Once my latest post about improving your Gmail experience hit the Digg frontpage, lots and lots of comments were submitted to that post. One of them was from mmilian, writing the following in the comment;
Adding some tips on managing multiple accounts would be really helpful!
That exactly is what I’m going to describe, as there where more and more people asking for some tips and tricks to do this properly. Gmail has all the tools you might need for doing this. Although there are a few remarks of which I really regret that they are still not available as features of Gmail, I’ll get back on that later in this post.
But Gmail is a perfect tool to manage multiple accounts, from different domains, even when they run on different servers. It’s also possible to fetch all your mail from Live, Yahoo or another provider, straight in your Gmail inbox. And yes, we can put all stuff we’ve learned in my previous article in practice on all of our mail! Isn’t that convenient?
Receiving email from different accounts
We have several options to fetch email from different email addresses in our Gmail inbox (Settings > Accounts). My favorite way to do this, is by configuring it in the configuration panel of my host. This is able to forward all mail that is send to a @coenjacobs.net-address, to my Gmail address.
In some cases, your current host could provide additional settings to forward all your email from that existing account to your (new) Gmail account. But that differs from one company to another.
But you can also choose to fetch the email via POP into your Gmail address. Gmail gives you the options to add a username and a password for each address you would like to fetch the emails from.
Image: Adding multiple accounts to Gmail, to receive email from in Gmail
Gmail fetches the email from the POP accounts you add from time to time in your Gmail inbox. But there is some delay in this process, that’s why I choose to do this in another way.
Once you receive email from multiple accounts it might be convenient to be able to quickly see from which account the email is from. That’s where the filters and labels are coming in hand again!
Using filters and labels with different accounts
Filters and labels prove that they are the great tools that I claim them to be, when we use them to make a difference between multiple accounts in Gmail. In Gmail it is possible to automatically add a filter to all posts that are sent to email-addresses from a specific account or domain name.
I’m doing it this way, to make a difference between my email from @coenjacobs.net-addresses and other email. See the image below to see how I’ve configured this (Settings > Filters).
Image: Filter all email send to @coenjacobs.net-addresses
This way it filters all mail send to a @coenjacobs.net-address, and in the next step we add the specific label to all email that is filtered with this filter.
Image: Add the label to all email filtered
And when we add a nice color to this label, all email will be catchy in your inbox and you will know instantly that the mail is being send to a specific account. Off course, you can apply the same trick to all accounts, but you should be aware of using too much labels as it can get pretty crowded!
Sending email with different accounts
Now we have our email in Gmail, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could actually send email from those accounts? People who send mail to my @coenjacobs.net-addresses will get a reply from my Gmail address, but you can choose to send replies on those email with your own domain!
Image: Adding multiple accounts to Gmail, to send email with in Gmail
As you can see in the image above, we can add a new email address to send email with (Settings > Accounts). And when you select another email to email from, you can choose to reply with that email address, or always reply with your default address. That’s up to you to choose!
Once you’ve added one (or more) accounts to send email with, you can now select the account you want to send an email with, from the pull-down-box in the screen when you write a new email. Standard email-address from which you will sent your email, will be the default address.
Just a few downsides to complete the post
As I mentioned in the first lines of this post, there are a few (more) downsides to managing multiple accounts from within your Gmail inbox. These downsides are not that negative to give up on using Gmail with multiple accounts, but some of them can be quite annoying.
- • First of, when you have added more than one account to send email with, you always have to be careful from which email address your email will be send. Standard (when we write a new email) it is set to your default address. In some cases you might quickly overlook this setting and send an email with the wrong account. Could be annoying, to me it is at least.
- • Second, you can’t select different signatures for different email addresses. This forced me to create an additional account for my company-email, besides my personal/blogging email. Just a little feature I would like to be added in the near future is to select different signatures for each and every email-address in my Gmail account.
- • Third, when you send an email from another account besides your default account, your mail will be sent via the default account. Your secondary email-address will be added as the reply to: address. This could be a downside, but for many people it’s not a problem ( thanks for this tip in the comments Luis! # ).
Conclusion
Gmail is a quality tool, also for managing multiple accounts, but it has some slight downsides. If you can live with the downsides, Gmail is the perfect tool for all your email needs.
If you know any more tricks, downsides or just remarks about (managing multiple accounts in) Gmail, please let me know. I’m always looking for more tips and tricks! Other comments are welcome too, as usual with my extended posts as this one.
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Tags: accounts, digital life, email, filters, gmail, labels
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There’s a third downside, any e-mail you send from the e-mail address you’ve added, will still show as if the e-mail was coming from Gmail so that server won’t treat it as spam.
For example: “sent from xxx@company.com by xxx@gmail.com“
Thanks for sharing this one Luis, I’ve added it!
Great post, but is there a way to be logged in to multiple *Gmail* accounts with the same browser? My problem is that I have a Blogger account that’s linked to a Gmail account that isn’t my main Gmail account, and I can’t figure out how to be logged into Blogger and my main Gmail account at the same time. IOW, if I’m logged into Blogger and then try to log into my main Gmail account (the one *not* linked to Blogger), I am automatically logged out of Blogger, and vice-versa. I could use separate browsers, but with Blogger and Gmail, I’ve had the best luck with Firefox and want to use it for both.
Help!
It’s not possible to retrieve mail from Yahoo, Live and Hotmail…..
Another small problem is that false-positives caught as spam at an originating account won’t get forwarded. I’ve missed some important messages that were sitting in a spam folder at a mail account that I don’t check often.
I have set up Thunderbird 2.0 with my main Gmail account via IMAP. So far so good. Here is my question. There is a second Gmail account that I use for a different purpose. Can I also set that up with IMAP in Thunderbird as well? Will it get the two accounts mixed up?
