Managing Multiple Gmail Accounts
Posted on November 25, 2006
25 Comments
In yesterday’s article, I mentioned that not only is my email hosted by Google Apps For Your Domain, but that I also read and manage all my email online now. No more Outlook or other local email clients. In general, this has been working great — anywhere I have a browser, I have access to my email. And heck, I always have a browser with me these days thanks to my USB Key.
However, initially I had some challenges. You see, up until very recently I’ve never used Gmail for more than one account. Now I have at least 3 that I want to monitor. Have you ever tried to be logged into multiple Gmail accounts in one browser at the same time? Didn’t work out so well for me! So, my initial plan of “Gee, I’ll just open more tabs and have a browser tab for each account” didn’t quite get the job done.
To be clear: checking email one account at a time was working fine. Just cumbersome. I wanted a way to be notified without have to go look. Something like Google’s Notifier (or the FF extension I used to use) that would handle multiple accounts.
Last week, Rich mentioned Netvibes and some updates. Long time readers know that I’ve always been a fan of Netvibes, but haven’t used (nor mentioned) them much lately. His article inspired me to drop by and see what has changed recently. Once there, I remembered their little Gmail notifier widget. After some experimentation, I was pleased to discover that I could add three of those to a Netvibes tab all pointed to different accounts with no problems.
The same evening, I found the Gmail Manager Firefox extension. It handles multiple accounts with no difficulties and not only lets me know when I have mail, but for which account. It’s really very slick and has made this “migration” much easier.
So I have two options for Gmail notification/management. The Netvibes one works great when I’m spending time in any browser besides Firefox. The Gmail Manager extensions works great all other times. Happiness is achieved.
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25 Responses to “Managing Multiple Gmail Accounts”
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[...] When I last wrote about this topic I thought Netvibes had a pretty decent answer, but it doesn’t quite work out. Works fine as a notifier, but things break down when launching Gmail from it — not always sure which account I’ll end up with. Close, but no cigar. [...]
Another possibility is to use one gmail account as a ‘primary’ and have all the others auto-forward everything to that address.
Set up labels to indicate which e-mail address is responsible for each piece of mail.
You can then configure gmail to use the appropriate reply-to address in your own replies.
This allows you to access all your mail from a single login, while maintaining separate identities, without having to find specialized tools for the job.
One thing I have notice about this setup with the “reply to address” is that if you are reply from the central email account, it will say “sent on behalf, defeating the purpose of multiple identies
What i do is I use the central email to view all mails from the other accounts, and then If I need to reply, I Log into the other accounts using IE Tab for firefox, so that I don’t lose access to the central account by cookie change.
Hope I did not make the explanation complicated
Hi Jerry – thanks for the idea!
I recently discussed this very topic (just last week in fact) and haven’t run into the “on behalf of” issue yet. Now, in that post I gave two options to handle sending from the proper email — darned if I can remember which option I left in place in my mail account though… doh.
Hi ZB – thats a thought that I should definitely look into.
Can things be “auto-labeled” based on source address when forwarded?
Yes, under settings > filters (for your “primary”, or aggregating account).
Create a new filter. Click in the “to” field and fill in the e-mail address (this is whatever your “secondary”, or forwarding address, is), then add a description to the new filter.
Whenever you receive mail that was originally sent to that address, it will be labeled in your inbox with the description you gave, giving you an easy visual representation of which box the mail came from.
Bonus points to google for allowing you to setup up alternate sender profiles, and associating them with the “to:” field of the mail.
This may sound complex, but it’s a lot harder to describe than it is to actually do. I’ll write up a full blog post with screenshots later, and give you a link to it.
How painfully obvious, in retrospect!
Thanks for that tap to the head with a clue-stick, I think that you just provided the answer I’ve been seeking.
Hope you got it figured out – if not, hit my blog (just started it, so this tut is the only content). I’ve just written this up with pictures and steps and everything
.
Thanks for the link. Glad I could inspire that first blog post.
Looks pretty straight-forward.
Has anyone found a way to synch gmail contacts between multiple gmail accounts?
I’ve got my business email hosted by google apps and my personal email in gmail. I open my business email in one firefox tab and my personal email in another. It works great except that each account uses its own contacts database and contacts cannot be shared…
That is pretty neat stuff Chris! I actually have justed used the ability of gmail to have all my ‘multiple email addresses’ from gmail and the google aps into my main account and then use the filters as suggested above! This is currently handling about 10 email accounts on 4 domains! I will be looking at the firefox app though! Great stuff!
Trent
@Jay – Have to confess that’s not something I’ve looked into. Can’t say I’ve seen much, but I vaguely recall seeing some “web 2.0″ contact manager site that would sync with just about anything. If I recall the name, I’ll drop a link.
@Trent – Heyas. Glad you liked it.
http://gmailnotifier.alexeyev.org/ – now supports multiple accounts.
Hey Max, that’s great to hear! Thanks for the note, much appreciated.
Finally! I’ve set up several emails for different projects and they were getting out of control – not to mention the cumbersomeness (is that a word?) of going from one email acct. to another. Thanks.
Hi,
You have solved a big problem of mine,thanks for this information.
Hey MorganLighter and Makarand – so glad to hear what you read here was helpful.
Thanks for dropping by.
Just want to thank you for your words. It’s good feeling someone found it helpful.
[...] been down this road before. I’ve yet to find anything that can hit all of what I’m after. I wonder [...]
try gsyncit to sync multiple calendars and contacts
http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/
The “Gmail Manager” is good enough for what what I was looking for. Thanks.
Does anyone know of any good Greasmonkey scripts to be able to pull together multiple gmail accounts in one window?
Hi Dmitriy – have you seen some of the newer Google Labs toys? Check out this article: http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2009/02/06/new-labs-multiple-inboxes-adds-new-spin-on-inbox-consolidation/
I’ve been using Gmail Manager for some time, and it is handy, but disagree that it handles multiple accounts “with no difficulty.” As an add-on by itself, this is true, but I’ve found that if I have one particular gmail account open in the browser window proper – say, the one under which I store my calendar and tasks lists – action on that screen begins to yield “500 server error” messages if the Manager add-on logs in and checks another account at the same time. It is as though the add-on and the browser window are still using the same process, making it only marginally more useful than the scenario you described where you can’t really check all 3 at the same time in different tabs. The addon itself is effectively a “tab” that can steal away the active gmail login from the window you’re using.
I don’t know if Google Chrome, with its “each tab is its own process” model would alleviate this, but of course as of now there is no gmail manager equivalent addon for Chrome, either… not to mention, I still prefer firefox.
The best solution in my mind would be for the Google Notifier by Google to be updated (it was last 3 years ago this week, making it only slightly less useless than the standalone Google Talk client). Managing multiple gmail accounts in the browser doesn’t seem to work well as the sessions don’t play nice with each other.
Have a look at the new Gmail Notifier that is out.
Support for multiple accounts and many other goodies:
http://www.gmailnotifier.com