Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account

Written by: Peter Jalbert on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
Posted to: Gmail
122 comments, add yours!

Having a multitude of email addresses, I thought of simplyfing my life and workflow one day. I realized I’ve been wasting too much time checking up on my email from various places. There are the different Gmail accounts, Yahoo mail accounts, and even those from my own domains.

As for domains, I actually had some applications for Gmail for domains activated already–this means I could use Gmail as the default mail handler for my domain email. No more of that crappy webmail that usually comes with hosting subscriptions. In my opinion, Gmail is simply the best webmail application ever. Just an opinion, of course, but who doesn’t like that threaded-mail view and the simple interface (no clutter like those of Yahoo! and Hotmail).

One mailbox to rule them all!

Hence, Gmail being the best for me, I thought of consolidating ALL my email under one account. The Gmail hosted solution is good, but face it, when you’ve been using a Gmail account for a long time (I’ve been using it since the first beta / “by invite only” stage) you tend to have a close affinity to that one. All your contacts are there. All your stored conversations are there. It’s like one big reference you simply cannot live without. And it’s such a hassle having to log in and out of Gmail accounts whenever you have the need to check up on something that’s stored on one of your accounts.

So my solution: keep them all under one account.

You need two things:

  1. Mail forwarding
  2. Gmail “send from” feature

That’s easy, isn’t it? Almost all webmail (and domain email) accounts have forwarding. And Gmail has a “send from” or “send as” feature that lets you send from any address you’ve proven to be your own. Theoretically, you can make use of your Gmail address to be your universal inbox, and also the account from which you send email from any of the other addresses you own.

Step-by-step

Here’s how to do it step-by-step.

  1. Set up your other email to forward to your desired Gmail account. Most web-based emails have this. If you are using a hosted solution (for your own domain, for instance), you can control mail forwarding with cPanel, Plesk, or whichever control panel your provider uses. If in doubt, ask your host’s customer service.
  2. Set up Gmail to “send as” your alternative email address. Go to Settings–Accounts. Under “Send mail as,” click “Add another email address.” Enter your name and alternative email address here. You may also add a “reply to” address if you want your users to reply to a different email by default.
  3. Click “Next step,” then “Verify.” Gmail will then send your alternative address the verification link and code.
  4. Since you’ve already set up your alternative email to forward messages to Gmail, simply open up your Gmail inbox (in a new window, perhaps) to get the code. Click on the verification link, and your new “send from” address will be activated.

Sending from your alternative email addresses is simple. Everytime you compose new mail, you will be presented a drop-down box from which you can choose among the addresses your email will be using as “sender.” When replying, meanwhile, you can select under the Settings–Accounts menu whether to reply using your “default” address or reply using the address the email was sent to.

Now you can use Gmail to handle incoming messages to your alternative email address, and also to send messages from this address. You can set-up up to as many “send from” addresses as needed!

No more accessing multiple email accounts to get your mail!

Get more out of Gmail

We regularly update our Gmail tips section, check it out. For example, did you know you can use Google Groups to backup your Gmail?

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Share This   122 comments, add yours!

122 Responses to “Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account”

  1. chrison 24 Jun 2006 at 9:20 am

    I understand that you say most webmail have forwarding as an option but so far as I can tell Yahoo mail does not have that. Do you know if there is a way of forwarding yahoo mail to my gmail account with upgrading to yahoo mail plus.?

  2. chrison 24 Jun 2006 at 9:21 am

    I understand that you said most webmail have a forwarding ability. Do you know if its possible to forward email with yahoo without upgrading to yahoo mail plus because so far as i can tell I can’t find a way and I would really like to be able to do that.

  3. Chris Hathawayon 24 Jun 2006 at 9:43 am

    Try this out: http://www.e-eeasy.com/MigrateYahooToGmail.aspx. It requires a couple of downloads, but I think it works okay. Also, I think google has something in the works, where you could get your email from any account that has POP3 (yahoo has it already).

  4. un labeled » seis em umon 24 Jun 2006 at 11:21 am

    [...] o googletutor tem um tutorial bem feito sobre como usar a conta do gmail como único endereço de email, redireccionando todos os outros endereços para o gmail, e poupar tempo. [...]

  5. MikeBon 24 Jun 2006 at 12:22 pm

    The gmail send as feature sucks. It use to work great but now all mail sent using this features shows “From Me on behalf of Me2″.

    I just want it to say from ME!

  6. BruceMagnuson 24 Jun 2006 at 12:43 pm

    Hotmail doesn’t seem to have forwarding either.

