Entourage deletes gmail

Question

I have successfully configured Entourage to check my gmail. I have set the gmail to "keep Gmail's copy in the inbox" when messages are accessed with POP. Also, "POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived"
Also, entourage is set to "Leave a copy of each message on the server (but to delete messages from server after they are deleted from this computer"
The problem is...I access my mail from an Entourage on my laptop and on my desktop MAC, both. Whichever one accesses the mail first, makes it so that the other can no longer download the gmail mail item.
In other words, the "Online Status," the yellow envelope, goes away after "Send & Receive" on the Entourage and it makes it seem that the item was deleted off the server.
BUT the item is not deleted off the server - if I log into web gmail the items are all still there. For some reason gmail will not let my Entourages download the mail more than once.
I do not have this problem with Cox mail - I can download the mail into both my laptop and my desktop. I do not have problems with duplicate downloads.
MacPro   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

Gmail POP access doesn’t work as a normal POP mail server would. Here are some of its idiosyncrasies:
1. Messages downloaded by any conventional POP mail client are marked as downloaded at the server (but not as read on the web), and no longer available to either the same or any other POP mail client.
2. To make already downloaded Gmail messages available for POP access again, you must go to Gmail’s Settings > Forwarding and POP page, select Enable POP for all mail, and click Save Changes, which will cause everything (and I mean everything) still there to be downloaded again. Alternatively, if you only want to download the last 30 days of mail, you can configure Mail in “recent mode” as described in How should I use POP on mobile or multiple devices?.
3. The Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > Remove copy from server settings have absolutely no effect on the messages stored on Gmail’s server. Gmail ignores any requests to delete messages from the server made by a POP client. What happens to the messages on the server after a POP client has downloaded them is determined by the corresponding Gmail’s setting alone.
4. Messages created and sent using the web interface will be downloaded by your POP mail client as if they were incoming messages. Although this may seem weird, it's good because it allows archiving all messages locally in Mail, regardless of how they were sent -- as long as you don't access the same Gmail account with more than one POP mail client, that is. You can set up a rule in Mail to automatically route those messages to the appropriate Sent mailbox (or to any other mailbox for that matter) if that's what you want.
5. Messages created and sent using a POP mail client such as Mail are also treated as if they were incoming messages for POP purposes, just as in 4. What prevents them from being downloaded is that Gmail marks them as already downloaded immediately. They would, however, be downloaded if Gmail settings were changed as described in 2 above.
6. As a particular case of 5, messages sent to yourself will appear in your Inbox on the web, but cannot be downloaded by either the same or any other POP mail client.