Do you have too many email addresses? You know, one for work, one for home, one for spam, one for that not-profit you’re involved with? I have a solution: GMail! I’ve finally consolidated all my email addresses into a single GMail account. I receive mail from each of the accounts, and I can send email out using any of the accounts. As the email arrives to my Gmail Inbox, it is tagged appropriately and, if need be, canned to the Spam folder. NOTE: This is also a method for using Gmail as a spam filter for another email account.
Here’s how:
1. Gmail doesn’t check other POP accounts, so you’ll need to at least have forwarding capabilities on each of your email accounts. Thankfully, I do. Configure each email account (home, work, etc.) to forward all emails to your Gmail address. Optionally, you can choose to save copies of each message in the original inbox, for backup purposes.
2. In Gmail, Configure labels as desired, for more organization (for me, that would be Pantano, Priority, Refuge Center, Southgate). Configure filters to automatically label incoming messages appropriately. COOL NOTE: The filter will also affect outgoing mail.
3. In Gmail, add external accounts. Gmail will send a verification link to each address you wish to “send from”. Once that is completed, whenever you compose a message, you can decide what account to send it from (for example, pcain@so ut hgate or phil@ca ins cap e – spaces added for spambot protection).
4. Here’s the real fun part. Enable POP access in Gmail for all messages after the current time. Now go setup your blackberry or mobile phone to check your Gmail account. You’ll need to create a filter (Blackberry Webclient can do it) to filter out all mail that’s from you and not to you (which means, all your sent mail).
Currently, I receive email from personal accounts (cainscape, and my main gmail), my spam gmail (philipacamaniac), my work accounts (southgate, pantano) and my refuge center account. It all goes to my Blackberry. Yay!