Category: Gmail

I wasted a bunch of time chasing my butt with this issue, but sometimes IT is like that. The IMAP settings in the Spiceworks server application are like setting up any other IMAP e-mail client. But I kept getting an authentication error when setting email up for the helpdesk feature. Logs in the Spiceworks app also confirmed that it was an authentication error, but nothing further. I knew it shouldn’t be an authentication error and here is how I verified that:

• I was able to log into the Gmail helpdesk user account like any other user would log into their Gmail account using a web browser. This also means that I first had to remove 2-step verification from the account, but confirmed that I had a valid password.
• I set up the portable Thunderbird app on the server and IMAP worked just fine. So that got me down to thinking it was just Spiceworks, but in the end, It wasn’t spiceworks.

The issue was caused by a Gmail setting that by default is set to limit “less secure apps” access on the Google account. All that was required was to turn this setting on – meaning allow less secure apps to have access. Note that you won’t find this setting in Gmail itself, but rather under account settings.

Here is the link to the “allow less secure apps” setting:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en

I have automated e-mail messages sent to my Gmail-based work account. I like to periodically remove the older messages as they clutter up any e-mail searching that I need to do. There are ways around this problem but getting rid of useless messages works best for me.

Here is the command to select the messages to delete. Type this in the message search box (don’t use the label operator if it does not apply to you):

label:servers before:2019-01-01

Explained: select all messages prior to January 1, 2019 that are labeled as “servers”.

Once you confirm the messages are the ones that you actually want to delete, click the box to select all of the messages displayed on the page, then click “Select all conversations that match this search”. Then just click the trash icon.

Below is a link that takes you to a Google page that describes the various Gmail search operators. If it is broken, just do a search for “Gmail search operators.”

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en