Using gmail to collect my various email accounts

Brendan Burgess

Founder
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I am trying to rationalise my various email accounts, so I have done the following

1) I have set up 1@gmail.com - just a collection account, I don't want anyone to see this email address.

2) I use 1@gmail.com to check my three email addresses

  • 2@eircom.net
  • 3@askaboutmoney
  • 4@brendanburgess
3) I have set up Outlook to check my 1@gmail , so I am now getting all my emails into Outlook which is much easier to organise than Google and is free of ads.



My problem though is that if I reply to an email sent to 2@askaboutmoney it comes from 1@gmail


Can I choose which of 2,3 or 4 I reply from?



I can set these three accounts up on Outlook, but the gmail is handy as a spam filter. And if I want to check my email from another pc , I only have to remember my gmail details.



Brendan
 
In settings
then
Accounts and import
option 'add another email address you own'

You don't really have to setup another dedicated collection email address.
You can forward all other mail from other accounts to the one address.
But whatever works for you.
 
Or, in Settings\Accounts and Import, click the "Make Default" link beside the email address you want emails to be sent from. You can change these for individual emails if you wish by selecting the source email address from the dropdown list.

Note that if you use the gmail servers to send emails, they will still say, eg "From 1@gmail.com on behalf of 4@brendanburgess". This is to avoid being marked as spam by the receiver. You can eliminate this by sending from your email address's servers - see here:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.ie/2009/07/send-mail-from-another-address-without.html
 
One other tip -- on yahoo.ie/yahoo.com (which also supports SMTP and POP) you can set up throwaway e-mail addresses associated with your main account. Lets you have temporary e-mail addresses that you can dump later, which is sometimes handy. I use them for anonymous Google Drive and Facebook accounts which I would certainly not sign up to with an actual name.
 
If you want to keep them separate, having to choose which one you're replying from is a potential source of user error vs keeping them seperate. Maybe its not that important.
 
With Outlook set up, I can now reply from any of the accounts.

But what if I use another pc and check my email using Gmail to save me logging into three separate accounts?

It seems that the emails I send must come from my 1@gmail account , even if it is 1@gmail on behalf of 2@eircom

Brendan
 
itsallwrong said:
You don't really have to setup another dedicated collection email address.
You can forward all other mail from other accounts to the one address.
.
Click to expand...

I overlooked this.

So I forward 3@askaboutmoney and 4@brendanburgess to 1@eircom.net

That is handy for checking the email from someone else's pc.

However, there is no advantage in doing this from your own pc.

Come to think of it, what is the advantage of a gmail Account on my own pc? It is very good at screening out spam, but if all my replies come from 1@gmail , then it's not worth it.
 
I use a few different gmail accounts. What I do is use different browsers for each account. Say Chrome for one, IE another, Firefox etc. So I can be logged into them all at the same. You can still send notifications to another account. You can still use Outlook to manage or backup gmail.

But for business email and managing work, I'd always use Outlook. Its just find it much better to stay organised.
 
Just as an FYI on a similar note.

If you use gmail and have an account called eg. username@gmail.com, you can use username+askaboutmoney@gmail.com (for example) to register with askaboutmoney.
The mails will still come to username@gmail.com and you can then set up a filter to put all emails with username+askaboutmoney@gmail.com as the recipient into a seperate folder automatically. It can also bypass your inbox if you wish.

I find this very useful as if you get spammed by sites selling your email address, you can easily identify who the guilty site is.

However, some sites have validation on the registration fields that prevents addresses with special characters.
 
Well when you setup diff accounts in outlook and want to reply or send an email from a specific account then you get drop down menu to select from address (seen in outllok 2007)
 
I was just about to say this. I also prefer to use Outlook for various reasons, and have a number of gmail and other accounts set up in it. When I open a new message, next to the 'From' line is a drop-down button which lets me choose which account the message will be sent from. In fact I'm pretty sure it's there when I reply to a message received, i.e. when I'm answering a message sent to address A I can choose to have the reply come from address B if I want.
 
I use Outlook in the same way but prefer to use Outlook Profiles. With this each account source has a separate outlook data file and no danger of ever having the wrong responder used. Only drawback is that you have to close the Outlook session to start another profile.
 

GMail->Settings->Accounts&Import->SendMailAs

you can add all the addresses you own in here and then they appear as a drop-down list when you send a mail.

GMail's web interface is actually very flexible for organising your mail if you spend a little time setting it up (labels, archiving etc) - also the search function beats all other mail clients hands down (as you might expect).
 
The only problem with Gmail I find is when people start being "creative".

Some people like to change the subject of emails, and even edit the previous mails in an email, perhaps for clarity, or perhaps to change how a conversation appears to others. Some for no logical reason. Some to deliberate mislead.

Anyway it throws Gmails conversation into a spin and while you can turn off this view it makes Gmail a lot less useful. Certainly filter and labeling are useful, but sometimes just using the mouse to sort a bunch of disparate emails into folder is easier. Sometimes you want to compare a few emails, or refer to one while writing another.

Theres numerous ways to manage it though.
 
I used this thread to help me link my gmail account to an email account of my wife's that she frequently has difficulty logging into (gets a blacklisted error message a lot). This is not convenient permanently. I tried to link my wife's new yahoo mail account to her old email account without success, I naively thought it would be as easy as linking gmail to it. Any ideas?

I could just set up a new gmail for her, she would have 3 in total then, even though she only needs one!
 
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