By Princess Jones
Email is unavoidable in today’s communication. It has replaced letters as the default business correspondence. If you run a business, you probably have several email addresses you’re using, not counting your personal email. But how do you manage all of these emails without logging into each account to check messages throughout the day?
The easiest way is to combine your accounts into one place. You can do that with a number of email management programs of varying degrees of effectiveness and cost. However, I recommend combining your emails accounts into a single Gmail account. I love Gmail as an email management program because it’s easy to navigate and I can access it anywhere I am on whatever device I happen to be using. Here’s how to do it.
- Start by clicking the wheel on the right-hand corner of your Gmail inbox and clicking Settings.
- Then click the Accounts and Import tab.
- About halfway down the page is a link to add an email address you own. Click that.
- You’ll get a pop-up screen where you’ll enter the email account and the name associated with it. (Don’t see the pop-up window? Check that it’s not behind the other browser windows or that your browser didn’t block it.)
- Deselect the Treat as an Alias box unless you really know what you’re doing. Click Next Step.
- On the next page, enter your settings. Your username is usually the entire email address and the password is just the one you use to log into it normally. You’ll also need the SMTP settings. They are associated with the email provider of the address you’re adding. You can find the Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo instructions easily online. If you are using another email provider, contact them for the correct settings.
- Once you’ve done that, it will ask you if you’d like to also send mail as this email address. Follow the same process. This time, you want to use the POP settings when prompted.
When you’re all done, there’s just a bit of clean up configuration to do. Go back to the main browser window to edit your Gmail settings. Click “Make Default” next to the email address you use the most. It’s also a good idea to check the setting so that Gmail automatically replies from the email address the message was sent to. (You can always change which email address you use by clicking the arrow next to the address in the From line).
This will do wonders for streamlining your email management process. For more ways to make email more productive, check out these secret Gmail features you should be using.