How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#1

Post by bitdrift » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 7:38 PM UTC

I currently have 4 Gmail accounts that I use on a fairly regular basis (for personal, work, side projects, etc). One of the accounts I forward to my personal account, but the others I want to keep separate and distinct.

I have tried the Gmail account switcher but I don't like not being able to see everything at once (plus it's slow switching between accounts). I also don't like desktop clients because their UX is old and clunky (apart from Sparrow, which I can't use because I'm on Linux) and I don't want to configure my client every time I find myself using a new machine. I'm also getting tired of having multiple browsers open just so that I can keep two accounts open at once.

So my question is--how do you deal with multiple email accounts? Am I missing out on something that others know about? Or is this a common problem?

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#2

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#3

Post by petervandijck » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 7:48 PM UTC

I forward them all to 1 account. However, even though I've set this up before, I can't for the life of me figure it out now.

Let's call EX the existing (old) email account that you want to keep and use daily (your personal one), and NEW the new one that you want to forward to your old one.

In NEW, settings>forward&pop3>allow pop3

In EX, settings>accounts>check mail pop3: add the new one.

The problem I'm having is that I can't seem to add the right settings for the new one (which is a google app hosted email)

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#4

Post by petervandijck » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 7:49 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.

You can do that? Do you have to switch back and forth every time, or can you keep multiple accounts open at the same time?

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#5

Post by madhouse » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:00 PM UTC

I'm using Gnus, problem solved. Only 4 separate mailboxes, but it could scale to any number of sources, without trouble. The UI is the same as the rest of my environment, fits in perfectly, it's flexible beyond imagination, and tailored to my specific needs.

I used to use the gmail web UI before, but due to the problems you yourself outlined, I switched to something much more powerful, something much more flexible.

I love Gnus, now that I managed to set it up after more than 10 years of using Emacs, and resisting the temptation to finally give gnus a real try.

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#6

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

petervandijck wrote: post #4

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.

You can do that? Do you have to switch back and forth every time, or can you keep multiple accounts open at the same time?

Nah, it works fine... each account stays open in it's tab and I can just switch tabs to see each account I care about. Note that I've only ever tried this using Chrome, so I don't know if they do something special to make it work or not.

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#7

Post by ollysb » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

I use the standard mail client on my iphone, macbook and imac. They all have an "all accounts" inbox so you can view all your email at once.

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#8

Post by bitdrift » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.

Wow. The multiple tabs + account switcher thing works surprisingly well.

Have you ever run into problems using it this way? Seems like this is somewhat outside of the normal usage (maybe because of all of the disclaimers when you add extra accounts?).

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#9

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:29 PM UTC

bitdrift wrote: post #8

mindcrime wrote: post #2

I have 3 GMail accounts I use regularly, so I just keep GMail open in three tabs, and use the GMail account switcher to switch each tab to one of the three accounts I care about.

Wow. The multiple tabs + account switcher thing works surprisingly well. Have you ever run into problems using it this way? Seems like this is somewhat outside of the normal usage (maybe because of all of the disclaimers when you add extra accounts?).

So far, no. I've been doing this for about a week, and - as far as I can tell - it works fine. I don't know if this is actually a supported thing, or something that only works by happenstance, or what. But for the time being it seems to work.

Re: How do you deal with multiple Gmail accounts?

#10

Post by bo_Olean » Wed, Mar 09, 2011, 8:32 PM UTC

petervandijck wrote: post #3

I forward them all to 1 account. However, even though I've set this up before, I can't for the life of me figure it out now. Let's call EX the existing (old) email account that you want to keep and use daily (your personal one), and NEW the new one that you want to forward to your old one. In NEW, settings>forward&pop3>allow pop3 In EX, settings>accounts>check mail pop3: add the new one. The problem I'm having is tha…

have you tried this ?

username: username@yourdomain.com

pop.gmail.com as incoming server

smtp.gmail.com as outgoing server

Link : http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...