Gmail: Get Mail From Other Accounts
18. Jan, 2009 
16 Comments
I realize this may be old news for some, but I just noticed a feature in Gmail settings that allows you to retrieve mail from other email accounts.
I can’t tell you how frustrated I was, logging into other email accounts and checking mail in 5+ different places.
Oh, and you can also send mail from outside accounts as well. Sweet huh? Ok, enough talk, here’s how it’s done:
How to add a new account:
- Login to Gmail
- Click the “Settings” link in the top right corner of your browser
- Click the “Accounts” link in your settings area
- Scroll down until you get to the “Get mail from other accounts:” section
- Click the “Add another mail account” link
- Enter the email address for the new mail account in the pop up box and click the “next step” button
- Fill in the new account’s login credentials: username/password
- In the “POP Server:” field: Most likely you can just leave what’s already provided in the text field, but you may need to adjust this to match you mail account settings. If you’re still stuck, go here.
- Select any check boxes that you would consider helpful. I would recommend numbers 2 and 3 for security and organization respectively…but that’s just me.
- Click the “Add Account” button and assuming everything is set up correctly it should go to the next step. If there are any errors and you’re stuck go here.
- Fill in the name that will be associated with your new account and click the “Next Step” button.
- Click the “Send Verification” button to verify your new email account.
- Go check the email account that your adding, for new email, and look for an email sent from Google containing a verification code. Copy the verification code, paste it in the verification text field, and click the “Verify” button
- If you would like to send email from your new email account, using Gmail, select the “Yes, I want to be able to send mail as: ” option and click the “Next Step” button.
- You’re Done! You will be returned to your Gmail settings page and will now be able to use your new email account in Gmail. :)
As a note: Getting mail from a Yahoo account requires you to be a Yahoo! Mail Plus subscriber. Server denied POP3 access for the given username and password. POP access is limited to Yahoo! Mail Plus subscribers. Please contact Yahoo! Mail’s support team for more information.
I also wasn’t able to set up a Hotmail account – I think you need be considered a “Plus User” if you want to enable POP3 settings which requires you to upgrade your account and pay a fee.
If you run into any problems, Google has a support page which is quite helpful, or feel free to leave a comment with a question.
Gmail, and obviously the rest of the Google Network, is beautiful for simplifying life and being more efficient. Can’t help but love it.
My favourite thing is GCal’s ability to email you a daily agenda at 5amish… so good.
Hi, I just twittered you and I saw this post. I bet you had/have the same problem: have more email addresses than you can follow and open them each. That’s a sweat. I tried the gmail account add option and I praised it to everyone until I got into trouble with that option. I added some 10 email accounts and sent the emails from 10 accounts embedded in one but several times I did have problem remembering to chose the right account to sent from. The other problem I faced is that those having outlook can see that main host gmail address you are sending emails from so they can get squeezed what is your real email address. So then I stopped it and went on opening each account one by one with the sweat till I found digsby! That’s the way to go, man. You can include as many email and IM accounts as you wish and it though you are logged in different accounts you use only 1 program that handles all. Hope it helps! :) It helped me a great deal. No more log into yahoo, aim, gtalk, icq, and all my email addresses, they are launched by one single program. It saves at least 10 percent of your time. digsby.com
Nice screenshots and easy to follow steps. :)
I did the whole multiple mail account aggregation a month back with a little bit of manual labour.
You can use httpmail plugin for OSX mail.app to pick up your hotmail via POP3 into mail.app then also subscribe to your gmail via IMAP. You would have to manually move your hotmail archives into the gmail directories. If you want your hotmail emails archived under gmail labels, you have to copy them from your hotmail folders into the relevant gmail labels which are displayed as folders in gmail. If you have a large hotmail archive, it’s painful but very worthwhile. After that I think you can setup a forward on your hotmail to fwd mail to your gmail.
Here’s the link for the httpmail plugin:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10842
Here’s a more helpful step by step instruction to my previous comment.
http://blog.stevienova.com/2007/12/14/howto-migrate-hotmail-to-gmail-or-google-apps-for-your-domain/
@Rob – I totally agree!
@Barnabas – You have a good point – Adding email accounts into Google can sure be handy dandy, but you do have to use caution when sending/replying to emails from different accounts. I’ve heard of Digsby but never considered it as an all in one email solution. I’m not opposed, but I must admit I’m in love with Gmail.
@Barry – Thanks for including helpful information on Hotmail integration. :)
wow. excellent tutorial and visuals. what do u use to screencast and what blog template are you using? love this layout. simple, easy, done. a lot of my readers/friends are starting to ask me similar ?s and i’m starting to create tech tips on my site. happy to reference your blog. really a great layout. visual learning is vital. my long posts would be 1/4 or 1/8 their length if i can teach…when i teach myself this. thanks for it!
tre
I love Gmail since the first time I used it (February 2005). What I miss are the folders…
@Barnabas – Digsby sounds good and useful, but I’m a Linux user so I can’t test it now…
Nice post, but I do want to add that when sending email from another email address, it is more likely that it will be marked as spam, since there is a mismatch between where the mail comes from, and the email address you use.
For most people it won’t make a difference, but it’s worth keeping in the back of your head.
@Tre – Thanks! It may sound primitive, but I simply do print-screen’s and perform some image editing. I use Wordpress as my blogging framework and absolutely love it! Thanks :)
@Giada100 – Yeah, I used to have the same type of withdrawl after switching from Outlook to Gmail, but really with labels and search capability their isn’t any need for folders.
@Complay – I get what you’re saying, but once you’ve added a new email account into Gmail you can specifiy, for each outgoing message, which email account you want to send from. So it strips away any possiblity for it being marked as spam.
@David – You’re right, in fact I’m trying to improve my labelling skills! :)
Great blog David! and thanks for the follow on twitter. i must be the only person in the world that has issues with gmail, everytime i delete something 3 months down the road it automatically transfers back to my inbox, meaning that my blackberry gets up to 100 junk mails! on top of that my labelling is not great either.
anyway, your post is super useful, cheers!
Thanks for the post.
I did not find the support in the Gmail help for the topic “Get Mail From Other Accounts”..
Once again thanks for the support post!!
I found your article quite useful and interesting. I have bookmarked the site for later usage.
Handling various personal and work email accounts is frustrating. This Gmail feature is amazing, but it doesn’t respond as fast as I would like. Gmail should be requesting email from each account at a maximum of every 5 minutes. Most of my email clients typically force a 1 minute status update. Google currently waits up to 1 hour before requesting new emails from my linked accounts. Unacceptable, email should be instant. Is there any way to increase the frequency Google requests emails?
WOW, if only I found this blog post before the 3 hours of frustration!! LIFESAVER!
@Ty Maynarich – Yeah I’ve noticed that too. I completely agree, Gmail should be instantaneous. No, unfortunately I haven’t found a way to increase the update rate yet. :/