If you have more than one gmail account for different purposes then the primary problem which you will face is not being able cannot log in to multiple accounts simultaneously if you are using one browser. Hence today we will try to explore various ways and corresponding tools to manage multiple gmail accounts simultaneously and productively too.
Now the most obvious solution to this could be opening another browser (if you have another one installed) and checking your other gmail account in that. However this may not be convenient and productive.
One good solution is to merge the other gmail account into your primary gmail account and manage it through that. This way you would never need to log in to your other account. I have explained this process elaborately in my post: Switch To A Gmail Account Without Changing Your Original Email Address . Here you can consider the email addresses to be your primary and secondary gmail address and manage it accordingly. Now when you do this, make sure you create a filter for your secondary email address and make it ‘ skip the inbox ‘ so that you do not get all the mails in your main inbox. This can be repeated for 5 such addresses.
One more easy way to do it could be using the forward all mail option in your secondary gmail account and forwarding them to your primary account. And also make sure you create a similar filter in this case too. And if you do it this way, you can do it for any number of gmail accounts. Although for personal use, I think its highly unlikely that you have more than 2 or 3 gmail accounts.
If you would really want to keep both the gmail accounts aloof, then we do have some tools which help you do it productively :-
IE Tab Firefox Extension
The IE tab firefox extension helps you to embed Internet explorer in firefox. It creates a small icon in your firefox status bar which when clicked opens a new tab which behaves like IE browser. And there you can actually open your other gmail account because it doesn’t have the same firefox cookies. You can further customize the settings of this add-on.
Gmail Assistant
Gmail Assistant is a notifier for multiple Gmail and Google Apps email accounts. It is a free open source software written in Java and notifies you with a pop up if you get an email in any of your gmail accounts.
Gmail Manager For Firefox
Gmail manager is a firefox extension which has similar functions as Gmail Assistant. As it says ” Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets. ”
Cookie Pie Firefox Extension
Cookie Pie extension enables you to maintain different cookies storage in different tabs and windows, thereby enabling you to open different email accounts in different tabs. The developers of this extension have given a good presentation on their site with a video too.
I think the above methods and tools could be helpful if you have more than one gmail account. Do you use any other method to manage multiple gmail accounts other than the aforesaid methods? Let me know in the comments.
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Great list there. I had written about this earlier and you can also just multiple browsers if you have them installed, i.e. IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Aseem Kishores last blog post..How to edit the right click menu in Windows
Thanks Aseem…and your comment was the fastest on my blog till now. Just a few mins after the post.
Hey, I never knew about that. Thanks a lot for sharing the trick.
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You are welcome Haris
Nice tips. There is a Greasemonkey script as well named Multiple Gmail Accounts (reviewed in the link in my name) that lets you seamlessly switch between Gmail accounts. Stumbled!
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Thanks for the info and stumble, Karthik
This will be very useful. Stumbled.
Thanks Shankar!
Currently I’m using Google Apps edition and using POP to get all emails in one place.
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Love this tip. Gmail Assistant should satisfy my needs.
STUMBLED!
I also wasn’t aware of this, good to know though.
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Hey cool post. I needed that badly. Stumbled!!!
By the way, nice blog.
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Thanks Syahid and Rakshit
I use POP and Outlook to manage my 5 gmail accounts in one place. Works seamlessly and lets me have it all in one inbox & archive but be answering things all from their own account, etc.
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This is a good post. Really useful information that is helpful and will improve productivity. Good share mate.
hii..I have made two gmail account and merged them using the ACCOUNTS option. Now, if i have a third Gmail and then i link the primary mail of the other two to this one, i will get all mails in the third one right ?
One question..do i have to periodically sign into all gmail accounts to keep them alive ? or does gmail automatically checks the connected Gmails..? THNX
@Shrinath - Yes, right. And there is no need to sign in periodically to your other accounts. However you may wanna do it to check the spam folders to see if any important mails have landed up there.
@Abhijeet Thanks for the info..
Question along these lines: I have a gmail account and three other accounts that all go to my gmail account. Is there a way to set a different signature based on which email I address I use to reply? Thanks.
@ncharny - You will have to search for external scripts to do that (if there are any ). Gmail by default doesn’t have this feature. However the new Gmail Labs has a feature called Random Signature which might be useful. Check that out.
Found it — works great: http://blankcanvasweb.com/pages/detail/id_15/n_getting_started/
I have three Gmail accounts.
Is there a way to merge all these..? (one account, multiple e-mail addresses, like disposable addresses ? ) i mean if i change the password of one ID, will the others change…
Guess GMAIL Team does not understand that providing different usernames to same accounts saves the GMAIL people some space.
Also, i will continue to get mail from the accounts even if i change the passwords too rite…?
i mean i can change the passwords of any of the accounts and still i will get mail rite ?
CookiePie doesn’t work very well. I tried it with two different versions of Firefox and in FFX 3 it doesn’t even show the toggle option in the tab context menu. In the last release of FFX 2 the second gmail account was unresponsive and unusable.
Thanks for all the goods I find in your blog. I am subscribing to it.
Does any one know Google gmails policy on mutiple accounts. Can I have 10, 20, 100?
Is it only possible with pseudonyms etc?
Andrew (Australia)
Instead of having multiple gmail accounts, just use you single account with dots. abcde@gmail.com receives mails from a.bcde@gmail.com, ab.cde@gmail.com and so on. Just make sure you have a filter which labels incoming emails according to the email address. Categorize your contacts and give them different email addresses while you maintain just one account!!
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