For the past couple of years, more or less, I have used the Firefox add-on Gmail Manager. I find it so useful that I didn’t upgrade to any of the beta’s of Firefox till Gmail Manager was upgraded to work with the new version.
I run a copy of Portable Firefox off a 50x speed thumbdrive when I’m away from home using the same extension/add-on.
Regardless, my mail is always available wherever I am. One of the problems with using a stand alone app like Outlook or Thunderbird is that your e-mail is always tied to one computer or, in the case of portable memory, one device. Lose your computer or memory device, lose your mail. Tsk, tsk.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of addresses tied to specific domains and all that mail is forwarded to individual gmail address for easy access. And when I send mail from these accounts or reply to mail, my friends, coworkers, etc, only see the original address not the gmail address, unless I want them to.
Gmail Manager and Firefox changed the way I use and access email.
And if you run Portable Firefox, try Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronization extension. I can’t emphasize enough how Gmail Manager and Foxmarks simplify and smooth my web and email experience.
The third one is the biggest and worst downfall of Gmail. Other than that, it is brilliant!
Downfall #4 - Signatures from Outlook look terrible in gmail! Should be better.
How do you fetch email from Hotmail (Live) to gmail without using the forwarding function in Hotamail. I thought Hotmail didn’t offer popmail.
I have been managing several accounts in one gmail account for a while now. One problem I encountered: free Yahoo account does not allow POP forwarding. Do you have a work around for this?
I don’t believe you can get msn or yahoo on gmail without using izymail or some sort of site like that..
There are countless reasons for loving GMail and this is one of those. Thanks for sharing
@ #3 Paul Kotta, you can forward other Gmail accounts to your main one just like any other e-mail address. I also have 2 Gmail accounts and use only one inbox.
Thanks for the tips. here’s one more:
I wanted to transfer all of my .edu emails to my gmail account. One way: in Outlook, set a rule that forwards all email from the .edu account to the gmail address. Then run the rule for everything in you inbox. Problem: in gmail, everything is labled as a FW and is date-stamped the same.
Better solution for integrating old email accoutns to gmail:
In Outlook, add the gmail account as an IMAP (have to enable IMAP from gmail settings panel). Now in Outlook, drag and drop everything from the old email account to the gmail account. Now everything is date-stamped correctly in gmail.
It’s not possible to retrieve mail from Yahoo, unless you pay a fee to enable POP3 mail boxex
I use izymail. They don’t forward html mail though. They charge for that; I believe you get the first 30 free then you get an email saying you have reached your limit and won’t be able to view them. I also noticed msn(hotmail) doesn’t always come through…I fo have it set up to where I can send from ALL of the accts though..
if you want something like izymail, but don’t want to pay for it, you have an option if you happen to have a linux server at home. I have installed something called FreePOPs on my home server. I have gmail configured to pop from my IP address, and my hotmail is downloaded through my home server into my gmail account. It says it works with yahoo and just about anything else out there.
Another great tool I came across the other day in terms of filtering gmail.
My address is CXXXXXX.HXXXXX@gmail.com
If someone sends email to CXXXXXX.HXXXXX+blog@gmail.com those get sent to my account as well.
So now, for example I have one set up as CXXXXXX.HXXXXX+reader@gmail.com. Whenever I am using google reader I send to this address, which is filtered to automatically categorize and archive it for future reference for blogs, schoolwork, work work etc. I have another one set up for blog posts, another one set up for userinfo - all set up with specific filters attached to them. I’ve found it pretty interesting to see what other sites send to those very specific emails as well, ’cause that tells me who is sharing my email address.
Great post such tips one is not bale to get usually.Already i had stumbled it.
Thanks mate.
Why would you specifically say, “It’s also possible to fetch all your mail from Live, Yahoo or another provider, straight in your Gmail inbox” if it’s not possible? That’s the only reason I clicked on this article.
You forgot cookiepie! http://lifehacker.com/396818/cookiepie-logs-into-multiple-gmail-accounts-simultaneously & http://del.icio.us/url/8106e281a1d3c7180bd6dc2d7247db26
Another downside:
When recieving mail from a mailing list that does not disclose recipients, there is no way to tell what address it was delivered to!
My roommate wants to set up her own gmail account on the computer I have. But Gmail will not allow it. What am I doing wrong? It is an older computer with very old software - can that be the problem? It cannot accept new software. Can we get her an account on my computer or not? I know I can access my account at the library - so I assume computers can use more than one gmail. Thanks.
Lovely trick dude.thanks for sharing it
AOL mail transfers easily to GMAIL. Saved mails can be dragged to the Spam folder, once there you have to de-spam them. They then go directly into the inbox and straight to Gmail. I learnt this the hard way… At least for all its faults, AOL is a bit pliable. MSN is crap.
I am moving my outlook account over to gmail. I have added this account to my gmail account and made it my default address. It’s great that I can now check my ‘outlook’ email from anywhere.
Downside: although I’ve made my outlook account my default in both gmail and outlook, when I hit ‘reply’ when using gmail in my outlook client, it replies back from the gmail account instead of my outlook account.
BUT - when I open the same email from within the web gmail and hit ‘reply’, it WILL show my outlook account address.
I changed the setting from within outlook so all replies are coming from the non-gmail account, but it doesn’t make a difference. I think this must be a bug in Google as I’ve had an exchange account where I”ve used the same setting and it did work.
Anybody else ever deal with this? Thanks.
Is there ANY way to avoid the 3rd downside ?
If not, what would be the best way to check my mailbox of my webside email extensions ?