So, let’s say you have an email address at home, and an email address at the office, and maybe even several others, and you’re tired of having to visit several sites to read and respond to all of your messages. This post will show you how to have all your email forwarded to one location, your Gmail inbox. And not only will you be able to read all your email there, but you will also be able to send email from there to any of the sending email addresses you choose.
Here are step-by-step instructions for setting all this up:
1. If you haven’t already done so, register with Google.com and open your free Gmail account. When you open your Gmail account you will be looking at your Gmail inbox. Bookmark this page in your browser because you will need to return to it later in these instructions.
2. Go to the administrative control page for one of your existing email accounts. If you get your internet connection through Verizon or Comcast, you or a family member are likely the administrator for that account, so you will already have the login information. Login, and then go to the email settings, and in those settings look for the link that permits you to edit the “forward to” setting. Enter your Gmail address in the “forward to” window. Then, save that setting.
In the case of some email addresses, you may not have administrator access to your email settings. For instance, if you have a university email address, or a business email address, the administrator of your email settings is likely to be a university or business colleague. Find out who this is, and ask him/her to enter your Gmail address into the forward to window of the email settings and then save that setting.
3. When steps 1 and 2 are accomplished you should start noticing email from your other addresses showing up in your Gmail inbox. So, now you can read all your email in one place, but what about sending from Gmail so that you can choose your sending-from address? Follow the remaining steps to achieve this.
4. Go back to your Gmail inbox, the page you bookmarked in step 1.
5. Click on the “settings” link in the top right corner.
6. Click on the “send mail from another address” button (second section down from the top). You are about to set up a sending-from address in your Gmail controls, so that you can compose a message in Gmail but have it appear to the recipient as if it were sent from another of your email addresses (besides your Gmail one).
7. In the window that appears, type your name as you want it to appear in messages from that other address, and the email address you are now configuring.
8. Click on the “Send through Gmail” button, and then, the “next step” button.
9. Click on the “Send verification” button. When you do this you will receive, almost immediately, an email message in your Gmail inbox that will contain a link to verify and configure this setting. Click on that link in the email message.
10. In your Gmail inbox window, click on the “Compose mail” button (top left). This will bring up a compose message window. At the top of that window you will see a “From” window, with a little black triangle to the right. Your Gmail address will appear by default in this window, but if you click on the little black triangle you can access other email addresses which you have set up, following steps 4-9 of these instructions. In the drop-down menu click the address you want to send from and compose your message. When you have finished composing your message and click on the send button your email will go out with the sending address you chose.
Voila, you have configured Gmail to be your one-stop reading and sending-from site.