How to Read the Same Email on a Laptop & Desktop
- 1). Connect to your free email service via the Internet. You may connect to any of the major free email services from either your laptop or desktop simultaneously to read and send email messages. Since the information contained within the email is stored on a central server housed by the email service provider, the messages are freely accessible at any time on either machine. As long as you have your user name or email address and password, you can log in to see your messages.
- 2). Log on to your private email account through the website's webmail client. Most hosting companies that offer you the chance to create emails in the form of 'yourname@yourdomain.com' also have a webmail client accessible through the control panel (cPanel) of your hosting account. Once you log in to your account, look for icons that say "email" or "webmail" to find the link to the emails stored on the server. You must have the email address and password assigned during the creation of the email account to access the webmail client. This process may be done on either the laptop or desktop to read the same email stored on the server.
- 3). Configure a desktop email client such as Outlook or Entourage to leave each email message on the server when downloading the information to your desktop or laptop. Many desktop applications download a copy of your email and then erase the copy stored on the server. This makes it impossible for the message to be read by other devices that connect to the server. In Outlook, simply click the check box next to the option to leave a copy on the server under the "Advanced" tab of the "More Settings" window of the individual email account you want to configure. In Entourage, the same task is accomplished in the "Options" tab of the "Edit Account" dialogue box accessed from the "Tools" menu.