Google + Email Trick

Gmail Trick: Use multiple email addresses for your single Gmail account

You know those situations where you’ve got a system in place with a few test accounts on it and each account requires a unique email address?  You then spend ages creating lots of Google email addresses or using every variation of your work email address until you run out.  Well, no longer.  There is a way you can use one Google email address in many variations and still receive all the emails into the one mailbox.

You can use multiple email addresses with your single Gmail account.

or first.name.last.name@gmail.com

Suppose, you have your Gmail account as: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

With Gmail, you can also use it as: firstnamelastname@gmail.com or first.name.lastname@gmail.com 

Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames. Email sent to all of these email addresses will go to your original Gmail account, that is: firstname.lastname@gmail.com

Here is what google has to say about this:-

"Sometimes you may receive a message sent to an address that looks like yours but has a different number or arrangement of periods. While we know it might be unnerving if you think someone else’s mail is being routed to your account, don’t worry: both of these addresses are yours."

Here is another trick  to use a plus sign next to the @ sign in your gmail or googlemail address.  Say, for example, your email address was myemail@gmail.com.  You’ve set up your account on… let’s say Moodle… to use this email address.  The next account you set up on Moodle insists that you provide a unique email address.  No problem.  Add a + sign within your email just after the name of the email account and put anything you wish after it.  So you could use myemail+1@gmail.com or myemail+sue@gmail.com or myemail+asmanyvariationsasIwish@gmail.com.  All these addresses will work and you’ll receive the email into your mailbox for myemail@gmail.com

When you receive the email into your email account, it does show the original email address (the one with the +), so this should, although I haven’t tried it yet, make it possible to filter emails using an email rule.  So if you know that your Twitter account uses the email address myemail+twitter@gmail.com, then you could automatically filter anything that comes into your email box using this address into a Twitter folder.  This trick also means that you can set up multiple Twitter accounts with one email address.

So, a useful way to create as many email addresses as possible and to manage your inbox, all with one little trick.  Brilliant.