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I’m a huge fan of Google’s online applications: GMail, Google Reader, etc. One little known feature of GMail which I find myself using over and over again is the ability to add extra metadata to my gmail email address to let me know where the email came from.
Let’s say that I have a gmail address: sean@gmail.com
Now if I am signing up for a newsletter at XYZ Corp. I can register with the email address sean+xyz@gmail.com You can put in any extra alphanumeric information after the plus sign and it still gets delivered to sean@gmail.com. Furthermore you can apply a filter in Gmail to process the email a certain way based on the email address that you signed you for (sean+xyz@gmail.com).
One handy use of this feature is to track where emails are coming from so if you started to get spammed for instance you will know which address was passed onto a third party.
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Good hint. I wasn’t aware of that. I have my own domain which is handy as I subscribe to lists using des_listname etc etc but use my gmail account for a lot of potential spam.
I notice that using a in my gmail address isn’t acceptable to your comments system !!!
Thanks for the comment Des. I too have used the catch all on my own domains. I think there is a subtle difference here with the catchall and the gmail method I outlined above. Generally the catchall on a domain will accept any local part of an email address i.e. abc123xyz@mydomain.com which means it is much more open to spamming because all someone has to know is your domain name (which they can find by crawling the web) whereas with the gmail system they would have to know your original gmail address first (which I keep a closely guarded secret
)
Interesting about Wordpress (my blog system) not allowing the plus sign, according to RFC 2822 (outlines the rules for email address formats), the local-part of the address may use any of these ASCII characters:
* Uppercase and lowercase letters (case sensitive)
* The digits 0 through 9
* The characters ! # $ % & ‘ * – / = ? ^ _ ` { | } ~
* The character . provided that it is not the first or last character in the local-part.
Thanks man that was great.
How can I get a 2nd email address for my account. I have tried to add one but I keep getting my account deleted
Using the MX facility of CPanel domains, It is possible to use, say, me@me.com so that it sends and recieves via this address but in reality uses google mail in the background. However, does anyone know if you can do this using more than 1 email address (rather than have GM collect the emails, as explained above) ??
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the comment. I have setup Google Apps for domains on a number of sites which involves changing the MX DNS record as you stated. It is definitely not limited to 1 email address. I have set it up on domains with 5-10 email addresses, I am not sure if there is a hard limit on the number of accounts. The way it works is that by changing the MX record you send all email received at that domain via Google’s email servers not just for 1 account as you stated. The online help is quite good, see it here at http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/static.py?page=setup_guide.html&hl=en
If you need any more help then let me know.
Thank you Sean, a very prompt and helpful reply.
In order to setup multiple email addresses on 1 one google mail account, please see the posting and link above.
Just for further clarification. Google Apps allows you to use Gmail for accessing your email for me@mydomain.com and for multiple email accounts on that domain. This isn’t to be confused with actual gmail.com email addresses. If you want to be able to manage multiple gmail.com email addresses fromt the one gmail.com account then use the method in the actual post above. If however you want to take advantage of the gmail interface and Google’s back end technologies (anti-spam etc.) and keep your email at mydomain.com then you want to look at Google Apps for domains as discussed in the preceding comments.
i am new to gmail..and i find it so hard to get answers to questions i have there..even tho i have checked over and over again the help section.all i want to know for now are 3 things
1) how do i delete my gmail account if i need to?
2) how do i block certain email addresses from sending me messages?
3) am i able to get a secondary gmail address in addition to the one i ahve? and if so..how do i do that?
thanks to any1 for any help or suggestions..:)
answers for #9
1) see http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8152
2) either set a filter for them or mark them as spam
3) sign up for another Gmail account, or use the process mentioned above.
Hi, thanks very much for very helpful info!
We need help with the following situation….. We have a small company with 3 owners, and currently we are using google apps for our email, combined with Outlook and personal PDAs. In google apps, we setup both individual accounts – eg ben@mydomain.com – as well as “public” accounts – eg info@mydomain.com. For the public accounts, we would like all 3 owners to receive emails (we have an understanding about who replies to which email.) Is there a way to setup our system so that all 3 of us receive emails from the public accounts?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Very slick.
One question. Does it make a management headache to have all these extra variables on your email address, though?
I’m thinking in terms of clarity…
@Ben Argov
Instead of creating ‘public accounts’ for info@mydomain.com I would suggest creating groups that deliver the mail to all three owners then on each owner account you add additional outgoing accounts so that they can send a message from info@mydomain.com
First delete the public ‘accounts’
goto -manage this domain – users and groups – users –
check each ‘public address’ and delete users
then – users and groups – groups – create new group -
add the public e-mail addressees and configure each one to deliver all mail to all three owners.
Each owner should then goto their mail settings.
-settings- accounts-
And add each public account -add another account you own-
enter the public e-mail address
Send verification
send mail through gmail apps
Once done each owner will get all the e-mails, and each owner will be able to respond from the ‘public’ address
Hope this helps.
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the comment.
That sounds like a great solution, I haven’t seem the groups feature in Google for domains.
Also, up until recently if you send an email one of those additional email accounts from your gmail account it puts in that awful ’sent of behalf of x’ which really made it look unprofessional. Not too sure if exists with google apps for domains but here is a recent update from google on that very topic :
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/send-mail-from-another-address-without.html
Hello, Thanks for the tip about this. Now, do you know how to configure the multiple e-mail addresses with the multiple inboxes feature? I’d like to have each unique e-mail appear in its own inbox.
Respecter Sir,
I am working in a school and have to create the email ID’s of all 300(approx) students in Gmail but ur server do not allow me to make more accounts. please give me a appropriate solution.
Regards
DGSingh
I don’t understand how spam is still something to talk about – gmail’s spam filters keep it all at bay really effectively. In fact, I don’t remember when was last time I got spam and I’m more than sure that the spam mails that slip into my inbox isn’t more than 1-3 mails a month.
Hi Sean,
thanks for the advices. However, still now I am mostly unable to use the ” ” trick in my email address on websites (e.g. for newsletters) has it is 90% times rejected has invalid. Is there a work around or just many non compliant sites ?
For now I keep on using my previous email addresses on another account (free) and get gmail to import from the account and filter according to the original recipient email. I don’t think this will be sustainable over time.
Cheers,
Antoine
Brilliant info, thanks very much
)
Karen x
I have an email with the name and not the email name as my company’s name “My Company”. My Company only shows as the name when someone receives an email from me. The email itself is not mycompany@gmail.com.
So, I decided to create mycompany@gmail.com and it seems that it’s taken. Then I discover that it got fusioned with my present email. Basically, it’s the same profile as my main email, I can even log in with the same password. Now, I want the old gmail to be deleted and use the new one which is mycompany@gmail.com. But there’s absolutely no way to do that! I can’t edit, add, delete my present email or the new one.
Can someone help me please? Thanks.
This is really weird….
i have made a email example 1234@gmail.com. and i sent a email to it and i got it fine. but then i sent an email to 1234.test@gmail.com and havent recived it. from what i have read it should go through.what am i doing wrong?
I am fairly sure that it only works with a and not a .
Hii sene there are two gmail ids say abc@gmail.com and xyz@gmail.com can these both access same account abc@gmail.com.. If yes how??
I was looking for this everywhere. I thought it was an urban myth. Very excited.
Nice feature but a lot of websites ( or mailproviders) don’t allow to use the ” ” sign.
Any idee?
Tx
sir
i want to send text message to 100000 number of email address
please help me???
Hi…
My friend is gettin a mail from a gmail id,we cudnt trace it… it is of 5 characters.. help me to find out that culpirt.. the id is ssk.1@gmail.com…