Aggregating Your Gmail Accounts

Let's say that you have several domains and that you were smart enough to use Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD). Invariably, you end up with at least one account for each domain. What a hassel, right? Well, when you use email from GAFYD, you are essentially using gmail. With that in mind, you can easily aggregate all your accounts into one. You can still store the mail at each account and you will be able to send as, and more importantly reply as, each account. Let's review how it's done.

First you want to set up your "Send Mail As" Setting in the Account from which you want to do all the checking. This is from Google Help: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=22370

How do I use a different From address to send mail?

If you'd like your outgoing Gmail messages to display another one of your email addresses in the 'From:' field (instead of your Gmail address), just follow these easy steps:

1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. Click Settings along the top of any page, and then select the Accounts tab.
3. Click Add another email address in the Send mail as section.
4. Enter your full name in the Name field, and the email address you'd like to send messages from in the Email address field.

   *Keep in mind that each time someone replies to a message you send using a custom 'From:' address, the reply will be delivered to the 'From:' address rather than your Gmail address. If you'd like replies to be delivered to another account, you'll need to enter a 'reply-to' address. Just click Specify a different reply-to address to enter this information.

5. Click Next Step >> and then click Send Verification to complete the process. Gmail will send a verification message to your other email address to confirm that you'd like to add it to your Gmail account. You'll need to click the link in that message, or enter the confirmation code in the Accounts section of your Gmail account, to complete the process. Once you've verified that you'd like to add the address to your account, you can start sending messages using your custom 'From:' address.

NEXT, you'll want to set up a filter. This is a piece that Google doesn't tell you about. Since you are going to leave the email in your other accounts, you will want to be able to easily identify and delete email from those account that is in your main Gmail (aggregate) account. That way, you don't fill up your main gmail account.

Here's the Google Help instructions on setting up a filter. Read after for my recommendations. The orginal help is at: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6579

How do I set up filters?

Gmail's filters allow you to manage the flow of incoming messages. Using filters, you can automatically label, archive, delete, star, or forward your mail, based on any combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more.

To create a filter:

1. Click Create a filter (next to the Search the Web button at the top of any Gmail page).
2. Enter your filter criteria in the appropriate field(s).
3. Click Test Search to see which messages currently in your account match your filter terms. You can update your criteria and run another test search, or click Next Step.
4. Select one or more actions from the list. These actions will be applied to messages matching your filter criteria in the order in which the actions are listed -- for example, you could choose to Forward matching messages to a specific email address, then Delete the messages.
5. If you'd like to apply this filter to messages already in your account, select the Also apply filter to x conversations below checkbox.
6. Click Create Filter.

To edit or delete existing filters:

1. Click Settings (at the top-right of any Gmail page).
2. Click Filters.
3. Find the filter you'd like to change and click its edit link, or click delete to remove the filter.
4. If you're editing the filter, enter the updated criteria for the filter in the appropriate fields, and click Next Step.
5. Update any actions and click Update Filter.

MY RECOMMENDATION is that the Filter criteria is on the "To:" you should set that to one of the addresses in your "send mail as." Then, as the action, apply a label. The Label can be the email address as well. Keep it simple.

Consider doing the same with your POP Accounts. As a last little tip, if you want to aggregate your Yahoo and Hotmail accounts, simply set them to be checked via POP!

Enjoy