  7. PhilPon 24 Jun 2006 at 12:45 pm

    The gmail send as feature sucks. It use to work great but now all mail sent using this features shows “From Me on behalf of Me2″.

    Yes, I agree. This causes all kinds of confusion, because there are a lot of other mail clients out there that are (improperly, I realize) configured to save/respond to the “From:” address instead of the “Reply to:”.

    I’ve been trying the gmail-as-only-account for some time now–ever since they came out with the send as feature–but this problem is making me lean strongly toward abandoning it.

  8. Chrison 24 Jun 2006 at 4:58 pm

    Why not just use Mail.app or another email client, configured to receive all email from all acounts? then send from whichever account you want to? I do this and use Gmail as my main acct.

  9. [...] Google Tutor & Advisor » Blog Archive » Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account (tags: Google HowTo Tech) [...]

  10. Thilakon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:10 pm

    Thanks, I knew about forwarding, but i didn’t know about send as feature.

    Overall this is a great article

  11. Robert L. Wessaon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:13 pm

    confusing to say the least!

  12. outofasson 24 Jun 2006 at 6:19 pm

    I think this post was totally stupid.
    None of the suggested solutions work in practice.
    First, almost no webmail provides mail forwarding for free.
    Second, as the post above says, Google just writes:
    “Me on behalf of Me2″ which ruins the whole thing…

    Waste of time for lots of users.

    My two cents.

  13. ericon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:38 pm

    Or instead of doing all that, you could just download Mozilla Thunderbird and download the WebMail extension with the corresponding exensions for your mail hosts (hotmail, yahoo, gmail) and have all of your email in one client.

    Look in the mozillazine forums for the webmail extensions.

  14. SEARCH ENGINES Webon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:43 pm

    Thank you for that tip, it will be helpful

    BTW: :-)

    you just made Digg Frontpage

  15. Stevenon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:53 pm

    Actually, if you have a webhosting account or any other type of e-mail hosting service, forwarding your mail off of that server is generally a bad idea.

    The reason being, is that if you have your own domain (i.e domain.com) and you set up mark@domain.com to forward to your gmail account, then as mark@domain.com gets spam, that spam is forwarded on to gmail.com. Now I’m not entirely sure how gmail works with this, but other large providers such as AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail, will see these forwarded spam messages as originating from your webhost’s server. If they receive enough of these spam messages, they will block the webhost’s server. Then not only does your mail for mark@domain.com not forward to gmail, but nobody else on that server can write to an @gmail.com account. Again, I’m not sure if this is relevant for GMail, but I do know that it holds true when forwarding mail to AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail, so I can only assume that it is just a matter of time before GMail adopts this procedure.

  16. Joeon 24 Jun 2006 at 6:59 pm

    is there a way to sort my inbox to view mail by the individual email account messages separately?

  17. Annaon 24 Jun 2006 at 7:31 pm

    this works perfectly fine for me…and as for sorting your mail you can set up gmail label/filters to do that

  18. Jeffon 24 Jun 2006 at 7:33 pm

    I agree what I thought was going to be an answer to prayer…is NOT! Who wants incoming e-mail to say “Me on behalf of Me2″?

    Remove that glitch and you’ve got a good thing though.

  19. Obleyon 24 Jun 2006 at 7:46 pm

    Joe says:

    is there a way to sort my inbox to view mail by the individual email account messages separately?

    filters

  20. [...] more | digg story No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]

  21. Obleyon 24 Jun 2006 at 7:52 pm

    “Who wants incoming e-mail to say “Me on behalf of Me2″?”

    I just tested this.. and it did not do that.

  22. Obleyon 24 Jun 2006 at 8:08 pm

    actually it did but thunderbird just
    added a “sender” along with the “from”

    dang

  23. yagooon 24 Jun 2006 at 8:42 pm

    Yahoo Mail offers forwarding or pop3 (which can be used by gmail to retrieve emails from yahoo mail) but its a premium service so you would have to pay to get it. Hotmail as well used to allow remote fetching of mail via outlook but that again has been disabled and made into a premium service.

  24. Patrickon 24 Jun 2006 at 8:48 pm

    Before I switched to Gmail, I had been using Hotmail for many years. When I made the switch, I forwarded all my Hotmail emails to my new Gmail account. Also, because of Gmail’s search power, I just archived all of the forwarded messages without filtering or labelling them. I immediately stopped using my Hotmail account.

