OT A somewhat dumb gmail question

Re: OT A somewhat dumb gmail question

David Bassett

I can't answer your question, as my gmail account was acquired the same way yours was.

I assume you are using a computer for your email and I can suggest the Thunderbird mail reader as an alternate solution. It looks and works sort of like Outlook but can be configured to handle multiple email addresses so they all are checked regularly and show in the same window. (It can even be configured to connect to an Exchange server. When work required I use Outlook, I used to connect with Thunderbird for searches as it was much faster.)

Vacation Mode

Yonak

John, I think you can set up a "vacation" mode where a message is automatically sent to the recipient. You could send a message that says the mailbox is not being monitored. Of course, anyone who sent a message to that address would get your vacation message. I'm not sure if messages get delivered anyway so that you would receive the messages from him or anyone else and read them. I'd say it's worth experimenting.

Re: OT A somewhat dumb gmail question

Mark Nowicki

You can delete your gmail account.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/61177?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform=Desktop

Re: Vacation Mode

John in NM

Trouble is, I don't want to make the whole mailbox so dormant, I do use it on rare occasion and I forward one of my other accounts to it for easy checking if I'm bored while waiting for my wife to come out of the store or something.

I may have to simply stop helping them.... all I'm getting from it is frustration at people who can't follow simple instructions to help me help them!

Re: OT A somewhat dumb gmail question

John in NM

I do use thunderbird on my personal linux machines.

It took years of frustration with the work issued mac to push me to migrate both accounts to thunderbird, but I'm very glad to have done it. Searches are far easier for one thing, and the web app that my primary ISP uses for email is horribly buggy. Using thunderbird I get to avoid that!

If I still had that job and the mac I would probably be installing thunderbird on it. When I started the IT department was very hostile to the idea of using non-mac apps, so I never got in the habit after the initial battle to get a couple installed that I'd used for years already.

Good question

John K Jordan

>>>If I block him in gmail, will it bounce back and let him know there is a problem? Or will it just filter it in my inbox so that I don't know he even emailed? I'm looking for a way of being more blunt - not looking for a way of missing the email

Blocking won't do it. Blocking will send the email directly to the Spam folder without notifying the sender. It may also send a copy of the email to the Gmail team so they can analyze it and see if they should automatically treat other similar emails as spam from now on. Gmail is absolutely the best I've used at deflecting spam.

The Out Of Office auto response should do what you want (I see it's now called Vacation Responder), accept the email but send text of your choice to the sender. The text could say "This account not monitored. Please resend to xxxxxx". I know a guy who uses that for an account he rarely looks at. (I don't use this anymore since I'm on vacation every day of the year.)

Open Gmail, click on Settings, click on "See all settings" (at least on mine) and look for the vacation response at the bottom of the page. You could test this by sending yourself an email.

JKJ

Simple solution

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

I have a gmail account attached to my woodworking website. I never monitor gmail - it is too much extra effort. What I have done is a redirection of all mail to my main email address. This works well. Gmail is good at filtering the spam and unwanted emails. If you emailed me to my gmail account, I would receive your email on my main account almost immediately. Set up a redirection facility, and then you can ignore the fact it originated from gmail.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Re: OT A somewhat dumb gmail question *LINK*

John McGaw

AFAIK that has had a solution since somewhere around Gmail's day one.


Automatically Forward Gmail

That's what I just wrote 

Yeah...

John in NM

I know. I just hate to do it that way, not because it is ineffective, but because the basic problem with this individual is that he is not able to organize his working environment, and not able to follow directions. If it were just on me to communicate with him, I would simply follow one of the expedient solutions offered by Mark, yourself, and Derek.

The trouble is, that organization really needs to have this guy succeed in his work - that is why I still help him even after separating from my job there months ago. In reading the replies - Derek's in particular - I realized what my problem with this set up really is, and that I had inadvertently fixated on an obvious and solvable symptom of it rather than the actual root causes.

So thank you all for the input. Even though the problem is much more complicated than I understood yesterday, reading the replies did illuminate it better for me and I know what the solution is now.

Re: OT A somewhat dumb gmail question

Ed Wozniak

Block one of your other two email accounts in gmail. Send an email to the google account with the blocked email address and see what happens.