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Can I Access One Email Account from Another?

Question: I have two email addresses. Can I have them sent to one and get it the other?

It’s a little unclear as to exactly what you’re looking for here. But I’m going to assume that you have two email addresses and want to configure them so you can use just one.

There are a couple of different approaches and I’ll give you some examples.

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Let’s assume you have two email accounts: example@hotmail.com and example@gmail.com.

Set up an auto forward

On one account, set up an auto-forward to the other.

When you get email at example@hotmail.com you instruct that email service to automatically forward it to example@gmail.com. (The specifics of how to set it up will vary depending on the specific email provider you’re actually using.)

That way you can do all of your management using your Gmail account, you only need to login to that second service and all of your email appears there.

Email envelopeRetrieve email

The other approach is to instruct the main account (example@gmail.com in our scenario) to automatically pick up the email from the other by performing a POP3 or an IMAP email fetch.

In our example we might instruct the Gmail account to perform a POP3 pickup of email from the Hotmail (aka Outlook.com) account], and once again all the email would appear in the single Gmail account.

What I do

Exactly how you do this and whether it’s an option or not depends on the specific email providers that you are using. Hotmail and Gmail actually both do this and you can work in either direction. Exactly how you set it up depends on the service; not all services provide both of these kinds of functions.

As a final example, I’ll simply point out that I have a Hotmail address. It’s now accessible through Outlook.com, but I almost never go there. Instead, my Hotmail email is automatically forwarded to my real email address where I manage it. I can read all of my email in one place, including that which comes into Hotmail and I can send email that is from my Hotmail email address as well.

Remember to login to both

If you successfully get something like this set up, please be sure to login to both accounts periodically. The problem is if that you never login to the first account because you’re managing all of your email with the second one, then the first account provider may deem your account as being abandoned. They may end up closing your account because you never login to it. So, make sure to login, say once a month, to all of the email accounts that you care about so you don’t lose them.

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7 comments on “Can I Access One Email Account from Another?”

  1. In the unlikely event that you have 2 email addresses that allow neither forwarding nor can download email from another account via POP3, you can set up a third GMail or Outlook.com account and have that one download the emails from the two accounts you do use. I have a second email address that I use for that purpose, because GMail only downloads from 5 email accounts and I have more than that.

    And a question for Leo: Doesn’t accessing the account via POP3 or IMAP count as logging on in regards to keeping the account alive. Otherwise people using an email program exclusively could get locked out of their accounts. I assume this is true for the major email providers, especially in light of the fact that many people access emails exclusively on their phones and/or tablets.

    Reply
  2. I have set up my web mail so that it is forwarded to Outlook on my computer at work. It is also forwarded to a gmail account. So I read incomming mail anywhere using gmail but if I want the reply to come from web address I can only do this by using work computer Outlook. I am told I need microsoft Exchange but don’t really know what this is.

    Reply
  3. Hi

    My contribution about e mails is that since I had to use Outlook when Hotmail ceased to operate, I have had nothing but trouble. It is slow, and seems to freeze, and the icons and colours (UK spelling) are drab and uninteresting. Why is this? Can anyone explain what is wrong? I feel loathe to change the whole of my many contacts and use a new e mail account which is not associated with Outlook, but I would like some other users point of view, and if they are reading this…come on Outlook create an e mail application which looks and feels like the 21st century..yours looks like the 70’s….and that’s being polite! Paula Ipswich UK

    Reply
  4. Leo you referred to “performing a POP3 or an IMAP email fetch.” Gmail only seems to perform a POP3 email fetch. Which service does an IMAP fetch?

    Reply

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