    Also, I created two additional Gmail accounts and forwarded them to my default Gmail account. I use these extra two addresses for website registration and any other potentially spam inducing activity. And I forward my blog domain email to my default Gmail account as well. I labels to differentiate mail from each account. Thus, mail from four email addresses arrive in my one default Gmail account Inbox and at a glance I can see via their respective labels from which account the message was forwarded.

    I love Gmail! Too bad many people are so resistant to leaving their temporary ISP email accounts behind. No matter how much I evangelize Gmail to them, often ISP email users just don’t get it.

  25. [...] read more | digg story [...]

  26. fullfilthon 24 Jun 2006 at 9:05 pm

    email service that dont have forwarding features sucks. hopefully gmail will have features to handle pop3 and imap too.

  27. [...] http://www.googletutor.com/2006/06/20/using-gmail-as-your-universal-email-account/ [...]

  28. johnon 25 Jun 2006 at 12:43 am

    My understanding is that Gmail’s “glitch” of ““Me on behalf of Me2″ is actually a standards-compliant approach. I don’t know all the logistics, however.

    Regardless, it IS an annoyance. The whole point of doing this is so you don’t have to reveal your “one inbox that rules them all” yet still interact with your other email accounts.

  29. Leson 25 Jun 2006 at 2:08 am

    I have also used Gmail as a ‘catchall’ - and loved it until — their outbound server got flagged by Spamcop and my outbound messages starting getting delayed. Now try and contact a human being at G-Mail to get that resolved - 3 months and counting…..

  30. Bob Tayloron 25 Jun 2006 at 5:29 am

    offers a email forwarding service that allow you to select email domain namesfrom practically any sports or leisure activity. For example you can choose email addresses like bob@ImAllAboutGolf.com or sara@ImAllAboutMe.com and all email sent to the custom email address will be forwarded to your existing gmail account. I’m not sure why but the service only works with a gmail hosted email accounts.

  31. Bob Tayloron 25 Jun 2006 at 5:30 am

    ImAllAbout.com offers a email forwarding service that allow you to select email domain namesfrom practically any sports or leisure activity. For example you can choose email addresses like bob@ImAllAboutGolf.com or sara@ImAllAboutMe.com and all email sent to the custom email address will be forwarded to your existing gmail account. I’m not sure why but the service only works with a gmail hosted email accounts.

  32. Matton 25 Jun 2006 at 5:43 am

    Yeah, mail forwarding is totally awesome. I have multiple gmail accounts so i set them to forward to one account and then archive the original copy! - perfect!

    Gmail owns!

  33. Matton 25 Jun 2006 at 5:46 am

    Some typo for my blog.

  34. Anonymouson 25 Jun 2006 at 8:24 am

    Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account

    If you have allot of e-mail accounts, and want to manage all of them from one place, this tutorial may for you.

  35. Growing Localon 25 Jun 2006 at 6:39 pm

    Work Smarter: Email

    Aah, email. I love email, because it lets me stay in touch with people across the country, as well as people in the next town. And yet, I hate email too. Why? Because I’ve just started work, and I’m really productive and really getting …

  36. [...] Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account (Google Tutor) I realized I’ve been wasting too much time checking up on my email from various places. (tags: gmail email howto) [...]

  37. [...] LINK  [...]

  38. Kimon 26 Jun 2006 at 10:39 am

    I use Yahoo Mail Plus as my universal mail client. I forward my gmail to Yahoo and I have all of the same functionality you are describing and more. I have an alias and disposable addresses so I can just drop an address like a hot potato if I receive spam from it. And I know WHO to bring my complaint to if I do get SPAM. It becomes traceable where that address came from.

    Like mentioned above, Yahoo also allows you to send from multiple addresses and thus far, it does the mail thing better than google at this time. Not to say that that won’t change in the future, but….

  39. [...] Using Gmail as Your Universal Email Account [Google Tutor] You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. RSS 2.0 [...]

  40. golf-golfon 27 Jun 2006 at 3:21 am

    Hi .. nice tips.

    I have questions though , I hope you can help me.
    I got gmail hosted for domain.

    I have 2 mail clients .. at home (incredimail) and at the office microsoft outlook.

    Previously I can download my email to both at home and at the office, however after I change to gmail hosted for domain ,
    any email that i downloaded at home, it is not downloadable anymore at the office, and vice versa ..

    ANybody can help me ?
    thx

  41. aaryaon 27 Jun 2006 at 10:25 am

    hi guys i request u all to invite me from ur gmail plz becaus i wamt an account to be open plz. can any one invite me from ur gmail .my email id is rockdudeofxgenerationajay@yahoo.in or rockingdudeisin@yahoo.in

  42. [...] Using GMail as Your Universal Email Account GMail allows you to send from an address, but it will not check POP accounts. Yahoo DOES check POP accounts, but does not let you send from different addresses (unless you pay up). [...]

