Tuesday, November 29, 2011

You can forward outgoing Gmail

December 2012 Update: I don't think this is working for us any more.  Sorry.

I was able to forward outgoing Gmail to a single address as long as I was willing to forward incoming mail also. I had it working, then I changed to a method that made it stop working. Below I'll describe what works and what doesn't work to forward outgoing and incoming email from a Gmail account.

What works:

1. Set up a filter to apply a label such as "outgoing" to all email that is "from:(myaccount@gmail.com)" or has the words "in:sent". Either of these seems to work.  Check the Skip Inbox checkbox

2. NOT under Filters, but under Forwarding, set all mail to be forwarded to another address. This only works with one address. If you need more, you will need to have an intermediate address that does nothing but broadcast what it receives.

What doesn't work:

None of these work.

1. Set up a filter to forward outgoing mail.

2. Set up a filter to label outgoing mail, and another filter to forward labelled mail.

3. Forward to more than one address.

4. Forward outgoing mail only.

Now for a conscientious plea:  Consider moving all your money including your retirement fund from stocks and banks to a credit union.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't work for me :(

Thomas Gail Haws said...

We have this working currently for several email addresses. If you can give me specific steps, I may be able to help.

Anonymous said...

i also tried this today and its not working. does this suddenly stopped working??

Thomas Gail Haws said...

Hmm. It's still working for us. I'd be happy to talk through it with you.

Vikas Rajan said...

this is what i did:



1) created a filter to label mails send from my email id as "outgoing". I confirmed that this is working as i could see the labels set for the mails that i sent (I also tried it with in:sent, but some how that was not working)



2) Under the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" i set up auto forward my mails to another gmail id. but some how i am never getting the email. i am still getting incoming mails. Btw does it matter which additional option i choose under the forwarding :

a) keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox

b) mark Gmail's copy as read

c) archive Gmail's copy

d) delete Gmail's copy



Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I also am having issues making this work also.

Any tips will help me out!

I created a filter to create the outgoing. It shows up in the labels, but they are dark like they have already been read, if that means anything. Either way it doesnt send it on to the other email under forwarding.

Please HELP!!!!

Thomas Gail Haws said...

I'll try to take another look at this and see if I can improve my instructions. Hang in there.

Anonymous said...

Did you select forward ALL mail?

Anonymous said...

Did you select Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)?

Thomas Gail Haws said...

It is definitely necessary to select select forward ALL mail. This method CANNOT selectively forward outgoing. Thanks for that pointer. I will clarify in the blog entry.

Thomas Gail Haws said...

I'm not sure it's necessary to Enable POP for all mail. Pop enabling is for honoring requests to download your mail.

Anonymous said...

I did tell it to forward ALL of the mail. incoming and outgoing. It didn't work.

I did follow the steps, even though they weren't 'great' they were pretty self explanatory. This may just be a work around that is no longer working.

Unknown said...

Hi
I too am having problems with this method.
I have set up a filter which is successfully being applied as I send mail and in 'Forwarding Pop/IMAP' I have 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to' selected and pointing to another Gmail address. But the mail is never received by the other account.
Is this still working for you?
If you have any other suggestions I would be very grateful.
Thanks
Tim

Thomas Gail Haws said...

I checked my configuration, and I see that Skip Inbox is checked on the filter. Did you do that?

I've requested verification from the owner of the company that he's getting all emails still.

Tom

Unknown said...

Hi Tom
Thanks for you help. I hadn't got 'Skip inbox' selected but have just set it now but unfortunately it hasn't helped the email still isn't being received.

I have found this solution
www.webernetting.com/auto-bcc-gmail/
but it is not ideal.

I would be very interested to know if the owner of the company is still getting all the forwarded emails?

Thanks again

Thomas Gail Haws said...

Tim,

He just emailed to tell me he still is receiving copies of all inbound and outbound mails. I sent "him" a test from one of the accounts, and he says he got it.

Maybe we should try to find out if there's some step I have failed to describe so that you can succeed.

Tom

Thomas Gail Haws said...

Well, the filter has the following checkboxes checked;

-Skip inbox
-Apply label: _______
-Never send to spam

And the forwarder under POP/Forwarding says to forward all mail to ______

Unknown said...

Well my settings are exactly the same as you have suggested
-Skip inbox
-Apply label: _______
-Never send to spam

And the forwarder under POP/Forwarding says to forward all mail to ______

But it just isn't working. My filter is applying the label though.

Rather confusing !!

Thanks

Anonymous said...

The original post worked great for me I created a label "outgoing" and then a filter to mark all sent mail as "outgoing". And I already had a forwarding address set up in Settings. Now I receive all messages including the sent ones in my other email. Thank you!

aaron said...

I THINK I GOT IT! Do all that Thomas, said, except on the first shot of setting up filter, choose "forward it to" and choose the address it is allready being forwarded to. It will give you an error warning, click okay- uncheck the "forward to" (but the name will still be there), and then update. worked on 2 different accounts for me

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your article on Gmail. Gmail is by far my favourite email service.
It was nice to learn something new.