Blogs on Gmail and Google Accounts

Of late, many users have reported receiving the "We are sorry, but you do not have access to Gmail. Please contact your Organization Administrator for access." message while attempting to add Gmail to their non-Gmail Google accounts which are also not Google Workspace accounts.  Normally, users would need to follow the steps mentioned in the "Adding Gmail" help article:  https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/72198?hl=en , but the current complaint is that, after being signed into their non-Gmail account and clicking on the 9-dot Google apps launcher icon and then, the Gmail icon, they receive the following message. Apparently, something is not working as intended and after looking at the URL, we can spot a redirection to the https://admin.google.com/a/cpanel/... URL.  The cPanel feature and why it is essential to activate for Gmail in Google Workspace domains is explained in this help article:  https://support.google.com/a/answer/54717?hl=en . As seen, the chec

In spite of the growing popularity of social media and messaging apps, Emails still retain their importance. We use it for all official and otherwise important and formal correspondences, all our important reports - medical, financial, professional get delivered to it, and if it is a Gmail address, then it also ties everything to its Google account, where you would typically have all your valuable documents stored and invaluable photos saved. Now imagine losing access to all of those, suddenly, over something you casually overlooked or were previously cavalier about. There are various ways one can lose access to their Google account. Some are more ubiquitous than others, so there is a very strong argument about better understanding what needs to be done to be able to keep your Google account accessible all the time. It is important to remember that this is NOT a blog on account recovery. There are several of them around (my favourite being this one ) and it is pointless to add one mor

Google Account Security has been central to many of the things I have been doing of late so it was a no-brainer when it came to picking a topic to write an article for the Cyber-security awareness month. Knowledge about your Google Account’s security is important as it helps you to understand how it works and also for the fact that it is the user's responsibility to ensure the security of their Google accounts. Presently, Google offers four (4) levels of account security on their accounts and this article presents an overview of the details of those four levels and explains how you can best decide on the level of security you require for your account and ways to manage the various security options.  This understanding of the security levels is also very important from the account recovery perspective as the Google user-verification system looks to verify user ownership beyond all reasonable doubts using the most secure process based on the highest security level enabled on that acc

Recently, the Gmail Help Community has received quite a few queries on this topic involving AOL, Yahoo!, and Outlook accounts. As an attempt towards making the users more comfortable by making the process more visual for them using screenshots, this three-part blog aims to explore the three inbuilt Gmail processes through which one can bring over emails from another account over to a Gmail account. Following the first part where we looked at how to bring over emails from an AOL account, we shall look at how we can bring over emails from a Yahoo! account in this second part. The final part will be on how to bring over emails from a Hotmail account. It is best to mention it upfront that like my AOL account, my Yahoo! account also has 2-step verification enabled. If you would like to enable it for your Yahoo! account, refer to instructions here:  https://help.yahoo.com/kb/add-two-step-verification-extra-security-sln5013.html .  If you do not have 2-step verification to your Gmail acc

Even though it has been more than a decade and a half since Google launched Gmail, users regularly post about receiving emails intended for someone else, addressed to a dot (or the dotless) variant of their username and wonder if the other person is receiving their emails in turn as well. So, it won't be unfair to say that the Gmail "dots" issue is still one of its most misunderstood features. This blog is my take on this issue. I have shared all relevant information that is known to me on this issue, through the three following sections, detailing what the issue is in reality, mentioning the common rebuttals, and describing self-tests that anyone can perform to dispel their doubts. The reality of the issue The common rebuttals The self-tests 1. The reality of the issue: what exactly happens? What happens is the simple act of someone (say Person A) giving out an email address that they incorrectly think is theirs, but in reality, belongs to someone else (say P

Wendy Durham (CWD in her A Gmail Miscellany blog and wdurham in the Gmail Help Forum ) was a Product Expert and a prolific contributor when it came to explaining the intricacies of Gmail and Google accounts. Due to changes to Gmail and Google Accounts, some of her well-known blog articles are no longer applicable. The three most used articles have been updated here to be consistent with the current version of Gmail. This will keep them useful going forward as a tribute to her dedication to user education. One common theme running through all the Help Forums is confusion about Google accounts and what you can and can’t do with - and to - them. So what exactly IS a Google account? A Google account is an entity that is permanently linked to a unique and specific ID - always an email address (and not necessarily a Gmail address - see below) - which you access by signing in with that unique ID and a password. It can house one or many Google products, such as Gmail, YouTube, Docs