  43. Jimon 28 Jun 2006 at 6:00 am

    Thanks for the tip, and I’m giving it a test run at the moment. I definitely prefer Gmail for keeping track of all my email. I just never realized before that it could be used to manage several accounts, and I’ve been using Gmail almost since its inception.

  44. naseron 28 Jun 2006 at 8:31 pm

    That wasn’t a very bright advice. Its tough to forward mails from mainstream email providers like Yahoo or Homail. So using gmail universally can be quite a pain; although I do agree that Gmail is “MY CHOICE FOR WEB-BASED” mail out there :D

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  46. superflyon 02 Jul 2006 at 7:59 am

    is any one able to invite me to g mail because i need to use google talk PLEASE HELP ta!

  47. raon 03 Jul 2006 at 9:42 pm

    how do you set the forwarding from hotmail to gmail??

  48. scotchneaton 06 Jul 2006 at 3:14 am

    You can now change your gmail account settings to have it reply automatically from the address to which an email was sent.

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34528

  49. nabilaon 17 Jul 2006 at 11:22 pm

    hi ,
    i activate my google account, but now i want to activate a gmail account , how can i do,
    i read that i must have an invitation to get a gmail account, cant you help to have a gmail account,
    thank’s

  50. stevenon 22 Jul 2006 at 2:12 pm

    how do i activate my google account.
    please answer

  51. omar ilkaboqolon 06 Aug 2006 at 10:03 pm

    how do you set the forwarding from hotmail to gmail??

  52. Amiton 07 Aug 2006 at 1:49 pm

    I m extremely disappointd with gmail . You talk of universal account , i m repenting to even have my account since i lost all my data and contacts which i have in my gmail account . It just disabled my account not even a warning or anything . How can they act so irresponsible .
    When they proclaim themselves as a gr88 company thsi is not what gr88 companies do . There are so many people asking for a solution sionce last so many months but no one to come forward and give us .
    This is such an unprofessional attitude .. wish someone here would help us solve teh account disable problem.

  53. Neilon 14 Aug 2006 at 3:59 pm

    At my office, access to webmails such as gmail, yahoo is blocked..How can I access gmail from the office..I would prefer to download emails online & not offline through a POP account.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  54. reggeron 16 Aug 2006 at 7:03 pm

    Hello, I have a premium account with Yahoo that I receive all of my email from my domain and various other email accounts. Since I quote often use a few different computers this works out great. The one feature of Yahoo’s that I cannot seem to figure out if Gmail has, is the ability to download (Yahoo calls it “archive”) all of my emails. Yahoo lets you download a zip file of all of your emails. It downloads them as .eml files. Then all you do is drag and drop them into Outlook Express and you’re all set. This really helps because I can quickly reach my 2Gig limit with Yahoo. As far as I can tell Gmail does not have this capability. Can anyone she light on this subject? Thank you so much.

  55. GT Staffon 17 Aug 2006 at 10:36 am

    Neil, try using a VPN.

  56. ratloson 21 Aug 2006 at 4:08 pm

    how can I forward emails from a hotmail account to my (brand new) gmail?? can’t find the feature (if it exists), help!

  57. lokesh dhagaton 22 Aug 2006 at 5:24 am

    hi ,
    i activate my google account, but now i want to activate a gmail account , how can i do,
    i read that i must have an invitation to get a gmail account, cant you help to have a gmail account,
    thank’s
    samghra_shrilopk@yahoo.com

  58. M Tariq Ashrafon 26 Aug 2006 at 8:44 am

    I just want to know, can i make gmail as my emailing system for my own domain, for example my email address is “example@mydomain.com” and this is working on gmail mailing system.

  59. premiumon 27 Aug 2006 at 2:11 am

    thanks!

  60. Pimon 30 Aug 2006 at 1:46 am

    You can now change your gmail account settings to have it reply automatically from the address to which an email was sent.

    http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34528

    I want this too but by forwarding (by filter of by setting). Anyone know if this is possible?

  61. Vivekon 02 Sep 2006 at 12:51 am

    My gmail account was disabled today,i sent a support request but i got no reply from them.What to do now

  62. vaibhavon 06 Sep 2006 at 3:25 am

    how to activate accountin g mail

  63. shilpa4goon 12 Sep 2006 at 7:33 pm

    i love google

  64. john son 18 Sep 2006 at 8:09 am

    I was using GMAIL for all my mail but my account was disabled on 9/14 with no notice. I have contacted GMAIL several times through their web forms but have received no news.They have no telephone support and the excuse used by some that is in beta really doesn’t make it dependable. Even if I get my account back, I will not use it as my primary. THeir support is non existent.

