GMail Address Features

Did you know that you can create an essentially infinite number of email addresses that all deliver to your GMail account? We’ll get to that shortly but first …

GMail ignores periods in your GMail address

Yup. [email protected] is the same as [email protected]. So is [email protected]. As far as GMail is concerned they all are [email protected]. That can be helpful if you have a fairly long email address to break it up to make it easier to see. [email protected] is easier to see and remember than [email protected]. You can start using that right away! Be aware that email FROM you will be from your address WITHOUT the periods. And that includes replies.

Making an alias and optionally making it the default

You can make the email address with the periods your default email address by clicking the gear icon on the top right of the GMail web page, clicking “See all settings” then going to Accounts and Imports. There you will find “Send mail as:”. If necessary scroll down until you see “Add another email address”. Click that and a pop-up will let you specify your email address with the periods included. Without changing anything else, click “Next” and you will have added your period separated email address to your GMail account. Once you’ve done that you can click “make default” next to that newly added address — now you can send and reply to emails with your period separated GMail address! I know that was a lot. You can get instructions with pictures at https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-the-default-sending-account-in-gmail-1171921. Note that is current as of right now, May of 2025. Google can change how you do things in the future.

Using that alias without making it the default

Once you have an alias set up, you can send or reply from that alias. When you’re composing a new email or a reply, click on the From: field and you should see a drop down list of all your alises. Select the one you want to use — that email will come from your selected alias.

Unlimited GMail addresses that deliver to ONE Gmail account

Another cool feature (I refuse to call it a “hack”) is what is called a subaddress. You can add a plus sign (+) and anything that is valid as part of a GMail address to the end of your base GMail address and all email to that subaddress will be delivered to your base GMail address account. For example, if your base GMail address is [email protected], you can add “+<pretty much anything>” to it and email to that address will be delivered to [email protected]. Why would you want to do that? Let’s say you want to create an account at Kroger. You could give them an email address of [email protected] and Kroger would send all their email to your [email protected] address. All of those emails would be put into your [email protected] Inbox. You could then search for emails from Kroger or set up filtering that moves all those emails to for instance, a Kroger folder. If you want, you could even set up a filter to delete them and you would never see them again! You could create a +newsletter address and use [email protected] for all of the newsletters you subscribe to and then use as filter to put them all into a newsletter folder.

When you create or reply to an email with a subaddress, it will come from your base GMail address. You can change that in the same way we discussed earlier for GMail addresses with periods in them. If you create an alias of [email protected] you can send or reply to emails using that address as we discussed earlier.

That’s all for this time

I hope this has helped you understand how you can make your longer GMail addresses more memorable by inserting periods. I also hope you have an idea how to make and use aliases using subaddressing and why you might want to do so. Don't hesitate to write to me if you have questions!

As always, my intent is to help you understand the basics and equip you to search for more detailed information.

Please feel free to email me with questions, comments, suggestions, requests for future columns, to sign up for my newsletter, or whatever at [email protected] or just drop me a quick note and say HI!

If you like, you can read my most recent newsletter in the Hillsboro Times Gazette at https://go.ttot.link/TG-Column - I should have that link updated shortly after this edition of the newsletter appears in the online version of the newspaper.