You’ll learn in this tutorial how to forward your Gmail messages to Microsoft Outlook, though the method is the same for any other email services.

How to Automatically Forward Emails in Gmail

These instructions are for the web versions of both Gmail and Outlook.

  1. Open Gmail. Make sure you are signed in to the correct account if you have more than one.
  2. Click the Settings icon in the top right. It looks like a gear.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. Choose the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab at the top of the screen.
  5. In the Forwarding section, click the “Add a Forwarding Address” button.
  6. Type the address that you want to forward the email to. Here you will enter your Outlook email address.
  7. Click Proceed in the small window that appears.
  8. Switch over to your Outlook account and look for the confirmation message that appears.
  9. Click the link in the message.
  10. Click “Confirm” in the new tab that opens from Outlook.
  11. Return to your Gmail account’s Settings page and refresh it.
  12. Make sure you are still in the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
  13. In the Forwarding section, select “Forward a copy of incoming mail to.”
  14. Use the drop-down menu to choose what you want to do with the Gmail copy of these incoming emails. It’s best to Keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox.
  15. Click Save changes at the bottom of the page.

How to Filter Emails

If you only want emails with specific criteria to go to your Outlook account, you can create a filter.

  1. Open Gmail.
  2. Find the search box in the top center of the window and click the down-arrow at the end of the box.
  3. You can choose to filter the messages based on sender, subject line, size, date, attachments, etc. Add all of the criteria you want to use.
  4. Click “Create filter” at the bottom of the window.
  5. Choose “Forward it to” and select the Outlook address from the drop-down box. (If there is no choice in the drop-down, you didn’t complete the forwarding correctly. Click “Add forwarding address” and complete the process.)
  6. Click the blue “Create filter” button. These forwarding settings will only apply to new messages that come into this account. The existing messages will not be forwarded. Also, if you send a reply to an email that lands in the filter, the new message from the original sender will only be sent to Outlook if the response meets the same criteria as the initial email.

Disabling Forwarding

If you decide at a later time that you don’t want to forward these emails any longer, you can easily disable it.

  1. Click on the gear icon.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Under the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, select “Disable forwarding.”
  4. Click save changes. As you can see, it is easy to forward Gmail messages to another account. This makes it easy for you to migrate out of Gmail if you are concerned with your privacy. For Outlook users, you can compare Gmail’s and Outlook’s features to see which one is actually best for you.