  65. Nickon 21 Sep 2006 at 9:45 am

    Wow. that is something so esay, yet so practical and efficient. i can’t believe i didn’t think of it before. thanks!

  66. pradeepkumar _1504@gmail.comon 28 Sep 2006 at 7:50 pm

    i am not getting gmail account of id pradeepkumar _1504

  67. Tackon 01 Nov 2006 at 4:12 pm

    Yep,
    this system certainly works - until you get your Gmail account disabled for no known reason!

    Non-the-less, I still use it :-)
    Tack

  68. ACon 03 Nov 2006 at 5:50 pm

    How can I forward my AOL e-mail to gmail?

  69. [...] Changing the “send from” address. Most other webmail providers will charge you for the ability to change your “sender” address. While there are security concerns with the ability to change email sender addresses on the fly, Gmail will actually let you do this as long as you can verify that you are indeed the owner of the particular email address you want added. You can even use Gmail as your universal email inbox and outbox! [...]

  70. michael grayon 12 Jan 2007 at 11:04 pm

    As for the “From gmail on behalf of yourmail.com” issue…

    If you COMPOSE and SEND from gmail browswer itself, it places a true “from” field with your other email address.

    if you SEND the email via gmail SMTP server, than it mangles the from to be “from you@gmail.com on behalf of you@yourdomain.com“. But it does set the replyto correctly.

    The STMP server can be exploted by spammers, etc. and gmail doesn’t want that. The Web interface can’t (at least not so far!) so they don’t do the annoying “reveal” of your gmail address.

  71. Jeffon 16 Jan 2007 at 4:39 pm

    As for the “From gmail on behalf of yourmail.com” issue…

    If you COMPOSE and SEND from gmail browswer itself, it places a true “from” field with your other email address.

    if you SEND the email via gmail SMTP server, than it mangles the from to be “from you@gmail.com on behalf of you@yourdomain.com”. But it does set the replyto correctly.

    The STMP server can be exploted by spammers, etc. and gmail doesn’t want that. The Web interface can’t (at least not so far!) so they don’t do the annoying “reveal” of your gmail address.

    I exclusively use the the gmail browser for my e-mail and never use SMTP; however, I still will get the “on behalf of” annoyance when the e-mail is viewed in certain programs (Outlook 2003+).

  72. mohan0005on 17 Jan 2007 at 9:40 am

    ok

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  74. habibon 27 Jan 2007 at 4:24 pm

    i want to creat my gmail but i have failed can u help me in this field

  75. Going Google at Shannon O’Neillon 29 Jan 2007 at 1:06 am

    [...] The first step involved setting up Gmail to manage all of my email accounts, then switching to Google Reader for all of my RSS feeds. With this accomplished I’ve ditched Mozilla Thunderbird. Then I ditched Time & Chaos, by setting up Google Calendar, Google Notebook and a to do list. [...]

  76. Vijayon 29 Jan 2007 at 10:52 am

    Just to monkey with this I tried accesing my wife’s email account through my gamil .. and it worked like a charm. But not I cannot get to remove it. I Deleted the account from the Setting –> Accounts tab. I dont have a send as drop down when I compose, but I still get all her email !!!
    Help

  77. GT Staffon 30 Jan 2007 at 6:19 am

    Vijay, make sure you also delete forwarding from your wife’s account. If it’s also Gmail, check he POP and forwarding options (or maybe the filters if you are forwarding using a filter).

  78. Brianon 08 Feb 2007 at 10:15 pm

    If i add my old hotmail address to my gmail account like you said in your statements, will the emails sent to my old email address show up in my gmail? Please email me thanks.

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  80. GT Staffon 13 Feb 2007 at 12:37 pm

    Brian, if you do set your hotmail account to forward to gmail, then yes you will get messages sent to hotmail in your Gmail inbox.

    I hope that’s what you meant.

  81. Sarahon 19 Feb 2007 at 6:28 pm

    Ok I think we’ve all been saying here that you can’t forward from hotmail to gmail.

    So GT Staff, if there is a way to do this, there are millions of people waiting to hear how…

    Including me.

  82. Mikeon 02 Mar 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Hello GT Staff…

    We need an answer as to why we can’t get our HOTMAIL using the Universal Account…

    Is paying for the upgraded Hotmail account the only way to do this?

