hello everyone Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity
and if you're already a subscriber here to the Simpletivity channel
you know that my greatest desire is to help you simplify your work life
I want you to spend as little time on the insignificant things so you can spend more time on your most important work
and you know just recently I received a great question in my last live webinar
I received a question about consolidating email addresses
specifically this person was asking about how she could combine two different Gmail accounts
two different Google accounts so she could only deal with a single account
so today we're gonna be looking at how we can consolidate our email so we only have to deal with one email account here within Gmail
now what I have set up is I've got two test accounts
I've got this light-coloured account here
and if I click on the tab at the top
I've got this darker, there's a blue shaded account here
so the goal in this example is that we don't want to have to come back to this account ever again
we want everything that comes in to this second email account
we want it to arrive here in the first email account
but we also want to go one step beyond
when we reply to the forwarded email from the email that is intended for this account
when this email comes in to the first account
we want to be able to reply from this account as well
now the steps that I'm going to be showing you are going to be specific to receiving and replying to emails within Gmail
but this second account doesn't necessarily need to be a Gmail account
it could be an Outlook account
it could be some other email service
so again the goal is that we want to never ever come back to this account
we want to deal with all of our email here
and again you may be managing multiple email addresses
you may have personal email
a business email
you may have a separate organization or some other board or some other service that you provide volunteer hours
you want to be able to deal with that in a single email address
you don't have to bounce around to multiple accounts
so the first thing that we need to do
let's go to the second email address
this is the one that we want to essentially forget
we never want to come back here again
we want to go to settings
we're gonna click on settings
and we want to go to the forwarding area
forwarding and POP/IMAP is what it's called here in Gmail
and at the very top we have forwarding
and I want to select add a forwarding address
pretty simple right
I just need to enter in the address that I want my future emails to go to
so this is the address of my test account
this is the light-coloured Gmail account
I'm going to select next
it's going to give me a little dialog box
you want to proceed
yes that's the right address
I'm going to say proceed
and it's gonna say that a confirmation code has been sent to verify permission
I'm gonna say okay
let's see if we've received that
so let's go back to the initial email address
and yes here is that email
and it looks a little complicated here
but essentially it says to allow this second address to automatically forward mail to your address
please click this link to confirm
I'm going to select that link
do you want to confirm that mail from this address will go to your address number one
and I'm going to say yes confirm
perfect confirmation success
so now that is set up with my first email address here
now we do want to go back to this address just for a moment
now you'll see that nothing has actually changed on this screen
if we come out of the dialog box and then go back in
let's go back to settings
and once again we want to select the forwarding and POP/IMAP section
now you will see I have two radio buttons
so now disabled forwarding is set up by default
we need to come back into here and say yes
please forward a copy of incoming mail to this address
this is the one that we just confirmed Scott F test one
and the second option we have is what we want to do with the mail that is going to remain here in the second address
now you have a few different options
I usually say just keep Gmail's copy in the inbox
but if you want, you can mark them as read
you can archive them
you can delete what is happening here in this address that we are about to say goodbye to
or maybe a better way to put it is that we're just going to ignore it going forward
because we're gonna be dealing with it in our first email address
I'm gonna leave it at the initial one here keep Gmail's copy in the inbox
so we're gonna forward it to that new address
be sure to select Save Changes
and then at the very top of your screen you'll notice that it gives us a warning notification
you are forwarding your email to this address
this notice will end in seven days
so for the first week it will remind you
if you do happen to come in here and log into this account
it's gonna let you know that it's forwarding email to this address
but eventually this warning will go away
so let's test it out
okay let's go to a third email address
so now we have things set up
let's make sure it's working properly
so I'm going to go to a different email address
and I'm going to craft a new email
so let's send an email to this is the one
this is the one that we want to forget
remember this is my second email address
so I'm sending it to this address but it should appear in my first Gmail address
I'm going to say hi did you get this
okay we won't put anything in the description area
I'm going to select send
so first off let's go to the old address or the one that we want to ignore
so of course we received it here right
this is where we sent it to
we sent it to this second address
but we don't want to have to look for our messages here anymore
so let's go back to our primary email address
and look at that it showed up as we have set it up
perfect exactly this is exactly what we want happening
we don't want to have to go here anymore
we want those emails to come back here
it's been sent to this address
it's showing us as two different addresses here just because I happen to use exact same subject line and from the exact same email client
otherwise it would just be an individual email
so don't let that confuse you
so this is perfect
this is exactly what we want happening
