Recently Gmail activated IMAP for selected accounts, and I appeared to not be one of them. However was it really for selected accounts or was it for ‘selected languages’?!

Reading about gmail on digg led me to an un-dug comment (I gave him a thumbs up!) saying that for IMAP to appear your language in gmail had to be set to ‘English (US)’. So I gave it a try, as I had mine on ‘English (UK)’ for the spelling. I logged into gmail, went to my ‘General’ settings and changed the language to ‘English (US)’, and saved the settings.

Lo – under settings, the IMAP option was now enabled!

As a test, I thought I would set my language settings back to ‘English (UK)’ and see what happens. Would you belive it turns it back off again.

Re-activating IMAP is as simple as using the US variation of the English language again.

I’m not the first to notice this though.

I’m not sure if this activates or deactivates the actual IMAP on your account, but it certainly makes the settings show or hide it. I wonder why Google thinks that only US speaking people should have access to IMAP. All the gmail users in the UK or Australia – take note if you want IMAP! With 5GB available now, it is even better.