>>>I get it. Thank you for clarifying. When I had a problem with my Outlook connecting to gmail, I was doing the same thing: getting emails using the browser.
>>
>>So now Google has you where they want you: they have your emails, and you don't.
>
>I will have to experiment with one of my gmail emails, switching it to IMAP and see how it works.
>I am still confused as to how I will be getting my emails (if I switch to IMAP) on my Outlook, iPhone, and iPad.
>I use Gmail a lot and have to find a way to continue doing it. The only other option, as far as I know, is to buy hosting on Go Daddy or another hosting company.

I've spent about three days on IMAP when my then office switched to it, and didn't quite get it that the folders that I see are not really on my machine, they're on the server. So whatever I do, I do there, and everybody suffers :). I switched back to POP3 as soon as I understood how IMAP works, and guess what, the POP3 was turned off next day. I pretty much gave up on office emails after that, others had to tell me if I have something, and I wrote the emails in what I remember as the worst piece of M$ shit, its web based client, which always had its own ideas about formatting, quoting etc and wouldn't let me apply mine. Very restricting, and somewhere about 7th position in the list of reasons why I quit.