everything that is now being sent to this email address will automatically come to my primary address here
but I do want to show you one other step that's going to be most helpful
because to complete this process
when you go to reply to this email
you don't want to reply from email address number one
what if email address number one is your personal address
and email address number two was your business address
you don't want your replies looking like it's coming from your personal account
so what do we have to do there
okay so we're now in our primary email address account
we're going to go into settings
and what we want to select here is accounts and import
and about the third option down you will see is send mail as
now of course by default the first one is our actual email address right
this is the real email address that we use here
but now that we've got things coming in from this second email address
we want to add another email address
so click this link
we get a new dialog box
so now we get to select the name of that new one right
so this is going to be our second email address
this is that new email address
and let's enter it in
this is Scott F test two at gmail.com
we want to leave this checkbox checked
treat as an alias
it's important that we leave that checked
and we'll get a select next step
now before you can send mail as this person as this email address
we need to verify it with that email address
so let's say send verification
and it's going to tell us that we actually have two options here
so it has sent that verification
we're going to go check that
we can either click on the link in the confirmation or enter the confirmation code
so if I move this dialog box out of the way
let's go back to email address number two
okay here is that confirmation that we received here
and we are going to select the link
there is a confirmation code
so I could paste that in
but I'm just going to select the link
cuz it's right in front of me here
so I'm gonna say yes
I'm giving it permission
before you can send mail from this address using the first address
please click the link
I'm gonna select the link
please confirm
I'm going to say confirm
and it says confirmation success
so if I still have this other dialog box open
I can now close that because I've done this first option
I've confirmed using the link
so I'm gonna close that
I don't think it gives us any other information here in terms of a new email in the second one
if we go back to the first one here
you can see look at that a second one has been added
last time we were here we only saw the first one
now we have that second email address
oh now it says that it's unverified
so let's go back to yes
so we just received this in our second email account
we need to confirm that as well right
so I'm going to click that link there
and I'm gonna say confirm
the Gmail user may now send mail as Scott F test
- perfect perfect
okay so let's go back here
and I think the only reason why this is still saying unverified is that you'll see there's not a Save button on this particular page
so if we go back out
I'm just gonna click on inbox for a second
and go back to this email
I have to confirm it on this side as well
so I'm going to click that link
please confirm that you'll send mail or send email as this address
I'm going to say confirm
confirmation success
okay so now this is again
this is our primary email address
let's go back into settings
let's click on accounts and import
and there we go
now we have both of them listed
we saw them they're listed already
but the thing that I wanted to point out is that you have the choice as to which will be your default
and in this case I'm going to leave email address number one
what that means is that when you go to compose or create a brand new email
it's which one is that
which email address do you want to compose by default
which one do you want to pop up automatically
you can always change it and I'll show you that in just a minute
but I'm going to leave that one there
but the second thing I want to show you here is that when replying to a message
we want to select this reply from the same address the message was sent to
you could choose this one so that all of your replies come from Scott F test one
but that's not what we want
if something is sent to email address number two
I want to reply so they think that they're still dealing with me at email address number two
so I'm gonna select that radio button there
and now let's do one other test here
I'm gonna go back to my second email address here
again I want to send something to my test to account
this is the one that we want to ignore
and I'm just gonna say hello with an exclamation mark
I'm going to send it
and so it should appear right
it should appear here
perfectly
and here it appears in my old or the one that I want to ignore going forward
there's where it is
it should also appear
yes of course it's appeared right there perfectly
now what I want to show you is that it's telling me that it was sent to my second email address
it's always gonna let me know that
but when I go to click reply
and let me click here
look at that
now I'm replying as if I was replying to that message directly from this email account here
so it is set up perfectly
this is exactly what we want
now going forward I no longer need to log into this account ever again
unless I want to make some very specific changes or settings
I can just deal with that email right here within my first email account
and the last thing I want to show you in the settings area is that you can have two different signatures
so here in your email signature here is my email address number one signature
I can have a separate email signature for my second email address
so again it's gonna look seamless
it's going to feel seamless as I'm dealing with that email
I hope that you found this helpful
I hope that you will look at ways that you can consolidate your email
so you can spend less time logging into multiple different accounts
and instead deal with as much email as possible in a single email account
thank you so much for watching and please be sure to LIKE and subscribe right here to Simpletivity
remember being productive does not need to be difficult
in fact, it's very simple
