Several months ago, we wrote about how to use Gmail to check your various email accounts from across the web, so that you have one single inbox to check. That post contained handy tips on how to get other mail into Gmail, how to organize it, and how to send messages from within Gmail as if you were using the external account. To get other mail into Gmail, that procedure used POP3 to periodically pull mail from those accounts.
One flaw in Gmail is that you can't specify how frequently your account will pull down that mail. Gmail determines this frequency based on how often it discovers mail in those accounts when it checks. Lifehacker recently had a tip on how to increase that frequency. But what if you want to eliminate the delay entirely?
If you have the right kind of account, then eliminating the delay is easy. The trick is to not use POP3 at all from within your main Gmail account. Instead, forward mail from your old account into your main Gmail account. All of the other tricks for using your Gmail account as your main account will still work. Here are a few tricks to keep in mind.
Version of Gmail logo from velorowdy.
Option 1: Get All Mail From the Secondary Account
If you simply want to get all mail from the external account, check that account for a global forwarding option. If your secondary account is also a Gmail account, that can be found under Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
Option 2: Use Filters to Get Only the Important Stuff (and to Keep Your Secondary Account Clean)
Maybe you don't want everything forwarded from your secondary account. For example, I get various newsletters sent to my secondary Gmail account that I don't want clogging my main inbox. Instead of using the global forwarding setting on the second account, I use a filter. (Again, your secondary account must support filters and forwarding, like Gmail does). This filter also keeps my secondary inbox clean, by deleting a message after it is forwarded.
To use a filter to forward almost everything, put an asterisk (*) in the "From" box in the filter settings, and then carve out the undesirable senders by putting those domain in the "doesn't have" box. On the next screen, check "Skip the Inbox," "Mark as read", "Forward it to:" (followed by your main email address), and "Delete it." Screenshots of my filter are below.
Highlight and Organize Your Imported Emails
We touched upon this in our prior post on using Gmail as your only inbox. We suggested that you use Gmail's label features to label incoming mail. I set up custom labels, based on the "To" line in the message, along with a filter for each account. This way, you will always know, at a glance, to which account the message was originally sent. To make this even more effective and obvious, try adding a color to the label.
Send Mail As If You Were Using the Secondary Account
Another one of our prior tips that still holds true with this method concerns how to send mail from your main account, but make it look like you are sending it from the secondary account. Check out the prior post for detailed instructions on how to add the new account to accomplish this (check out "To Use Your Server's SMTP settings" to make it truly transparent to your mail recipients).
Once you follow these tips, email will forward, almost instantly, from your secondary account to your main account. If you try to reply to or forward a message, Gmail will automatically send it using the address to which the message was originally sent.
Do you have any more tips for making Gmail more effective as your main email hub?
Tony says:
Why do I always find out about these kinds of things now? FML.
.-= Tony´s last blog ..How to Customize your WordPress Admin Area =-.
July 20, 2010 — 11:00 pm
Evan Kline says:
You’re not alone, Tony. For a long time, I used POP3, or forwarded without then also adding the account into Gmail. This is so simple, that I almost didn’t write about it. But, I figured that if I overlooked it, others might be overlooking it, too.
July 21, 2010 — 9:10 am
Bobby Travis says:
I tend to use both methods, only forwarding from accounts that I want messages from immediately. I have enough different email accounts that I need to pick and choose or I will drown in digital messaging…. O.0
July 21, 2010 — 2:49 am
Evan Kline says:
That’s probably a story in and of itself – how to survive in a digital world without drowning. I was on the road yesterday, got to the office today, and now feel like crawling into a hole when I see all the voicemail and emails lined up from when I was out. Of course, I knew it was coming because in today’s world we’re always connected, so I saw the impending wave coming last night on my iPhone.
July 21, 2010 — 9:13 am
Bobby Travis says:
I hear you, man. When I wasn’t working for myself I had to remove my work email from my phone — and the resulting lift of weighty stress from my shoulders was incredible. Even I was surprised by it. Working for myself, though, I have no such luxury…
July 21, 2010 — 12:42 pm
Pete says:
Here we are in 2012 and I’m still experiencing issues with doing this! Maybe it will work flawlessly.
I just wish gmail supported inbound IMAP!
October 9, 2012 — 8:26 am
Piotr Magnuszewski says:
Forwarding from other account is not the same.
When I get forwarded e-mail from other account the sender is me not the actual sender.
It creates confusion – makes it more difficult to browse visually.
January 27, 2014 — 8:02 am
davidjsparks says:
Wow, duh! For years, I’ve been doing the POP3 thing, some e-mails coming in with an almost hour delay. I’ve searched around for other options, but aside from moving over to G Suite, couldn’t find any better solution. I can’t believe this never occurred to me. Thanks for writing!
March 17, 2018 — 5:06 pm
Evan Kline says:
Glad it helped, David. I think I have my mail clients do this for me now, but I hope this still works in the web client.
March 17, 2018 — 8:33 pm