If you have more than one email address, you may want to forward Gmail emails to a different account that you check more often. Google makes it simple to enable forwarding through the Settings panel. You can even forward certain types of messages or messages from certain senders to different email addresses. Follow the steps below to enable forwarding of emails on your Gmail account.
Forward All Emails
It’s easy to forward Gmail emails to a different email account. To forward all of your messages:
- Log into the Gmail account you wish to forward emails from.
- Click on the gear on the right side of the page.
- Click on Settings.
- Click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
- Click on the “Add a Forwarding Address” button.
- Add the email address you wish to forward your emails too.
- Click the “Next” button.
Google will send an email verification to the address specified for security purposes. You’ll need to log into the email you wish to forward your messages to and look for a confirmation message from Google. If you can’t find the message, it may be in your Spam folder. Click on the confirmation link inside of the email, and reload your Gmail account.
Now, to complete the process, you’ll need to:
- Navigate back to Settings > Forwarding and Pop/IMAP.
- Make sure that you check the option to forward a copy of any incoming mail. Check to make sure that your email is listed in the drop-down menu.
- The next step is to decide what you want Gmail to do with your forwarded messages. There should be another drop down menu that will give you the option of keeping a copy of your Gmail emails in your inbox, or archiving the Gmail copy.
- Before exiting, click the Save Changes
Forward Some Emails – But Not All
It’s also possible to only forward Gmail emails from certain senders, or to forward a particular type of messages. This can be done by creating filters. Creating filters is simple and straightforward:
- Log into your Gmail account.
- Click the arrow in the search box at the top of the page. A drop down box should appear. You should have the option to search for messages based on the sender, receiver or subject line. There are also two fields for “has the words” and “doesn’t have,” which allow you to create filters based on the content of the email.
- Enter your search criteria and click “Create filter with this search” at the bottom of the box.
- Select an action for your filter to take.
- Click on the “Create Filter” button.
Keep in mind that once you create the filter, only new messages will be forwarded. Any emails that are already in your inbox will not be forwarded to the new address.
Gmail only allows you to forward all of your emails to one address, so you’ll need to create filters to send messages to multiple accounts. A maximum of 20 different filters can be created and can be used to forward messages to different email addresses.
