Reiner Saddey’s Place

Gmail Offline Access with Google Apps Premier Edition outside of the US

Posted on January 31st, 2009 by Reiner.
Categories: English, Computers.

I encountered a tiny problem using Gmail Offline with Google Apps Premier, that might apply only to some non-US countries.

The Create Desktop Shortcuts action does not create any shortcut at all (at the time of this writing and using Google Chrome). So how do I access my mails when offline?

The URL to be used for accessing Google Mail (gmail.com) as given in the help pages does not apply to Google Apps accounts. Normally I just access my Gmail by browsing to http://mail.saddey.net, eventually being redirected to https://mail.google.com/a/saddey.net/. When offline, mail.saddey.net cannot be accessed.

The work-around is both trivial and effective: Just navigate directly to the very same URL that shows up in your browser after invoking Gmail while being online. For convenience, you can create a shortcut of your own just as easily by right-clicking your desktop and selecting New, Shortcut and entering the full URL (from Google’s domain).

Notes: As of now (31-jan-09), using Gmail Offline with Google Apps Premier requires:

• A browser that is supported by the Google Labs feature (common but up-to-date ones will do)
• The Google Labs feature (”new features”) to be enabled in your Google Apps domain settings (if you don’t know what this is, please call your admins).
• The display language no longer needs to be set to English (US), your language might already be supported now.
• The Google Labs feature to be enabled in your personal Gmail settings
• Offline to be enabled in your personal Gmail Labs settings

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