This article will teach you how to use Google’s Add Account setting to move emails into a central account. This will reduce the need of switching and searching through multiple accounts. If you are somehow looking for a How to Delete Gmail Account Without Deleting Google Account article, it’s right here.
Few people tend to manage more than one email account; however, multiple email inboxes innately increase the time one spends on email. To be up-to-date, one has to switch between email accounts, to review and reply as required from each account. Occasionally, you also may want to monitor the spam folder for each account.
To reduce the different number of inboxes to always check, you can try out forwarding emails into a central account. This essentially redirects incoming new mail from one account to another. This approach will only make sense when you don’t have the need to refer to older emails from an account.
If you are just looking to consolidate an email in a central account to simplify the search process, you should take a look at the Add Account feature in Gmail. When you connect an external account, the system pulls in any new email sent to all the addresses you added. It also pulls in older emails. The search process becomes much simpler when you’ve consolidated email into a central account. This is true especially if you choose to label emails to identify their source.
Choose the account in which you want to consolidate email. There is a feature that provides the Google Workspace administrator may choose to disable the Add Account feature. This can be done from the Admin console, navigate to Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > End User Access > Change Disable POP And IMAP Access For All Users to On. Email and attachments can consume significant storage space.
How can you add a mail account in Gmail to move emails?
- Visit Gmail.com and make sure you’re signed in with the account you want to use as your main account, this will be the account where other emails will be consolidated too.
- Click on the sprocket in the upper-right to access settings, then click on See All Settings > Accounts. From Other Accounts click on check mail, select Add a Mail Account
- Type in the email address of the accounts you want to connect.
- Fill in the information for the account you want to connect to. You will need to have both your username (complete email address) and your password readily available. If you have two-factor authentication enabled for your account, you require generating a one-time password to enter. AOL Mail, Gmail, Apple’s iCloud, as well as Microsoft Outlook each provide details on how one can generate app-specific passwords.
- You’ll need to enter the account’s POP server as well as port information. Generally, you can find this information in the support/sign-in pages.
Different email providers require a different POP server as well as port settings. Take Yahoo for example according to the POP access and instructions, you would have to enter the server as pop.mail.yahoo.com, port as 995. Then you need to check the box next to Always Use a Secure Connection (SSL) while Retrieving Mail since the connection requires SSL to be established. AOL Mail, Gmail, GoDaddy, Apple’s iCloud, along Microsoft Outlook each provide their own POP server configuration details.
If a particular configuration doesn’t seem to be working, you might try suggested alternative settings, be it changing the port to 110 and unchecking the box next to Always Use a Secure Connection (SSL) When Retrieving Mail.
When people attempt to connect a remote account, the password, POP server, port, as well as SSL settings are what cause major hurdles. You need to get all the mentioned requirements correct for the connection to work. If it doesn’t seem to be connecting as you expect, be patient, double-check your settings, then try again.
- Before we proceed any further, you have to choose to either check or leave the three other boxes unchecked.
For the first checkbox, you have the ability to choose to apply a label of your choice to incoming messages, for example, the name of your account, such as “Gmail”. Labeling mail that is being pulled in from another account makes it much easier to search and sort through the messages. We recommend you apply a label.
The second box provides you the ability to decide whether to leave a Copy of Retrieved Messages on The Server. If you do decide to check this box, you’ll have messages in two places: One will be your connected email account, the other one in your Gmail account. You have to decide if you want email to continue to accumulate and consume storage space in both places. OR. If you want you can go ahead and delete email from the source systems when it is pulled into the central Gmail.
The third allows you the option to Archive Incoming Messages, this means Skipping the Inbox. This is useful if you have processed all the mail from the account, you are connecting, and there is no need or requirement to actively use it. Under mostly all cases, we suggest you leave this box unchecked.
- Click on Add Account.
What will your approach be?
If you use more than one email account, how did you manage multiple accounts before knowing the secrets of moving emails we provided? Will you pull all of your emails into one or two accounts or would you rather keep the contents of each account isolated, to maintain individuality? If you happen to be an administrator that controls Google Workspace Gmail settings, would you allow people to access mail with POP or IMAP?
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