In this article I will show you how to set up email forwarding in Gmail.
What is Gmail
Gmail is Google’s free email service that allows you to send, receive, and organize emails. It offers features like search, spam protection, labels and folders, and integration with other Google services, making it a popular choice for personal and professional communication.
It is also the most popular and trustworthy email provider, which is important when registering accounts on various websites – everyone accepts Gmail. Creating a Gmail account basically means that you created a Google account, which also gives you a Youtube channel, blogger blog account, and access to a ton more services.
Some other noteworthy email providers are Outlook, Yahoo, GMX and Zoho.
Benefits of Forwarding Email
Email forwarding helps you manage multiple accounts from a single inbox, saving time and reducing clutter. It ensures you never miss important messages, allows you to organize emails more efficiently, and can even help automate workflows by directing specific emails to the right place. Forwarding is especially useful for business or personal accounts that you check less frequently.
Personally I own a number of Gmail accounts, and it would be a major hassle to check each of them daily or even occasionally to see if I have any new emails on any of them. And this is where forwarding comes in – I’ve set up forwarding on each of them to send all incoming emails to my 1 main email account, and I check that account daily. This way I always receive all the emails in one place, and I never miss anything.
In fact, all of those Gmails actually forward all mail to my personal self-hosted domain email, and then that email account forwards everything to my main Gmail account. In this way, if anything ever happens to my Gmail account, I still have all my mail in my self-hosted domain email, which is hosted on Hostgator.
If you have a similar set up or are interested, here is a tutorial on How to forward domain email from Hostgator.
I’ve had this setup for years, and it works perfectly.
How to set up forwarding in Gmail
Setting things up is very quick and simple. First open your Gmail account, click the wheel in the upper-right corner of the screen, and then click on “See All Settings“.
You will be taken to a page like this:
As you can see, I’ve already set up my forwarding in this account. There is also the option of forwarding only some of your mail by creating a filter. I never used this option, so I won’t talk about it.
Now you click on “Add a forwarding address“:
Add the email address where you want to forward your email to and click “Next“. Now a window will pop up, and you should click “Proceed“.
Now you will receive an email like this in your forwarding email address:
To learn more about why you might have received this message, please visit: http://support.google.com/mail
/bin/answer.py?answer=184973
Now all you have to do is click the link to confirm the request.
In the end you should go back to the settings in your Gmail account and make sure that “Forward a copy of incoming mail to” is selected, and also choose what you want with the forwarded email to happen, with the options being:
- keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox
- mark Gmail’s copy as read
- archive Gmail’s copy
- delete Gmail’s copy
In the end make sure to scroll down at the bottom of the page and click Save Changes.
Here is a video I made talking about this:
Summary
Setting up email forwarding in Gmail is a simple yet powerful way to manage multiple accounts from a single inbox. It saves time, reduces clutter, and ensures you never miss important messages. By forwarding emails to a main account – or even to a self-hosted domain email – you can stay organized and maintain a reliable backup of all your messages. With just a few steps in Gmail’s settings, you can streamline your email workflow and make managing multiple accounts effortless.
Check out our article about Organizing emails and login info for online accounts