Dave, I’ve been experimenting with a Google Gmail account and am wondering if there’s a way that I can forward specific messages sent to that account to my regular mailbox? And if so, is there a fee or membership cost associated with it?
I too have a Gmail account and am very impressed with how easy it is to work with, how attractively it presents messages, how there’s sufficient archival space that I don’t have to keep cleaning out my mailbox, and how it’s so simple and clean compared to the ugly ad-heavy Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Unfortunately, it’s also still an invitation-only system so getting an account is a bit of a “who you know”.
But, yes, there is a way to selectively forward messages from your Gmail account and there’s no cost associated with it (“nor”, Google assures us, “will there ever be.”).
The trick is to log in to your account, then click on the “Settings” link on the top right corner. There are lots of useful settings you can tweak here — don’t forget to turn on keyboard shortcuts, for example — but you want to click on “Filters” to accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish here.
Probably, you have no filters, so you’ll see a rather austere screen and a “Create a new filter” link. Click on it. Now you’ll see this:
To create a filter that selectively forwards messages that have, say, the pattern cikdiscuss in the subject, simply add those letters to the subject box, then click on “Next Step”.
Now you’re presented with five choices: archive the matching message directly (they call this “skip the inbox”), star it, apply the specified label, forward it to, and move it to the trash. Obviously, it’s the fourth choice that you want: check that option, enter the email address of your main mail account, click “Create Filter” and you’re done!
As you can see in the earlier screen shot, there are a number of different sophisticated filters you can create. I like that I can filter based on the content of the message, a real boon for using Gmail to help organize lots and lots of messages. MY kudos to the Google team for Gmail, and I just wish i could give everyone who reads AskDaveTaylor an account to check it out!
There is a somewhat indirect way to do this – if all the messages are in the same thread, you can use the “Print all” button to create a new browser page with all of the messages. Just click Cancel on the print request. Now you can either select all the text and put that in an email, or print to a PDF and send that.
I need to forward five previously sent separate e-mails in one to the recipient. While in the Outlook I can simply highlight several e-mails and click “forward to” button, Gmail does not give me similar option.
Your explanation about how to filter e-mails does not answer the question. Everybody knows how to create a filter, and how to forward a single e-mail, and all other mailing services can do the same so giving kudos to Google might be a bit premature.
Do you have the ability / simple way to forward multiple messages from my mailbox in one e-mail? if yes, please advise instructions. Thank you.
Not only is creating a whole filter just to forward a handful of emails, a cumbersome way to deal with forwarding, it doesn’t work , because even if you have made the filter and run it, the emails just sit in the inbox. This only works with emails that haven’t arrived yet.
Gmail needs a forward button, so you can just select several messages and push the button, put in the address & ya.
“Me”, you’re right. There’s no easy way to forward messages that are already in your Gmail folder. The only possibility is through using SMTP and another email program, but that’s really complex and beyond what most people are willing to do.
Your create a filter solution will NOT forward “already received” gmail messages. It will only forward INCOMING messages. So this is not a solution.
To beat a dead horse, I’m trying to wrap my mind around the lack of the option to select certain messages from the inbox and merge them into one new message. If Gmail has the capability of filtering messages and is pretty dang smart and can automatically label messages based on content criteria within messages, why then can’t it copy user-selected messages into a new conversation. These are similar messages that I’ve received that SHOULD be a conversation but were sent seconds apart as separate messages. I want to forward just these similar messages to a new contact. Is this something that could be developed in the future? It would be mighty helpful as it could speed up the process of sending related messages to an interested contact. I use Google apps all the time and I’m always in awe of the power, clean design and integration of the collections of apps. This one stone hasn’t been turned over, out of all the millions of possibilities.
I have several old emails moved into a ‘labeled’ position which i want to forward. They are not part of the same conversation. They are all dated separately. AND they do not all have the same ‘subject’ – is this possible? Thanks Ann
Hi,
I have tried my best to go through the above messages and replies but can’t see an answer to what should be a very straight forward action.
