How to Merge Multiple Gmail Accounts in One Inbox

Learn everything that you need to know about merging multiple Gmail accounts into one single inbox.

We usually separate our lives into parts, such as family, work, leisure, and others. And we tend to do the same with our emails. If you have multiple email accounts, you know very well what we’re talking about.

It’s common to have at least two inboxes: one for work and one for personal usage. This is excellent since mixing both kinds of emails can be confusing. You may know of someone that has three or even four email accounts. And no one can blame them for wanting an inbox just for e-commerce related emails, another one for academic purposes, and the third one for work. Although this may not be the best solution, it is the most accessible people can think of.

When it comes to business emails, it still can happen, mainly for people who need to keep a personal, professional inbox and a team inbox. Imagine how great it would be to have them in the same account? No switching between tabs or windows all day long and saving time? 

If this is your case, you should know that there are some ways of having multiple Gmail accounts in one inbox. In this article, you are going to learn the complete process step by step. We hope that after this reading, you can finally centralize your emails in just one place in a way that your workflow can be improved 100%.

The benefits of merging your Gmail accounts

Sometimes having separate accounts for different purposes is ideal. For example, having a personal account separated from a business account is essential to your work productivity. It also saves a lot of space for each account.  You can also get some specific benefits from having multiple Gmail accounts in one single inbox for each of the cases.

For personal purposes
Having several personal accounts for shopping, education, and others can be confusing. Besides, you lose a lot of time switching between one another.

For business
You don’t need to switch from your business inbox to your team inbox all the time.

Multiple Gmail accounts in one inbox: Step-by-step guide

This step-by-step applies to people who want to merge different Gmail accounts. It consists of receiving emails from a secondary inbox on a primary account. This way, you can use just one of them.

So the first decision you need to make is choosing which one is to be the primary account, usually, it’s the one you use the most. Then you can follow these steps.

1. Go to “account settings”
2. Add another email address
3. Send Verification
4. Confirm the changes
5. Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings
6. Confirm the forwarding email address
7. Select a forwarding option

Note: You can do this process between multiple Gmail accounts (@gmail.com) or two accounts from the same Google Workspace domain (@company.com).

Go to “account settings”

On the selected primary email address account, click the gear icon and select the option “Settings”.  

Then, click “Accounts” in the top navigation. Then click on the link “Add another email” in the section “Send mail as”.

Add another email address

A pop-up will open where you need to fill in the following information:

• Your full name or name of the team in case of a business email
• Your secondary email address

You can either check or uncheck the box to the left of “Treat as an alias.” If you want to send and receive messages in your Gmail inbox from this secondary inbox, you should mark it.  Also, keep it checked if you need to send email messages from a group mailing list. Now, if you need to send emails on behalf of another user or account, you should uncheck it.

It depends on each case, so you should look at this Google article to know more about this option.

There is a link right under the checkbox that offers you an optional step “Specify a different ‘reply-to’ address.” It means that the replies to messages you send will go to this address. If you would like to add this email address, click on it, and a type box will appear.

After completing the info on this popup window, click the “Next Step” button.

Send Verification

On the next screen, you will have to send a confirmation email to your secondary Gmail inbox. Just click on the button, and it will automatically send you an email. Don’t close the popup.

Confirm the changes

Next, go to your secondary inbox and open the confirmation email. You can either copy the verification code to paste it into the proper popup field. Or you can click on the indicated link inside the email.

Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings

Now you need to go to your secondary email account to set your emails from this account to the primary one.  Go to Settings by clicking the gear icon, and choose the tab “Forwarding and POP/IMAP.”

Then on the section “Forwarding,” click the “Add a forwarding address” button. A pop-up will open, and you need to type the primary inbox address.

After that, you need to click “Proceed,” A confirmation code will be sent to the primary inbox.

Confirm the forwarding email address

Next, go to your primary inbox and open the confirmation email. Here you can either copy the confirmation code or click the link that is on the email. If you choose to copy the code, paste it into the proper field in the “Forwarding” section of your secondary account. Then click the “Verify” button.

If you click the link, you will eliminate some extra steps. A new tab will open, where you need to click “Confirm”—no need to come back to the popup window.

Select a forwarding option

Lastly, on your secondary account settings, click the drop-down under “Forward a copy of incoming mail to…” and select the desired option. This option decides what is going to happen with the incoming emails on the secondary Gmail account.

After this, all the emails from your secondary account will be forwarded to your primary Gmail account.

