Forwarding emails from Gmail to Google Groups

Google Groups is a very versatile platform that allows someone to create a community or workspace for their various needs. Depending on the requirement, the Group can be set up in different formats and thereafter further customized as needed.

One of the inconveniences of working with the free version of Google Groups is that the email address comes in the format group-name@googlegroups.com which is perhaps not the best email option any business person or a professional would like to share with others, particularly outsiders or prospective clients. As a norm, most would like to share their own Gmail addresses. The trouble there would be that many wouldn't know how to ensure responses to their emails would arrive in the Google Groups, which is what we shall explore in this blog. 

Since there are a couple of Google products involved in this matter, we would need to ensure the necessary settings in Google Groups first before initiating the forwarding process from Gmail. For easy access to both the Google products, it is best if we have both open in different tabs to switch back and forth. You can either sign into those two products from the same account or different accounts in case the account you want to forward from doesn't have the necessary privileges in Google Groups where you may require managerial or ownership access.

Our first task is to ensure that the members in the Google Groups can post in the Group via email in addition to web posting.

The other is to momentarily change the "Who can post" settings for your Google Groups to "Anyone on the web" so that the confirmation email from Gmail can come through. But we need not do it now.

Note: If you are unsure of the Google Group's email address, you can find it under the Google Groups General Settings. However, the general rule of thumb is, if your Group name is "My Special Group", the email address will be my-special-group@googlegroups.com.

For more on how to create, setup, and manage your Google Group, you can look up the help articles here - https://support.google.com/groups#topic=9216. 

Those two things done in Google Groups, we now visit the Gmail settings Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop and click on the "Add a forwarding address" button in the Forwarding section. Then we enter the group email address and click on the blue Next button.

This will bring up a little pop-up window, and we click on the Proceed button to send out a confirmation code to the forwarded address. 

Before you click the blue OK button to send out the confirmation code, you would want to switch back to Google Groups to change the "Who can post" settings for your Google Groups to "Anyone on the web" and click on the blue Save changes button.

At this point, we move back to Google Groups. Depending on whether you have message moderation enabled or not, you should see the message from Gmail under the pending or approved list of conversations. 

Once located, we change back the "Who can post" settings for your Google Groups back from "Anyone on the web" to what is was previously and save that change before clicking to open the message. In there we would find a couple of ways to verify.

1. Copy the 8/9-digit confirmation code and enter it in the verification box in the Gmail address
2. Click on the confirmation link contained in the email.

This completed, we switch back to Gmail to confirm the forwarding has been correctly set up and to select the forwarding-specific preferences as shown in the image below before clicking the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. 

We are done at this point. All emails addressed to your Gmail address will now be forwarded to your Google Group.

In conclusion, there are a couple of almost inevitable follow-up questions that I would also like to answer.

Can I selectively forward some emails over to Google Groups while keeping others in Gmail?

The answer to it is, Yes. You would need to first add a forwarding address by following the steps described above. Once the address is added, we then

• ensure forwarding is disabled under the Gmail Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab (unless you are automatically forwarding all emails to another account)

• create the filter to forward the matching emails over to Google Groups

Can I add my Google Groups email as a "Send mail as:" option in Gmail to send emails from it?

The answer to this question is, No. This was allowed in the past, but presently, while attempting to add your Google Groups' email address, the system displays a "Please enter a valid email address" error.