I want to forward just ONE email (with attachments) but when i choose ‘forward’ and send, it is sending the whole of the conversation (previous sends/replies) but i don’t want the person i’m forwarding to, to read the whole conversation, i just want to forward the most recent reply i’ve had with attachments. Someone said copy and paste the message and send but then that means i have to attach the attachments separately. That is ridiculous! So please, in simple terms, how do i forward the most recent reply i’be had from someone to someone else with attachments without it sending the whole of the previous conversation? Come on Gmail, sort it out!
Iam trying to only send e-mails from one particular source to my cell phone to receive as a text message. I have set up a filter but either all e-mails come through or none. What could I be doing wrong? I am assuming that by setting up a filter, I am telling gmail that’s the one I want forwarded. How do I stop the others from coming through?
Thanks!
Kim
If you need just a few mails re-downloaded I just open them in Gmail and forward them to your existing Gmail address.
I have created an account in Gmail. The purpose of this account is to act as a routing agent. There is a group of people with their individual mail addresses. I want a situation whereby an email sent to this gmail account will automatically be forwarded to all the people in the group. I have added all the individuals’s addresses in the ‘Forward’ tab in Gmail but it is not working. It sends to one or two only and sometimes never. I also notice that it appends #in use# to some email addresses. Where am I going wrong? Thanks for your response
I am having the same problem with this new email. I cannot add any contact addresses by clicking on the envelope. every time I do I get a new blank compose email screen. I also am not very happy with this part of gmail. I tried to add the filters with no success either I need help and can not find it easily from Google. Is there a phone number to call. Frustrated!!!
I too really need to forward about two thousand mails out of gmail. Is there a solution to this yet? Can you contact gmail and have them change over the email account names??? PLLLLEEEEAAASSSEEE HHHEEEELLLLLPPPPPPPPP
For those asking about forwarding a single conversation with several posts in it… I had the same issue with trying to set up a filter and it not sending old messages.
After much to much time, I found that there is a “forward all” under the “more” drop down menu. (Using Firefox Browser)
This however, has led to another problem for me. After “forwarding all” I looked at the sent email and it didn’t actually forward all!!! It stopped part way through (ugh!). My convo has about 80 posts and it seems they have the darn thing limited to 25 and it doesn’t even warn you! What a joke. Back to the drawing board.
This just seems much too easy for them to fix…
At least those of you with less than 25 messages in a convo can use the “forward all”.
If anyone knows how to increase the limit or another way to send them all please tell us.
Hi Wendy. Sorry it seems unanswered, but the answer is, well, that there’s no way to do this that I can figure out. The best solution could be to enable IMAP access, then use a separate email program with its own filters set up to get your older messages, but a little niggling voice in my head says that won’t work either because IMAP access only lets you get to what’s new, not your archive. Sorry there’s no better solution…
I have the same question as “bo” dated Jul 3, 2011. This question remains unanswered as I looked through the previous posts other than by “bo”. It is this: How do I forward multiple emails that are already in my gmail account to another of my own gmail account IN ONE GO? I can select all 50 conversations in one page by just checking a little box near the top which is in the same line as “Archive”, “Spam”, “Delete”, etc, but after that, I cannot find any “forward” function to forward all these 50 emails to another gmail address. I know how to forward one by one but it will take me a 100 years to forward thousands of emails this way. Can somebody enlighten me on the method to do it? It will be very very much appreciated!
Nice one dear…keep it up..and Many thanks..
Just recently I’m getting forwarded messages in email that are in blue script, and it does not print. Why is this? How can I change thar script back to black?
i’m glad I asked Dave Taylor.
Cheers!
Kelly, should work fine. Set up your preference sin Google Groups so that you receive a copy of each message to your regular Gmail account, then set up the filter to recognize those messages and forward them along…
The forward filter will not work with emails I receive that are sent to a gmail group I belong to. Any thoughts on forwarding group emails?
