Access all your emails from multiple accounts in Gmail

clip_image002You could set yourself up such that all your emails land in your Gmail inbox so that you avoid the hassle of logging in to multiple accounts online. You could also send emails from any of your other address, from your Gmail itself. This will save your time and effort, as a result make your life on the Internet a lot easy.

According to the Gmail blog:

“Whether you have an alumni address, a work account, or your own domain that you like to use, rather than logging in and out of multiple accounts, you can set yourself up so all your mail ends up in your Gmail inbox.”

This feature has been around for quite some time now, but not many make use of it.

Gmail tips on how to make this happen:

  • Use the free auto-forwarding or fetching option!
    • Go to your non-Gmail account.
    • Change settings and set your Gmail address as the forwarding target.
    • In case your non-Gmail account does not give you the option of forwarding, check if it supports POP3 access.
    • If yes, then use Mail Fetcher in Gmail to automatically check your non-Gmail account for new emails and download it to Gmail.
  • Set up Gmail’s custom “From:” to send an email using your non-Gmail email address:
    • Gmail’s custom “From:” feature will help you could send an email with one of your non-Gmail addresses listed as the sender in place of your Gmail address.
    • Just add the address you wish to use.
    • Verify that the email address belongs to you.
    • Using the address drop down, pick which address you want to reply from while composing an email.

Share your comments on what you think about this Gmail feature.

(Source: Gmail blog)

11 Comments

Prasannan June 16, 2009

I have been using it for quite sometime.

Still there are some problem associated with it.

The outgoing mails we send from gmail with a non-Gmail From address is sent by google and so headers will show “signed by” or “mailed by” column as gmail.com. This can raise some suspicions (and possibly can lead to embarrassing situation) especially in a corporate environment.

Also if the other emails accounts we have are free ones, we have to login to them once in a while so as to prevent the account from being deleted.

But it saves us from a lot of hassles since we need not remember multiple username & password combinations from various email ids anymore.

Chris Bruno June 16, 2009

I love using Gmail as my email client. I have several email accounts tied in so as to never worry about having email on my laptop vs. the PC on my Outlook.

However, when I send emails from my business account through the gmail client, it does indicate that this email was sent from my gmail account “on behalf of” my business account-I could do with out that for sure.

SEO Tips June 16, 2009

I am not a frequest user of gmail but there some really good feature which are attracting me to use it. I might give a try to this multiple email feature.

pawan June 16, 2009

hi, my account has been disabled. google send message.

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

Neville June 16, 2009

Swati if thats ur pic then u r beautiful.. Thanks for the topic. It sure helped.

Swati July 1, 2009

@Neville: Thank you 🙂

Lynette June 18, 2009

Is there an option that we can set to have gmail fetch the mail from the other accounts more frequently? That is the only issue I currently have.

Swati July 1, 2009

@ Lynette:
Can you please elaborate on the exact problem that you are facing? I didn’t understand the question very well.

Vivian August 7, 2009

I have the exact same thought as Lynette — is there some way we can set gmail to check my other account more frequently than it does now? Usually I like my email client to check the server every 5-10 minutes or so, but I’ve gotten emails with a ~30 minute delay and I can’t seem to be able to manually change that. Thanks!

Mobango March 10, 2010

@Vivian I believe that if you just click on your inbox link inside gmail it refreshes your emails and if there are new ones they should pop up then. I hope that helps you 🙂

Aditya Kane March 10, 2010

Thanks for the tip. 🙂