Why can’t I send myself an e-mail on Gmail?
If you occasionally send an e-mail to yourself, for example as a makeshift reminder or temporary bookmark, you may be experiencing problems if you use Gmail. It’s down to a change in the site’s policies, but there is a partial workaround.
Gmail purists might huff and point to the Tasks feature but I, and many others it appears, often write an e-mail to myself when there’s something I need to remember and deal with next time I’m online. It’s also a useful way to remind yourself of a Web site you need to visit later, rather than adding a bookmark which can be either clumsy (if you are only intending to visit the site once) or pointless (when using somebody else’s computer).
However, anyone who uses their Gmail account to send and receive messages using a different address, for example a personal Web site domain, will have found e-mails to themselves appear to not be getting through.
Google’s explanation is that it’s changed how such e-mails are handled to avoid duplication: it appears to believe that the only reason you’d send a message to yourself is as part of a mailing list, in which case you already know what is in the message.
Depending on the precise set-up, messages from yourself (using another address) will now either only appear in the Sent folder or will go directly to ‘All mail’, skipping the Inbox. Unless and until Google realizes this approach doesn’t tie into the way people actually use their accounts, there are two workarounds.
One is to, when sending a message to yourself, send it to the actual Gmail address rather than your own domain. The other is to click on “Create a filter” at the top of the screen, type the e-mail address you actually use (ie not your Gmail account) in the “To:” field, click on “Next Step”, then check the “Never send it to Spam box” and then “Create Filter”. This will mean messages sent to yourself now go into the Inbox as intended, though they will be marked as read.
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February 10th, 2010
When I want to leave a message to myself using Gmail I just write the message and save it as draft.
February 11th, 2010
“When I want to leave a message to myself using Gmail I just write the message and save it as draft.”
+1. Total non-issue.
February 12th, 2010
Thanks for the tip to send the message to my Gmail address rather than the other addresses Gmail is capturing…that fixed the problem for me.
February 17th, 2010
Thanks for the tip!
That troubled me for some time… Until I realised it was because Gmail changed it’s policy, I thought my host failed to redirect the emails to my domain address which yould have been pretty annoying.
February 17th, 2010
Oh, and btw, what is the other workaround? Because the problem with this one is that actual spam fromn the domain email will also get in the inbox…
January 10th, 2011
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March 19th, 2011
Did anybody get ever the gmail notification about changing its policy on this issue? I think they should notify me, in advance.
March 19th, 2011
just go to sent mail….
August 15th, 2011
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with a few pics to drive the message home a bit, but other than that, this is excellent blog. An excellent read. I’ll certainly be back.
August 19th, 2011
I have tried to figure this out for ages.I E-mail myself all the time as a check to see if my mail was sent properly.
Thanks.
November 4th, 2011
I can send an email to myself fine using IMAP because I’m using Google Apps.
I only experience this problem with Nicks. However, my emails do not go into the SPAM folder so the filter work-around doesn’t help.
Any suggestions to find vanishing emails?