Cozy Computer

Sorting emails with multiple Gmail inboxes 391 words (2 min)

You can set up multiple inboxes in Gmail so that forwarded emails all appear in their own inbox.

It’s setup so that:

forwarded email from something@mst.edu goes to the mst.edu inbox
email for the current address something@cozy.computer goes to the cozy.computer inbox:

The two Gmail inboxes for mst.edu and cozy.computer

Setting up multiple inboxes

This assumes you’ve already set up forwarding from the old email address to the current address and are logged in to the current address.

Create labels

Go to Settings/Labels and click Create new label. Make two new labels: one for the forwarded emails and one for non-forwarded emails. Mine were called mst.edu (forwarded emails from my old university email address) and cozy.computer (non-forwarded emails).

Create filters

Go to Settings/Filters and Blocked Addresses and click Create a new filter. Create three new filters and apply the labels we created earlier:

Filter email from your forwarding email. Put your forwarding email in the From field and apply the forwarded emails label ex mst.edu
Filter email to your forwarding email. Put your forwarding email in the To field and apply the forwarded emails label ex mst.edu
Filter bcc email To your forwarding email. Put deliveredto:something@mst.edu in the Has the words field and apply the forwarded emails label ex mst.edu
Filter all other emails. Put -something@mst.edu in the To field. The - means NOT. It matches all emails that weren’t sent tosomething@mst.edu. Unfortunately I think it won’t catch a few things, like bcc emails, which might end up in both inboxes. It also doesn’t catch emails from Google Payments or G Suite for some reason.

Create inboxes

Go to Settings/Inbox, change Inbox type to Multiple inboxes. Place your labels in the Multiple inbox sections area and click Save changes:

Section 1: is:mst.edu
Section 2: is:cozy.computer

Enjoy

Now emails intended for the old email address will appear in the mst.edu inbox and emails intended for the current address will appear in the cozy.computer inbox.

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