Outlook 2003) to be sent to my gmail account so I could read e-mails at home/in other offices (I wasn't familiar with our webmail options, which in retrospect would have been a lot easier). I found the Outlook forwarding settings to be very confusing and complicated, so I opted to have gmail retrieve my work e-mails by adding the account to my gmail settings. Everything was swell until I got a blackberry and decided I didn't want my work e-mails on my blackberry (confidential client information, etc.) and figured the best thing to do would be to remove my work e-mail from my gmail settings and create a new, special gmail account solely for my work e-mails. Shortly after I created the account and arranged for gmail to retrieve my work e-mails, all the messages in my Outlook inbox disappeared. Currently, the contents of my work e-mail account's inbox reside in my new gmail inbox, but nowhere else. The trouble is that I share my work e-mail account with another intern, so while I have access to our inbox through gmail, he can't access any e-mails that were in our inbox prior to the switch. I already went through my gmail settings and checked the little box that says "Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server," which has fixed things for new e-mails, but doesn't appear to be retroactive, meaning I still can't view any old e-mails in Outlook. Before I start forwarding every e-mail back to its original inbox, I'm wondering if there is any way to retrieve the e-mails that seem to have gotten lost. Any ideas?

• Answer:

  I found the Outlook forwarding settings to be very confusing and complicated, so I opted to have gmail retrieve my work e-mails by adding the account to my gmail settings. You or the intern or whoever has set their email client to use POP3 and to delete the messages off the server, which is the default in most email clients. I already went through my gmail settings and checked the little box that says "Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server," which has fixed things for new e-mails, but doesn't appear to be retroactive, meaning I still can't view any old e-mails in Outlook. That's correct. You deleted them. Before I start forwarding every e-mail back to its original inbox, I'm wondering if there is any way to retrieve the e-mails that seem to have gotten lost. Any ideas? You should ask your work IT people to restore from backup. A work around would be to use outlook to create PST file of all those emails (this involves connecting to your gmail account using outlook) then connecting that PST to your work Outlook and then copying the items back.