Hi
There is a question that repeats itself here with no answer, apparently because it is a little bit similar to old questions that have been already answered, so it looks redundant though it’s not. I will be grateful if someone could answer this question please. Thanks in advance :#
So what I’d like to know is how to forward multiple OLD messages from my gmail to another account #without outlook#. The filter option does not work. It is a nice solution to automatically forward all your future mails that apply to the filter definition, but cannot be applied to old mails already in your inbox #even if you check the option “apply to messages below” during filter creation. There is even a note saying clearly that old mails cannot be forwarded).
The question is whether there is a workaround. I need to forwards hundreds of mails from my full account (believe it or not, my gmail is full :-)) to a new account.
Thanks so much!
For all those asking about forwarding multiple messages in one go, here’s how you do it if the messages are all part of the same conversation
Open the desired message (in conversation “on” mode) then on the far right hand side, above the Ads, in red text (at least on my theme) not looking particularly import there should actually be a “Forward All” button underneath “New Window” “Print All” and “Expand All”.
Matt
I have email id in gmail i have received so many emails from my friends and i want to add this email ids in to contact of my account. Please guide me how this can be done by me?
Hi Julie. I am still answering comments and you can add email addresses, but you have to set them up differently. Check out this tutorial:
https://www.askdavetaylor.com/verify_confirm_forwarding_email_address_gmail.html
If you are still answering comments here, please let me know why I can not add a new email to the forward window in a new filter?
Hi Dave,
I was wondering if there is a way to download (via POP) only the emails that come to a gmail address. I had a major system meltdown recently, which involved me losing alllll me emails…from 5 years. Very Sad. So I set up a gmail account which receives copies of the emails received on my “official” email (POP3). I have done this with my partner’s email to. We find it useful for when we go away – we can simply go to gmail and and check both our emails. We’ve even set it up so we can reply-from our individual addresses. These emails have been made to skip the inbox and immediately be archived and be labelled so we can pull them up again quickly.
We then got a little notebook for our travels and we want to set up outlook to access the gmail – but only the emails that are sent to my @gmail account. – It currently tries to retrieve all the emails from the 3 accounts.
Is there a way to stop the outlook on my notebook from downloading all the mail, and just what is in the gmail inbox?
Dave, how can i forward about 3,000 emails within a specific date range to my Outlook? I had a .pst meltdown and can only access emails sent between May and 9/7 in my Google online inbox but want to forward them to Outlook to be able to search more easily and file in my folders there. Thanks!
Hi,can i forward a gmail i have received to another email address ,Albert
i tried! its not freaking working! it just seems that the filter will work from future messages recved, not the current ones, even if i check the box.
why do they build it like this!? they should just have a pull down menu to forward all selected messages. this is driving me crazy. this is very urgent.
I don’t get your complaint, Bruce. I forward email all the time. Where it says “Reply” next to an email message, click on the small triangle next to it and “Forward” is one of your options. How much easier could it be?
As a newcomer to “gmail” I am very unhappy that I can not forward a message to a friend without going thru a lot of BS.
You run down sites like Hotmail but in my opinion, they beat Gmail, hands down.
Put a “forward button” on the site and I may use it. Otherwise my Gmail account will end up in the
bin.
I have plenty of resume in my mail, I need to download only email id’s from that resume, is that any procedure to download only email id’s, without view that inbox.
the easy way to forward an email is to get an email address with TALKTALK there is a tab at the top of the email list FORWARD and an address bar comes up
Hey mate.. thanks for your tips. I am gonna try your option before that I have a quick question as what will be the lead time of this transition?
hey i have a question,
is it possible to MOVE all of your gmails to a hotmail account all at once?
in other words, forward them all in one single action instead of forwarding them individually?
I can already forward all incoming e-mail to my secondary address and works great. My question is – how do I do the same for all outgoing mails automatically ?