Forwarding Specific Emails with Gmail

In this video, I'll show you how to forward specific emails using Gmail.

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Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how to forward specific emails using Gmail.

There are lots of reasons why you might need to forward specific emails. Maybe you don't check an email inbox frequently, but you want to make sure if a specific person sends you an email, you get it right away. Or, maybe every time you get a newsletter, you forward it to someone in your family and you'd like for this to happen automatically. Or, maybe you don't want to check your work email at all on vacation, but you want any emails that contain the key words from an important project you are working from to be forwarded to your personal email. Whatever the reason, gmail will allow you to do this.

This is not something that all email platforms will allow. I use Yahoo mail for my junk email address (you can see my video on that if you are interested). My Yahoo address is the one that I give out reflexively since I don't want my regular email to be cluttered up with junk. Unfortunately, I NEVER check this inbox, so sometimes I miss emails that I should have had go to my main email. For example, I used my Yahoo email address as my contact for a high school sports survey, but then ended up missing a bunch of emails from my daughter's field hockey coach about try-outs. Whoops.

When I went into Yahoo to find out how to forward specific emails. It wouldn't let me do it. You can forward ALL of your emails to another address, but you can't forward specific emails.

Fortunately, Gmail allows you to do this. Let me show you how.

So, here we are in my inbox for my marblejar email. I'm going to hit the Gears icon and choose Settings. Now you CAN go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Even though this seems like the place to do this, it is actually where you set up forwarding ALL emails from your account. Instead, you will need to go to Filters and Blocked Addresses. Gmail considers this to be a filter since you are only applying this forwarding rule to certain emails. So, click on Create a New Filter and here is where you enter the information that helps Gmail determine whether to forward it or not. Is it from a specific email address? Does it contain certain words? Does it have a specific subject? Whatever it is, go ahead and put it in here. So, I'm going to forward emails coming from my Yahoo email address. Now hit Create Filter. These are all of the things that Gmail will do with emails that meet the criteria you listed. For this video, we want to choose Forward it. So, you'll notice that the checkbox is greyed out, which means I can't select it. Why? Because Gmail first needs me to add a forwarding address. Click on that and it takes me back to the Forwarding tab where I can hit the button to Add a forwarding address. So, I'm going to add my regular email address -- sorry, I have way too many email addresses -- and hit Next. Hit Proceed and you'll get a notice that you'll need for that address to verify permission to accept forwarded emails. Since I have access to that account as well, I'll find that verification email and click through the link to confirm it. So, now that email address is listed as an address I can forward to. You can add more than one, but you have to make sure whoever is receiving your emails is willing to confirm it. So, now you can see that forwarding is disabled (which means Gmail isn't forwarding ALL of your email to that address), but the address is now listed as an option.

Okay -- so now go back into Filters and try that all again. You can see once we get to the options screen that I can check the forward it checkbox. I just need to pick the address from the drop down list -- which only has the one email address in it right now and hit Create Filter. Okay -- so let's try it out. I'm going to send a test email from my Yahoo account. Okay -- send. So, here it is in my inbox that I sent it to. Let's see if it also made it to the forwarded inbox. Here it is! It's in both places. Gmail won't automatically delete in the original inbox, but it definitely forwards it.

I hope that was helpful! Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

[sybilljimenez]

It was the damn Disable Forwarding option!!! My god. I has been trying for the past 2 weeks and they kept telling me they were getting ALL email, instead of the filtered ones. So glad I watched this video. Thank you so so much!!

[lassies]

I never could have done this without this video tutorial! I bet google made it hard because they want you to have to check gmail for everything. So great that I won't miss really important emails now and don't have to clutter up my work email with all the other personal emails I use gmail for! Thank you!

[valeriesuaste]

Wow! That was an awsome How to video! Straight to the point, there was no extra chit-chat that we(youtube watchers) all feel we need to forward to the essential parts of a video lol That was great! Thanks!

[vtdl]

Something should have been simple but they made it so difficult to setup. Thanks for walking us thru it. Couldn't have done it without you. Thanks.

[JasonPizzinoOfficial]

Excellent tutorial and great addition of the potential problem of not having the email address as a forwarding option! Thank you!

[queenv]

Because of your video, I just learned how to do something that my boss has been wanting done for quite a while now but nobody could figure out how to do. For 3 days straight I've been trying to forward specific emails; yet all of them kept forwarding. I can't express enough how grateful I am to have found your video. Many thanks to you 🙏 😁

[davidaryeh]

Wow! Rarely is the first vid I pick the one! But this was...thank u!

[timclare]

Awesome, thank-you. I couldn't find this information so clearly anywhere else.

[johnseeley]

Thanks for this Laura, just something to add I also found out - If I want forwarding of specific emails, such as containing the word Invoice - Gmail checks the body of the text but NOT the subject line for a word match. It would need a separate filter to include the word 'Invoice' in the Subject header. I have lots to learn yet to fully understand how the filters work

[greggriffin]

Thank you! Much clearer than the other instructions I found before yours.

[ilovebusiness]

You're an amazing teacher. Thank you so much.

Can Gmail forward to phone numbers, if so, can you do a video on this?

[jerrydecouto]

what i really like about your video..you are specific...to the point with no confusing extra fluff..thank you

[masterupgreat]

Thank you, lady! I think that gmail service does not put it straight forward once it doesn't explain to its users that for filtering and forwarding specific letters you should keep forwarding disabled. This really helped.

[pmorse]

great video! short and very understandable.

[nigelogilvie]

Thanks. I appreciate the brisk style, much better than humming and hahing. However it was 1min 40s before we got to the topic in the title.

[CADVILL]

It helps me alot....
When it comes to forwarding gmail...
Thanks for helpful video...
I give you my support 😊😊😊

[RedondoDennis]

Instructions start at 1:30 - nice video, Laura. Thanks for making it.

[tammywilliams]

Exactly what I needed. Thank you soooo much.

[ChuckNorris-bfcj]

Awesome! This deserves way more views!

[colinhargreaves]

Thanks for this but, when I go to create the filter, the date option is missing. How can I forward all the emails between two dates in the past (while I was away) to another staff member for them to deal with.