Our lives are made up of work, friends, family, hobbies, events, clubs, and so on. Because our lives are so diversified we often have multiple email accounts. Gmail is a great, free email program that has a lot of functionality. If you have more than one Gmail account you can easily link them together so you can receive and send email from one master Gmail account and keep everything together without having to switch back and forth between accounts.

Here are the 4 steps you will need to complete to link your Gmail email accounts together:

Step 1: Add A Second Email Address
Step 2: Forward Incoming Mail
Step 3: Create a Label
Step 4: Create a Filter

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Step 1: Add A Second Email Address

1. In your Primary (the one you want to send and receive all of your mail from) Gmail account click Settings at the top right hand corner of your screen.
2. Click the Accounts tag.
3. Select Reply from the same address the message was sent to under When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses:
4. Click Add another email address. A window will pop up.
5. Fill in the correct information for your secondary email account and click Next Step.
6. Click Send Verification. Close the pop-up window.
   
7. Switch to the Secondary email account and click the verification link in the email sent from Gmail.

Step 2: Forward Incoming Mail

1. Still in your Secondary email account, click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab found under Settings at the top right corner of the screen.
2. Type your Primary email address in the Forward a copy of incoming mail to box.
3. Then pick an option from the drop-down list:
   - keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox
   - archive Gmail’s copy
   - delete Gmail’s copy
4. Click Save Changes.

Step 3: Create a Label

1. Switch to your Primary email account, scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the Labels box on the left-hand side of the window.
2. Click Edit labels at the bottom of the Labels box.
3. Click in the box under Create a new label: and type a name for your label. You could use the actual email address if you want.
4. Click Create.

Step 4: Create a Filter

1. Still in the Primary email account, click the Filters tab, which is next to the Labels tab, and then click Create a new filter.
2. Type your secondary email address in the To: box.
3. Click Next Step.
4. Click in the box next to Skip Inbox to select it.
5. Click in the box next to Apply the label: to select it and pick the label you created from the drop-down list.
6. Click Create Filter.

That’s it! Now, emails from your Secondary email account will download into your Primary email account and automatically go into the Label (folder) that you specified. Using Filters helps to keep your email separate and organized so you don’t have all of the emails from multiple email accounts going into the same Inbox.

You will also be able to send emails from both email accounts from the Primary email account without ever having to switch to the Secondary email account.