Use Gmail to consolidate your email addresses

If you’re anything like me, you probably have around a dozen emails from different services. There’s Yahoo (I think I have five of them), there’s my work email (I have three!), there’s that service from my ISP which I barely use, the ones from the other blogs I run, and my Gmail. (okay, 3 Gmail accounts. What.) Maybe that email account I opened up way back in 1997 is still active, I don’t know. Honestly, I lost count.

So if I, the ravishingly handsome internet-savvy Google savant that I am, can actually get overwhelmingly confused by the sheer number of email addresses that I handle, I wonder how it goes for you guys. Sheesh, it must be a nightmare.

Fortunately, I discovered waaaay back that Gmail has a nifty way of helping you consolidate all those email addresses into one. It takes a bit of work setting it up, but I tell you, the pleasure of logging into one inbox as opposed to twelve is totally frakkin’ worth it.

So first off, we need to make sure that your Gmail account is capable of fetching your emails from your other accounts.

Set up mailforwarding. Many email providers offer free auto-forwarding to other accounts. Log into your non-Gmail account and set your Gmail address as the forwarding target. If your other account doesn’t offer forwarding but supports POP3 access, you can use Mail Fetcher in Gmail to automatically check your other account for new mail and download it to Gmail.

1. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts tab.
2. In the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account.
3. Enter the full email address of the account you’d like to access, then click Next Step.
4.  Enter your Password.
5. Decide whether to:
   • Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server
   • Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail
   • Label incoming messages
   • Archive incoming messages

Mail from this account can be archived directly, without showing up in your inbox. Learn more about archiving.

6. Click Add Account.

Finally, you can actually hide the fact that you’re using Gmail, because you can actually set up a custom “From:” email address. Basically, you just click Settings along the top of any page in Gmail, and open the Accounts tab. Under Send mail as, click Add another email address. Then you’ll have to verify the other email.

So, do these things, and you’re on your way to less work on your emails. Enjoy!