How To Forward Outlook Email to Gmail

Jamie Read more July 10, 2019

The trouble with having multiple email accounts is having to log into all your services to check them. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just log into a single email service and check all your mails? You could if you forward Outlook email to Gmail or the other way round.

Both email services are very good at what they do. Outlook can be accessed from Office, Office 365 or via the web. Gmail is all on the web. Both offer some very powerful email management features and both are suitable for work or home. If you have both an Outlook and Gmail account, wouldn’t life be easier if you could check one from the other and log in once?

Forward Outlook email to Gmail

Email forwarding is a fundamental feature of email management and something many of us do without thinking. Usually manually. You can configure Outlook to do it automatically to make life a little easier. I use Outlook 2016 so this process will use that. Outlook Live or as part of Office 365 will differ slightly.

Open Outlook and select File and Rules and Alerts.
Select email Rules and New Rules in the new window.
Select ‘Apply rule on messages I receive’ and hit Next.
Select ‘Forward it to people or distribution list’ and hit Next.
Enter your Gmail address at the bottom where you see ‘To’ in the Rule Address window.
Add any exceptions in the next window if you like and hit Next.
Give the rule a name and check ‘Turn on this rule’.
Select Finish.

From that moment on, any email you receive in Outlook will be forwarded automatically to Gmail. If you only want to forward certain email, add the sender email or subject in the exception window. This will filter out emails that match what you enter as the criteria.

Forward Gmail to Outlook

You can also configure emails to flow the opposite way if you prefer. You can have your Gmail emails forwarded automatically to Outlook.

Log into Gmail.
Select the cog icon at the top right of the Inbox.
Select Settings and the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Select ‘Add a Forwarding Address’ at the top.
Enter your Outlook address for Gmail to send the emails to.
Select Next.
Select the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab.
Select Create New Filter.
Enter your Gmail address in the From box at the top and your Outlook address in the To box.
Add any filters you need underneath.
Select Create Filter.
Select Forward It To in the next window and select Create Filter.

From that point on, any email you receive in Gmail will be automatically forwarded to Outlook. If you added any filters, those emails matching your filter criteria will not be forwarded.

Forwarding isn’t your only option to check multiple emails from Gmail. You can actually have Gmail poll Outlook and retrieve email from the service and send Outlook emails from Gmail.

Send and receive Outlook email from within Gmail

Gmail can integrate with a number of other email services including Outlook. That means all you need to do to manage all your email is log into Gmail, check all your mail and respond using the respective email address.

Log into Gmail.
Select the cog icon at the top right of the Inbox.
Select Settings and the Accounts and Import tab.
Select Check mail from other accounts (using POP3).
Select Add a POP3 mail account you own.
Add your Outlook email address and select Next Step.
Enter your Outlook email address again and your account password in the next window.
Enter the POP3 information in the next window.
Check all the boxes except the Archive option.
Select Add Account.
Check Yes to I want to be able to se email as…
Enter your name and hit Next Step.
Enter the Outlook SMTP server details in the next window.
Select Add Account.
Check your Outlook email for an email from Gmail. Enter the Confirmation Code into the box in Gmail and select Verify.

Now your Gmail account will receive Outlook emails and be able to send as Outlook too.

Your POP email server settings should be standard unless you’re using a work account. The defaults can be found on this page. You can use IMAP too if you prefer. It is arguably better to use IMAP but POP works well enough and seems to provide fewer errors.