Many people have more than one email address. A lot of the time, these are not from the same email provider. Personally, I have about 10. As you can imagine, checking that many email addresses all the time is a huge time suck.
One way I have been handling multiple email addresses is to use Gmail as an email hub. The way I will show you will allow you to send and receive emails from your Gmail account.
Note: An important part of this process is being able to forward your email to your Gmail account. Email services like Yahoo do not let you forward your Yahoo mail emails without being a premium or business customer. Please check if you are able to forward your emails to Gmail before you proceed.
I am using Hotmail for my example. The screens you see may vary, but the general steps should be the same regardless of the email program. Even if you have multiple Gmail accounts, this will work.
Part 1: Setting up email forwarding
Once you are logged into your email account, you will need to go to the settings menu. In Hotmail you will need to click on your name in the top right corner of the screen and select “Options“.
On the left side, click on Mail. Once in the Mail settings, you will need to click on Email Forwarding.
In the email forwarding tab, you will see a place to enter your Gmail address. With Hotmail, you will need to check the box telling Hotmail you want to forward your emails to another address. As you can see, there is a note telling you to sign in once every 270 days or your Hotmail account will be cancelled.
If you want to keep a copy of the forwarded email, there is a usually a box you can check to keep a copy on the Hotmail server. Click Done.
Keep your Hotmail account open, you will need to go back to it shortly.
Part 2: Sending from Gmail
After you log into your Gmail account, you will see your name and a gear. Click on the gear to see the mail options. In the drop down, select Mail Settings.
When in the Mail Settings, click on the Accounts and Import tab.
In this tab, about half way down, you will see a section called Send mail as: Click on the tab that says Send mail from another address.
A window will pop up with two text boxes.The first is what you want your name to show up as when you send an email. The second is the email address you want to send from. Fill in the email address and click Next step.
If you are changing email accounts and weening people off the old one, you can choose a different reply-to address here.
The next step is to select the SMTP or outgoing server. I am recommending to use Gmail’s outgoing server for ease of setup. This will save all of your outgoing messages to your Gmail Sent folder.
After you select the outgoing server, you will need to send a verification email to your other email account.
This is why I wanted you to keep your Hotmail or other email account open. When the email from Google arrives in your Hotmail inbox, you can click on the link in the email to verify that you really want to let Google send emails from this account.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the verification code from the email to the Gmail verification window you last saw.
You should be all set to try a test email. To do this, go to your Gmail inbox and compose a message. In the message composition window, you will now see a drop down option where it displays your email address.
When you send or receive an email from your Hotmail address, the recipient will notice no difference. It will be as though you are logging into your Hotmail account and sending it from there.
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