GMail goes ga ga.  Now you can access your GMail offline even when you don’t have internet. The only requisite is that you should have Google Gears installed for your browser.


Here are the Steps to activate your Offline GMail account

1. Sign in to Gmail and click ‘Settings’.
2. Click the ‘Labs’ tab and select ‘Enable’ next to ‘Offline Gmail’.





3. Click ‘Save Changes.’
4. In the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new ‘Offline’ link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.





5.”Install offline access for Gmail” will pop up. Click Install. This will install Google Gears also and re-start your browser.





6. Based on your email volume, Offline Gmail will download email that is newer than 5 years old excluding Spam & Trash.

TIP:


1.To evade browser restart you can install Google Gears from http://gears.google.com/.
2. Google Chrome browser have Gears already installed.



What can you do in offline Gmail


1. You can do everything except sending & receiving new mails.
2. If you compose and press send, the mail will be sent when you connect it to the internet.



How do I know if Gears is installed on a computer I am using?


1.Visit the page http://gears.google.com/. That page will clearly tell you whether Gears is installed or not.
2. Check the Add/remove programs



Flaky connection mode

An interesting feature is the useful flaky connection mode, by this you can:
1.Access the mail that’s stored locally on your computer, regardless of your connection status.
2.This makes it much faster to read and send mail, while you’re on a slow or flaky connection.
3.Your account will continue to sync in the background when it’s able to do so, with no disruption to your experience.



WARNING

If you remove or uninstall Google Gears all your offline data will be deleted.



Where will my emails be stored in my computer?


In the localserver.db – This is a SQLite database that keeps track of all files that are stored in the LocalServer across all domains. This file is used in the internals of the Gears code, and cannot be accessed without a Gears program.


The location of localserver.db will be inside:
Windows Vista – Internet Explorer
Location: {FOLDERID_LocalAppDataLow}\Google\Gears for Internet Explorer


Windows Vista – Firefox - Files are stored in the user local profile directory.
Location: C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile}.default\Gears for Firefox


Windows XP – Internet Explorer – Files are stored in the user local profile directory.
Location: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Gears for Internet Explorer


Windows XP – Firefox - Files are stored in the user local profile directory.
Location: C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile}\Gears for Firefox