Maintaining A True Universal Inbox on Gmail Remains Elusive

By Farhad Manjoo
Productivity

You’ve probably accumulated several different e-mail addresses over your years online. You might have an address for work, an address for your personal life, an address you got when you were in college—and perhaps a few more that you’ve forgotten about, too. It can be quite a chore to check each of these inboxes separately, which is why most e-mail gurus suggest using a universal inbox—a single address that collects messages from each of your various online profiles. This way, you get all your e-mail in one place.

Google’s Gmail has long offered some of the best tools for setting up such a system (see this page for how to do so). Unfortunately, Gmail’s universal inbox has long been troubled by a flaw that, for some users, is a deal-breaker. The problems is, when you try to send outbound mail from your Gmail universal inbox, Gmail adds a tag telling your recipients that you’re actually using Gmail and not your office e-mail. If your recipient is using Microsoft Outlook, he’ll see a message like, “From youroffice@domain.com on behalf of yourgmail@gmail.com.” This can look unprofessional—say you work at The New York Times and you’re contacting a bigwig to set up an interview. If the bigwig sees that you’re not actually using a Times address, he might dismiss your request. (Something like this has actually happened to me before.)

Gmail’s biggest fans have long been demanding that Google drop the “on behalf of” tag. Google explains that it adds the tag in order to prevent your e-mail from being considered spam by your recipient; the theory is that if the e-mail is honest about its origins, it shouldn’t arouse suspicion by spam checking software. Recently though, some users noticed that the tag had suddenly disappeared—now when you use Gmail to reply to a message that had originally come in to your office address, there’s nothing to alert your recipient that you’re using Gmail. Gmailers rejoiced—Google had finally made Gmail the perfect universal inbox!

But the joy didn’t last long. On a help forum, a Google representative explained that the “on behalf of” tag’s disappearance was actually due to a bug in a recent Gmail update. Soon, the rep explained, engineers would fix the bug and “on behalf of” would return—at least for a short while, until Google found a permanent way to both remove the tag and make sure your messages aren’t flagged by spam-checking software.

So for now, then, you can write messages from Gmail without your recipients getting wise. But soon, your universal inbox will tell where your mail is really coming from—and the dream of a flawless universal inbox will have to wait a little longer.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Alex May 4, 2009 · 4:48 pm

In the Labs section, there is also something called Multiple Inboxes which might be helpful. It can be set up with forwarding and filters to allow one gmail address to show emails from several.

Tom in Raleigh May 4, 2009 · 6:16 pm

Alex, this just doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is that outgoing mail, even when you say it’s from a non gmail account (that you read in gmail), gets that blasted “on behalf of” tag. There are better ways to signal that messages are unlikely to be spam in the message header without this albatross, and Google’s engineers know this. I can live with it because in academia, it’s not a big deal compared with, say, journalism. But it’s still a major problem for gmail and one that needs to be fixed, now.

Brian Tanning May 4, 2009 · 10:43 pm

I use Yahoo (Plus) and it lets me send emails using different accounts and it never adds anything to make it look like it is actually being sent via Yahoo… Maybe the Yahoo free acount does not let this but to me this is worth $20 a year.

Gautham May 4, 2009 · 10:57 pm

I completely agree with Farhad Manjoo.

Waiting for a solution …This problem has made me go back to outlook .

Writer May 5, 2009 · 12:44 am

I want the opposite: the ability to keep my two Gmail addresses separate but open at the same time! Work in one tab, personal in another, without having to constantly sign in/sign out. Why is that not possible?

Adrian May 5, 2009 · 8:41 am

Google has only hurting their own competitiveness in not addressing this concern promptly — and that slowness to deal seems very un-Google-like.

The beauty of Google products, besides their being free, is that Google engineers are constantly evolving and tweaking them to make them more efficient without impacting load-time, and giving users all kinds of choices (through Gmail Labs add-ons, for example).

I’ve used all the web-based email services, and GMail is the best one without a doubt. But there’s a whole lot of people who would love to use it with their work email load who are waiting, waiting…

Jerry Stevens May 5, 2009 · 10:04 am

I loved the idea of a universal inbox and immediately set up an account. I was soon embarrassed and annoyed when clients not only pointed out that they could see it was sent via g-mail, they started writing DIRECTLY to the gmail address.

John May 5, 2009 · 2:25 pm

Dear Writer (12:44pm),

An app called Mailplane ($24.95) offers one solution for keeping multiple accounts open at once, and has a few other nice bells and whistles too. Of course, a desktop imap client is another possibility.

——-
I want the opposite: the ability to keep my two Gmail addresses separate but open at the same time! Work in one tab, personal in another, without having to constantly sign in/sign out. Why is that not possible?

Pranab May 5, 2009 · 3:27 pm

I just use Outlook to add several IMAP accounts (work, Yahoo, 2 GMails). When I send emails, I select whatever account I want; the webmails are automatically synchronized.
Simple, straightforward, works for me.

Phil May 7, 2009 · 10:37 am

Writer (#5): A better solution than spending 24.95 is just to have 2 browsers open at the same time. I use Firefox and Safari and have 2 gmail accounts open at the same time – very simple, and free.

Mark May 8, 2009 · 6:20 am

Writer: Just forward all of the mail from one of your gmail accounts to your other gmail account, and set your options so that your replies are always sent from the address by which they were received. This works for me.

Another handy tool is the Gmail Manager add-on for the Firefox Browser. Check it out. It’s free.

JJ December 31, 2009 · 2:26 am

Gmail lets you pop your email from other accounts. I think it also lets you send this way as well. You simply set it up as you would Outlook, or whatever email program you use. I’m not sure if it still says “on behalf of.” I only download my other accounts to gmail. I don’t bother trying to send as my other accounts.