Multiple inboxes in Gmail

Besides merging your accounts, you can have multiple inbox options in Gmail. It consists of creating specific places for each kind of email, working more like a folder inside your inbox. Let’s see how to set it.

Navigate to your Gmail settings

First, click the gear icon at the top right of your primary Gmail inbox account.

Then scroll down until you find the option “Multiple Inboxes” under the session “Inbox type”.

Set the multiple inbox sections

To customize your inbox, click on “Customize” next the “Multiple Inboxes” option. Here, you are going to name your search queries and your sections. Later we will set labels for these sections to work correctly.
The correct format is “is:inbox-name.” Remember to type your queries in lower-case, and if there is more than one word in the name, use a dash instead of space.

Create labels

In the left-side menu of your inbox, scroll down and click on the “+” button next to the Labels session (“Create a new label”). You may need to click “More” to see this option. Now you are going to create the labels with the same names as your previously set inboxes. Just type the name and hit “Create.”

After that, mark the emails you want to separate in each inbox with their respective labels. They are going to look like this:

DragApp: Multiple Gmail business accounts in one inbox

The manual process of setting multiple inboxes that you have just seen works very well. But you can also depend on specific tools to share mailboxes to make your life easier.

Drag is a shared inbox extension that works inside Gmail. And it’s a way of having multiple Gmail accounts in one inbox —but shared with other people. For example, you have your business email ([email protected]), but you indeed have access to at least one other inbox ([email protected]).

With shared inbox software like Drag, you can have additional inboxes inside your account. It means you don’t need to switch accounts or even share login and passwords with your team to access a shared email address.

You will be able to collaborate seamlessly with multiple people inside an inbox at the same time, improving the process you have to perform together and eliminating possible obstacles you may be facing lately. Everybody in the team can know precisely what each one of them is working on at the moment. It prevents duplicated answers, miscommunication, and many other mistakes that often happen in shared mailboxes.

Besides that, you can stop using “FWD,” “CCs, and “BCCs,” which generate infinite email threads. Everybody receives emails in real-time on this collaborative inbox, so you don’t need to use any of that.

But Drag is not just a shared inbox. There are lots of other features that can help to improve your workflow.

Kanban boards

In Drag, you can share inboxes and visualize them as a Kanban board or in the traditional list or preview views. Drag is comprised of ‘shared workspaces’, which can be a company email accounts such as support@, a Google Group or just a blank canvas to share emails and tasks.

In Kanban view, you can rename the columns with stage names that you usually go through while handling emails. Inside these columns, you can create tasks or drag and drop your emails. Also, the emails sent to your team email address will arrive on the board set for it. It’s possible to move these cards between the columns, so you know in which stage that specific email or task is at the moment.

Workflow Automation

Automation is a feature that helps people who have to perform the same processes over and over. It consists of presetting rules to automate your workflow according to your necessities, the steps you take to accomplish tasks, answer emails, and so on.

Examples of actions that can be automated are:

• Move to (a specific workspace or column/list)
• Assign (to a specific user or in a round-robin manner)
• Change color
• Gmail action (eg. archive, mark as read/unread)
• Apply tag
• Change status
• Send an email template or email sequence

Integration with Google Calendar

When there are tasks, there are also due dates that come with them. In Gmail, you don’t have the option of setting due dates inside an email, but with Drag, you can. The best part is that every time you place a due date, an event is created on your Google Calendar, so you can keep track of them whatever you are.

Group Live Chat

Drag also offers a chat inside your inbox so that you can communicate with your team in real time. Besides, it’s possible to mention people inside the chatbox. This way, they will receive an email notification with a direct link to the conversation.

With this feature, you can notify specific people to call their attention to something important on an email/card. The chat is particular about the card, so all the information exchanged will be about it. It’s not a general chat like Google Chat. Moreover, you can keep the subject in just one place without sharing thoughts about it in third-party communication tools.

Analytics and reports

Drag also allows you to track analytics and generate reports across all of your boards. This way, it’s possible to see how you and your team are performing. You can filter your information by the board, user, and date in the three drop-down menus located below the tabs’ names across any tab. You can measure and compare changes between the current period and the previous one.

Wrapping up

The process of having multiple Gmail accounts in one inbox is simple, as you can see. It can help people who need to centralize their several accounts in just one place.

But remember that this may not be a solution for teams that need to share their inboxes since you would need to share a login with them so everybody can have access to the emails. In that case, choose an excellent shared inbox software that will help to boost your workflow and productivity.