    Thanks…

  83. Mike Howardon 11 Mar 2007 at 4:39 pm

    Guys — I already have a gmail account and a gmail address. All I want is a second email address that sounds more business-like. IMPOSSIBLE. I keep getting referred back to my first one. Can I do this or not? How? I am not interested in having any mail go to my gmail except emails specified for those addresses by senders.

    Doesn’t sound complicated, does it? It is. Would love an answer via hotmail (leftbank@hotmail.com)

    Thangya, thangya verramuch…

  84. GT Staffon 11 Mar 2007 at 11:44 pm

    Hi Mike. What do you mean? I take it you try to sign up using a different Gmail acount, but your browser keeps on showing you the one for your original Gmail account?

    If that is the case, then you can either try logging out from Gmail completely, before signing up for/signing in to a different account.

    Or you can try using a different browser to avoid confusion.

  85. Matton 24 Mar 2007 at 11:11 am

    Ok guys, did someone figure out once and for all how to forward hotmail emails to a gmail account??
    If you know how to do this, help please!!!

  86. Jordanon 05 Apr 2007 at 12:00 pm

    If you COMPOSE and SEND from gmail browswer itself, it places a true “from” field with your other email address.

    if you SEND the email via gmail SMTP server, than it mangles the from to be “from you@gmail.com on behalf of you@yourdomain.com”. But it does set the replyto correctly.

    The STMP server can be exploted by spammers, etc. and gmail doesn’t want that. The Web interface can’t (at least not so far!) so they don’t do the annoying “reveal” of your gmail address.

    This has not been my experience, and your post is the first time I’ve read such a statement. The “on behalf of” message occurs because Gmail adds a “Sender” field with your Gmail address to all outgoing e-mails, no matter how they’re sent. Certain versions of Outlook (which together must account for well over 50% of installed e-mail clients) read the “Sender” field and use this to generate the “On behalf of” message.

    The claim is that this is an anti-spam feature, but my Fastmail.fm account, which similarly allows me to “send” as other users, uses the “X-Sender” field instead. Result: no “on behalf of”.

  87. Bill Linon 10 Apr 2007 at 11:57 am

    I have been using gmail as my main point of contact to the outside world, indeed it is good … when it works. After my account got disabled without a trace of reason and without any response and support from Gmail, I realized I made a stupid mistake to put faith in them. You can imagine how painful it is to re-establish the lost contact information that went down with the disabled gmail. Conclusion: Gmail is good, but before it got out of Beta, keep it as a nice-to-have backup.

  88. Krissi B.on 13 Apr 2007 at 9:15 am

    That is excellent info and I thank you for doing the leg work. Unfortunately, Yahoo! (and many others) have found a way around this nifty trick, but requiring one to ‘upgrade’/pay for the Forwarding service. Not so much fun!

  89. Britgirlon 15 Apr 2007 at 4:09 pm

    This was a very interesting thread. I am a dedicated Windows Live Mail premium user and have been for years(as Hotmail). I also have a Gmail account which I used for my blog and responding to places where I don’t necessarily want my name, as in my hotmail. It forwarded to my Hotmail.

    I would have believed all the praise about Gmail, if it wasn’t for the fact that suddenly and without warning last Friday they disabled my account. As has been the case here,no response via their website, even when I clicked their indicated link. I’ve no idea why they disabled it…I’ve not broken any of their terms and conditions.I am thanking my stars that it was mainly my blog email traffic and that I use my Hotmail for my important stuff.I cannot imagine how I would have coped losing all my important contacts and emails going back years.

    I like Gmail and the way it links conversations and makes things easy to find - and I do have a Google account and other services, plus I set up another gmail for my blog email.

    But trust them again?

    Never.
    Livemail will stay my primary email account.

  90. Mary Koeson 17 Apr 2007 at 10:48 pm

    How prevalent is this account disabled thing? I recently switched to gmail and my account was disabled on 4/8 (for no reason and with no warning). I submitted a report and “Google Team” responded on 4/11 saying the problem was resolved. Only it wasn’t. I still (4/17) can’t access my account. Fortunately I have other email accounts but this has caused a number of headaches.

    It seems that it is misleading to offer email and then cut it off without warning, even if it is in their TOS. How do I know what Google does with my contacts and emails after my account is disabled? Can a bank close your account and keep your money?

