Nowadays just about everybody has more than one email account for different purposes. Multiple emails gives the convenience to do work systematically and saves from unwanted emails/SPAM but it's a real big mess when you have to login each of them regularly just to keep updated on all the new mail that keeps coming in to your various accounts.

But now with the method describes below you can maintain multiple email accounts from a single Gmail account. You will be able to receive emails from your other email accounts in one Gmail account as well as can send mail from that Gmail account using your other email IDs.

So here's how to setup Gmail as a master account for receiving and sending emails from all of your other online email accounts:

1. First, log into your Gmail account and click on the Settings link at the top right corner.

   

2. Now go to Accounts and Import tab and under the Check mail using POP3 section, click on Add POP3 email account button.

   

3. Now a little pop-up window will appear, enter the full email address there for the account you want to add in.

   

4. On the next screen check the mail settings and enter login password of your email account you have added. The cool thing about this is that you don't have to worry about finding the POP and SMTP server names for your email address, Google will automatically try to determine the servers for you based on the email address! However, if the details seem to be wrong, then you can type in the right ones.
   You may face problem to add yahoo mail address if you are using free Yahoo as POP access is limited to Yahoo Mail Plus subscribers but there is an workaround. Just change your Preferred Content setting to Yahoo! Asia. Then your mail settings will allow you to use POP to sync or forward to GMAIL... Check here for step-by-step process to get "POP Access & Forwarding" feature for FREE without having a Yahoo Plus account!

   

   You also have some options to leave a copy in your account, label the messages from the new account so you can sort them quickly, and to archive them directly so that they don't show up in your Inbox.

   You also have some options to choose -

   • Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server- This is not checked by default. This means after Google retrieves your email from the POP box, it will delete all mail. This is useful if you have a limited POP inbox storage. However, if you prefer to retrieve your mail using different mail clients (like Outlook, Mozilla, OS X Mail, etc.) you might want to leave messages on the server so other clients can also retrieve them. If you'd like to keep a copy of each message Gmail retrieves in your other mail accounts, select the Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server checkbox. This way, you can access mail in your other accounts, and in Gmail.

   • Always use a secure connection (SSL) when retrieving mail- Leave this checked if your POP server allows SSL connections. Othewise, your email arrives through your network in clear text, and anyone with a packet sniffer can read your messages and even your POP password!

   • Label incoming messages- By default, Gmail will label your incoming messages from that POP inbox using the email address. This is great if you want to organize your messages according to which email inbox it came from.

   • Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)- It helps in organizing your inbox view. Do remember that Gmail will retrieve ALL messages from the POP server, including spam ones. So this means having all those messages appearing into your inbox view would be a very bad idea if you get a lot of spam on that POP account.

5. You can now retrieve mails from this account but if you also want to send mail then select the option as indicated by the red arrow in the image below and click Next Step

   You can now retrieve mails from this account but if you also want to setup your Gmail account to "send as" your alternative email address then select the option "Yes, I want to ..." and click Next Step

   

6. On the next page enter the name that you would like to appear when you send emails from this account.

   

7. Now select the SMTP server you want to send your mail through

   

8. Gmail will need to verify that you own the account which you are adding. Click on the Send Verification button. This will send an email to the account that you've added to Gmail.

   

9. Check your email account for the verification email. Once received open the mail & get your verification code which you'll find on the 2nd line of the mail like shown in red color below in the image (you can also confirm your verification by clicking the link in the mail).

   

10. Now enter the Verification Code in the text box and click on the Verify button

    

11. Gmail will now take you back to the Accounts and Import tab. In "send mail as" section, select the option as indicated by the red arrow in the image below. This will ensure that replies that you send to people will come from the same address the message was sent to.

    

That's All! You're Done! Now the email accounts will be checked by Google on some periodic basis and the emails will be retrieved and stored according to your preferences. Unfortunately, you cannot set the time period for the email checking. To add more email accounts just follow the same steps. You can add up to 5 email accounts.

Even if you do not want to use Gmail as a catch-all account, it's still a great way to backup all of your other email accounts, especially if you're using Outlook. Just configure each new account to be archived automatically. That way, you can continue to check emails through Outlook, but it'll all be backed up on Gmail too. If your computer crashes and you lose your Outlook data file, the emails will still be in Gmail!