What Is Automatic Email Forwarding?
Email auto forward is a feature offered by most mail providers that automatically reroutes every incoming message to another address you choose. Once you set it up, all new emails land in both your original and forwarding inbox without any manual effort.
How To Automatically Forward Emails
Every email provider handles forwarding a bit differently. Below are the steps for Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple Mail, and AOL.
Gmail Automatic Forwarding
If you use Gmail, here’s how you can automatically forward emails with these steps.
- Open the Gmail account you want to forward messages from.
- Click on Settings in the top right corner.
- Click See All Settings.
- Go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
- Click Add a Forwarding Address.
- Type in the email address you wish to forward messages to.
- Click Next → Proceed → OK.
- Once you press OK, a verification message will be sent to the address you entered.
- Login to that mailbox, then click the verification link in that message.
- Once you’ve verified the address, go back to your Gmail account and go to Settings → See All Settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
- Click on Forward a Copy of Incoming Mail To. Then, select what you wish to happen with the forwarded messages. You can choose to keep them or have them deleted upon forwarding.
- Click Save Changes.
How to Set Up Automatic Forwarding in Outlook
Follow these steps to learn how to set up automatic forwarding in Outlook.
- Go to Outlook.com and log into your account.
- Click on the Settings icon in the toolbar.
- Choose Mail → Forwarding.
- Check the box labeled Enable Forwarding.
- Enter the email address you want these forwarded messages to go to.
- Choose whether you want Outlook to save its copy of the message or not.
- Click Save.
📌 Note: Microsoft requires two-step verification to be enabled on your account before you can turn on forwarding. If you don't see the forwarding option, go to your Microsoft account security settings and enable two-step verification first.
💡 Tip: Office 365 automatic forwarding works a bit differently, but you can learn how to do that in our tutorial on how to automatically forward emails in Outlook.
Yahoo Automatic Forwarding
You can use these steps to learn how to forward Yahoo Mail. However, you must have Yahoo Mail Plus to access automatic email forwarding from Yahoo.
- Go to Yahoo.com and login to your account.
- Click the More options icon (three dots) and select Settings.
- Click Mailboxes.
- Look at the Mailbox List, and select the address you’d like to set up forwarding for.
- Now, scroll down to Forwarding.
- Enter the email address where your auto-forward emails will end up.
- Click Verify, then log into the other address to verify the address and follow the steps of verification. Once ready, your messages will be forwarded automatically.
How to Set Up Automatic Forwarding on Apple Mail
If you are trying to set up automatic forwarding for Apple Mail, you can use iCloud email forwarding with these steps:
- Go to icloud.com/mail and sign in.
- Click the Settings icon (gear) at the top of the Mailboxes list.
- Select Mail Forwarding.
- Check Forward my email to and enter the destination address.
- Optionally, check Delete messages after forwarding if you don't want to keep copies in iCloud.
- Click Done.
💡 Note: If you’d like to set up email forwarding from your iPhone, you can also learn how to forward email from iPhone.
AOL Automatic Forwarding
Master AOL mail forwarding with these steps. However, if your inbox view isn’t set to Classic, you’ll need to do that before following the steps below.
- Go to aol.com and log in to your inbox.
- Click on Settings.
- Click on General Settings.
- Click on Forwarding, then choose Forward a Copy of Incoming Mail to.
- Enter the address you want to automatically forward emails to.
- Click Save Changes.
📌 Note: Automatic email forwarding is only available to AOL Premium subscribers. Free AOL accounts can only forward messages manually, one at a time.
💡 Note: Automatic mail forwarding feature is not currently available to all AOL users. If you notice that this guide does not work for you, it’s likely that your mailbox doesn’t have access to this feature.
Keep Your Inbox Clean with Clean Email
Sending all of your emails to one inbox saves time, but it also makes that inbox more cluttered. Notifications, newsletters, and old threads from all of your connected accounts start to fight for your attention.
Clean Email helps you handle that overflow. You can use the app to mass-select and archive or delete similar messages at once, stop subscriptions you don't read anymore, and make Auto Clean rules that automatically handle mail from certain senders or categories.
Since Clean Email connects to Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and other providers, it works right alongside your forwarding setup. You can access it from the web, Mac desktop, or your phone, so your combined inbox stays organized no matter where you are.
Automatic Mail Forwarding - FAQs
Can you automatically forward emails?
Most email providers support automatic forwarding. Additionally, you can use an email forwarding service to set up automatic mail forwarding.
How does automatic mail forwarding work?
After you turn it on, your email provider will automatically send a copy of every new message to the address you specified. Some providers let you set up rules so that only certain emails are forwarded based on who sent them, the subject, or other criteria.
Can I automatically forward certain emails in Outlook?
Yes. In Outlook, go to Settings → Mail → Rules and make a rule that sends messages that meet certain conditions, like the sender, subject line, or keywords.
Do auto-forwarded emails appear in sent items?
No, auto-forwarded messages typically stay in your inbox or are deleted, depending on how you set them up. You don't see them in your Sent folder because you didn't send them yourself.