    Very frustrated…

    Mary

  91. Zhang Ningon 26 Apr 2007 at 12:03 am

    Oh my god, I just found that my gmail account was disabled, without giving a reason or a warning in advance. I have stored over three thousands of my emails in the account going back to 2004 (some of them are very important), and i have no other backup!! what a horrible thing!!!

  92. Ashon 26 Apr 2007 at 4:58 am

    My account was disabled this morning - I have lost all my contacts and booking details for an upcoming holiday. It happened without warning and there has been no contact to my backup email address or via multiple requests through their web forms. I dont even get a ’support ticket’. I am absolutely fuming and reading around I dont expect to get back into it. I’ll be emailing all my contacts about what happened thats for sure. I feel so violated and I’m making sure nobody else uses it if I have any say.

  93. How to play craps and winon 21 May 2007 at 6:00 pm

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  94. Jeremyon 25 May 2007 at 1:32 pm

    I set up a website via googlepages for a festival I’m coordinating in NY in June. Our PR guy gave me a list of media contacts to email the press release to. Between his people and my people that’s over 800 people. Now my account–and with it, because it’s on the same account,my homepage–are disabled because I may be a spammer. The thing is, it’s not spam. It’s a press release going to press people who expect unsolicited press releases. I mean that’s their job.

    So now I’m screwed, right? Unless Google Help gets back to me and says “Okay. Sorry about that,” I’m screwed.

    2 questions: What happens to those who respond to the press release? Do their emails bounce back to them? Do they sit in the disabled account for eternity? Or do they get forwarded to my other account on file?

    The other question is, Will the help desk actually help or is this another frustrating corporate front that never returns your inquiries?

    I tried asking this in the 24hoursupport.helpdesk Google Group but instead of actually helping, everyone there just hurled insults my way. Is this really the best I’m going to get from gmail? A disabled account and a bunch of anonymous “helpers” swearing at me, calling me names for no reason?

  95. vishnu vikramon 03 Jul 2007 at 1:02 am

    Yahoo stopped forwarding its mail to others and at the same time it has stopped the pop3 mail service for its free yahoo mail users. Its really sad thing..

    we can receive any mail account to yahoo but not vice-versa.

  96. nevineon 31 Jul 2007 at 3:29 am

    I wanna check my mail without use of mail.googe.com

  97. 8-BITon 16 Aug 2007 at 9:12 am

    You can use an another gmail account + gmail drive.
    I don’t know how many accounts i use at the same time and i had no problem.

    But for keep files the finest solution is FTP, as my sense.

  98. Jimmyon 18 Aug 2007 at 7:13 am

    I was using a small free application called Getmail to forward mail from an old Hotmail account into my main Gmail account. However, today, when I went to the Hotmail account to do a periodic change of password, I saw that they now offer forwarding. I set it up, tested it, and it works like a charm. I should point out however, that my Hotmail account is a paid for premium account (only £15 a year though) and I have no idea if this is offered in free accounts.

  99. Geek Girl: Google to School > thepinkcon 21 Aug 2007 at 4:41 am

    [...] This is a powerful information warehouse. You can even set up your school email address to forward to Gmail and utilize Gmail as your one-stop email stop. Directions for using Google as your universal email account can be found at Google Tutor. [...]

  100. Surferon 30 Aug 2007 at 2:45 am

    How about Izymail forwarding to Gmail. Its free but for only 3 or 4 weeks. Then they start to charge but it might be useful for those who are migrating from Hotmail to Gmail and can get everything together within that time frame.

  101. amiton 11 Sep 2007 at 3:20 pm

    hey, i forgot my gmail password ,plz help me
    i don’t know where should i complaint for this
    plz tell me (even i m not getting password reset email on my secondary email id)…….

    whosoever is reading this plz inform me on my yahoo id “khurana29_amit@yahoo.co.in”…plz

    or complaint for this to customer service plzz

  102. amiton 11 Sep 2007 at 3:25 pm

    give me the customer care email id so that i may complaint for this………..

    plz
    plz
    plz

  103. annieon 01 Nov 2007 at 9:16 am

    now that google has imap, how can you make use of this between gmail accounts?

  104. ken bon 10 Nov 2007 at 9:21 am

    WEB mail send to function doesn’t work; reroutes
    webpage back to gmail; how to fix?
    ken b

  105. Ralph Pooleon 07 Dec 2007 at 11:49 am

    Yes, I did the same thing. I find Gmail better than Outlook! I can aggregate all my mail and send it out under a consistent address. I just wish they had more options for signitures.

  106. [...] it wasn’t my main Gmail account into which five other email accounts flow into (that would have been an unmitigated disaster if THAT account (with nearly 4000 emails) had been [...]

