Can Gmail 'redirect,' ala Mail.app?

June 5, 2008 1:56 PM

Can Gmail do something similar to the "Redirect" feature in OS X's Mail.app?

I'd like for my assistant to be able to Redirect (rather than Forward) time-sensitive messages that were sent to my public Gmail address.

Redirected email (as it works in Mail.app) resends the exact/original message you received, changing only the "To:" address to whatever you like. The message that new recipient receives is, for my purposes, indistinguishable from the true original.

This would make it so much easier for me to respond to the original message -- right now, when a message is forwarded, I have to fish the sender's address out of the quoted message plus trim out all the extraneous stuff before I can start composing a response. Hitting "cmd-r" in Mail.app would obviously be a lot faster for me.

Can you do Redirecting with a stock Gmail setup? If there's nothing official in Gmail to do this, can you suggest a Firefox extension or GreaseMonkey script that might help accomplish what I'm looking for? My friend is using Gmail with Firefox on Windows Vista.

posted by merlinmann to computers & internet (5 comments total)

If you set up Gmail to automatically forward emails (ie, Settings > Forwarding > Forward a copy of incoming mail to...) you get the same effect as the Redirect. I haven't used Mail.app but I have one Gmail address forwarding to another and it turns up in Gmail address #2's inbox as:
From: original sender
To: gmail address #1

You can also set up a Filter to only forward certain emails instead of forwarding ALL incoming mail (which the above does). The filter(s) can use From, To, Subject, Does have the words..., and Doesn't have the words...

However as far as I know there's no built-in Redirect style feature that would let you just click a button and redirect an individual email. You'd have to set up a Filter or a blanket forwarding address.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:19 PM on June 5

Couldn't you just turn on IMAP access on gmail, access your gmail with mail.app, and use the exact feature you're used to?
posted by kickingtheground at 2:25 PM on June 5

Good tips.

To clarify: The way my assistant is (wonderfully) helping me is by filtering and responding to as much of my email as she can, then flagging the rest for me to deal with as time allows.

The redirecting would be handy for the occasional emergency or time-sensitive message that it's good for me to see and react to ASAP.

I get enough of them that it would be more efficient to be able to just hit "Reply" without the need to edit around the forwarded email. (I.E., if I hit reply to the forwarded message, it goes to my assistant, rather than the original sender).

Thanks much for the suggestions and help.
posted by merlinmann at 3:15 PM on June 5

I don't have a specific technical answer to your question but if your assistant already has access to your email account, couldn't you log in to the same account where s/he has already flagged and organized the messages that you need to deal with?
posted by eatcake at 3:32 PM on June 5

There's a Gmail Manager extension that allows you to monitor several Gmail accounts for incoming mails at the same time, if you want to go eatcake's route.
posted by flabdablet at 4:57 PM on June 5