How to Forward Multiple Emails in Gmail

I think we can all agree that Gmail is among the best email clients out there. In terms of security and stability, Google has no serious competitors. But Gmail is far from perfect, as it’s laking a series of key features. The inability to provide a simple method of forwarding multiple emails in Gmail is nothing short of an embarrassment for Google.

The email is the de facto communication medium for business organizations. As a result, it’s vital to make your life as easy as possible and boost productivity whenever you need to manage emails. If you’re working in a business environment, there will come a time when you will need to do some bulk email forwarding. Sadly, Gmail doesn’t know how to do this – well it kind of does, but very inefficiently.

You can forward multiple emails in Gmail by setting up a filter and forward all incoming emails to a different address. But this won’t help you forward those emails that are already in your inbox. I’m not entirely sure, but I believe that nobody wants to manually forward hundreds of emails by hand. Unless you want to pass the time on purpose and get yourself fired.

If you’re sitting on a bunch of emails ready to be forwarded, we can help. There are better ways of forwarding in Gmail than opening each email in part. Below you have two methods that will help you forward emails in Gmail (including the native one).

Method 1: Forwarding Multiple Emails in Gmail with Filters

This is the “native” method I have mentioned earlier. While it’s not an ideal way of forwarding your emails, it works for the most part. Filters can be used to forward email conversations that already exists in your archives, but it dosesn’t work in every scenario and has a fair amount of limitations. This method is reliable when you want to forward emails that haven’t arrived yet. It’s sketchy when having to forward emails that are already in your inbox. In my test, this method has managed to miss over half of the messages that I’ve prepared to be forwarded.

Here’s what you need to do to forward multiple emails with filters in Gmail:

1. Login with your Gmail account and navigate to Gmail’s settings. To do this, tap the gear icon (top-right corner) and click on Settings.
   
2. Now look for the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and click on it. From there, click on Add a forwarding address.
3. Now enter the email address you want to forward emails to. Keep in mind that a verification link will be sent to that address. Hit Next and then Proceed.
   
4. The verification link needs to be accessed from the other email in order for this method to work.
   
5. After you succesfully followed through with the activation link, return to Gmail’s Settings. From there select Forward a copy of incoming mail. Finally, click on creating a filter.
   
6. Now it’s time to configure our filter. If you want to forward all the emails from a specific address, insert the email in the From field. You can restrict your forward to emails that contain specific words or forward only the ones with attachments. Once the filter is ready, click on Create filter with this search.
   
7. Once you see the new menu box, tick the box next to Forward it to and make sure you select the email address you previously verified. Hit Create Filter when you’re done.
   That’s it. Now all the emails that will be caught in the filter we’ve just created will automatically be forwarded to the destination we choose.

Method 2: Using an extension to forward multiple emails in Gmail

Now this second method is far superior to Gmail’s naive filter way. If you’re not afraid of using extensions (no reason why you should), there are a few that will make forwarding bulk emails a lot easier. Since Gmail and Chrome have been fathered by Google, I recommend you using Chrome’s extension while performing this method.

Note: Regardless of which extension you end up using, Google imposed a non-Note limit of 100 forwarded emails per day. So far, there’s no way to bypass that, from what I’ve gathered.

Here’s how to use Multi Forward for Gmail extension to forward emails in bulk:

1. Open Chrome and tap on the three-dot icon (top-right corner). Navigate to More tools and click on Extensions.
   
2. Scroll all the way down and click on Get more extensions.
   
3. Search for Multi Email Forward for GMail. Click on the extension to open it, then tap on Add extension.
   Note: There are many extensions under the same name, so make sure you select the one from cloudhq.net because it’s far superior. Here’s a direct link if you’ve missed it.
4. Immediately after you’ve clicked on Add extension, Gmail should automatically open. Enter your users’ credentials if prompted. Now tap on Create Account and choose your own Gmail account from the list.
   
5. The extension is ready to be used. Go ahead and select at least two emails from your account. You’ll notice a Multi forward icon that wasn’t there before.
   
6. Now all that’s left to do is insert the email address that you want to forward the emails to. Hit Forward Emails when you’re done.
   

That’s it. The recipient should receive the emails you just sent in a matter of minutes. At this point, you can safely close the Gmail window. The emails will look like any other email.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are two main ways of sending emails in Bulk from Gmail. Well, there’s also a third one, if you consider manually opening each mail a feasible solution.

Realistically, there are only two time-effective ways of going about this issue. You either use an extension like we did in Method 2, or you make use of Gmail’s clunky filters to automate your emails (Method 1). But if I’m going to be honest with you, I always use Multi Email Forward for GMail. So far, it has proved to be a reliable way of sending emails in bulk. Using the Gmail filters runs a bit of risk and tends to ignore the messages that are already in your inbox.

But in the end, it’s about choosing a solution that will accommodate the task at hand. If you know of a different way to forward Gmail messages, let us know in the comment section below.