  107. Yash Palon 12 Dec 2007 at 12:35 am

    How can I know the emailer’s location thru mail only?

  108. Gmail Epiphanieson 14 Dec 2007 at 10:30 am

    [...] you wanted to have your mails forwarded to another inbox, Gmail allows forwarding FOR FREE. So as we claimed in a past article, Gmail may well be the one “mailbox to rule them all” [...]

  109. dddon 14 Dec 2007 at 12:52 pm

    Can i use this for forwarding from aol?

  110. Caryon 24 Dec 2007 at 4:13 am

    I accessed my gmail account for the last time about 7 hours ago, now, it has been disabled (with that disabled message on the Web interface). I do have another gmail account that I checked and it works, so it wasn’t a system-wide problem.

    I’d like to thank the Gmail team for their Christmas present. My freelance business correspondence was in this account. My personal billing was tied into this account. I had recently rerouted all e-mail to the account after I cancelled another paid service. I had several documents in their system, especially one I was working with recently.

    While the accessibility of e-mail anywhere is a good dream, one can never be certain when disaster for a reason or no reason like this will strike. The original method of keeping e-mail in a popmail client is still the best, and I am definitely going back to that method thanks to gmail’s unreliable and unreasonable account disable feature.

    And to think I recommended buying stock in their company….

  111. Davidon 24 Dec 2007 at 6:07 am

    My email account has also been disabled for no known reason this morning. Ridiculous!

    I am a free lance consultant and every business remail that i have every written has gone; inc. invoices, progress reports etc.

    How can a service provider do this and expect to remain in business.

    SAY NO TO GMAIL.

  112. ferozkhanon 25 Dec 2007 at 10:00 am

    please activate my google account

  113. Karenon 28 Dec 2007 at 10:29 am

    My gmail account was disabled Christmas Eve day. I followed the instructions for a disabled account and it was restored with an apology from Gmail. Then, the next day, it was disabled again. I am hoping to get back into it, but seeing the other folks here with issues makes me think there was a larger problem. If so, Gmail should say so and correct the issue.

  114. Google to School » thepinkcon 31 Dec 2007 at 9:01 pm

    [...] This is a powerful information warehouse. You can even set up your school email address to forward to Gmail and utilize Gmail as your one-stop email stop. Directions for using Google as your universal email account can be found at Google Tutor. [...]

  115. [...] It is not so good to rely on one email provider alone, even if it’s Google. I will have to do something about [...]

  116. maryannaon 11 Jan 2008 at 12:39 pm

    i’m really veryyyy sad my account was disabled also in christmass eve is this my gift .. what is thissss!!! all my buss. emails is over this account i was always sending invitations to my freinds to join gmail but really now i’m telling them nooooo don’t relay on it …. i agree with David “How can a service provider do this and expect to remain in business.

  117. Jasonon 15 Jan 2008 at 9:13 am

    I love google tips here… such an awesome blog. As far as Gmail, I too have forwarded all email accounts (about 15) to the gmail platform. Can’t live without it!

  118. Jackon 23 Jan 2008 at 4:40 pm

    GMAIL totally sucks, it is confusing to read what is sent and confusing to send back. It stores your emails in a format that only a Martian can understand, and it locks your account because of some stupid issue they have with their system.

    Bottom line, Gmail should be Forgotten. should change the name to
    Suckmail, as thats all it does,

    hard to read what emails where received, what were sent,
    locks you out for no reason available to the common sense person,

    I rather use any other email than Gmail. What a joke from Google, poogle.

  119. GiGion 26 Jan 2008 at 9:34 am

    I understand HOW to set this up …

    however -

    the stupid gmail account says from “whatever email you choose” on behalf of “your gmail email address”

    in the event anyone has ever experienced those people in your life who note every number you have ever called from or email you have eve sent them something from, add to their address book and use ALL they are aware of … you’d agree with me when i say THAT IS IRRITATING.

    Gmail does not allow you to HIDE your email address. So what’s the point????

  120. [...] Use Gmail as Your Universal Email Account — got too many email addresses to keep track of? Forward them all to Gmail and deal with your [...]

  121. Jimon 26 Feb 2008 at 8:31 pm

    When I forward e-mail I have received from friends, they get a blank page with no writing or pictures with it. What am I doing wrong?

  122. I use GMail For The Important Thingson 02 Apr 2008 at 10:08 pm

    [...] I’ve set up Gmail such that it’s my universal inbox. So for all correspondence, including business ones, Gmail is the only email client I [...]