How to Forward Outlook Mail to Gmail

Outlook and Gmail are two of the most popular email clients, and there are some benefits to forwarding Outlook mail to Gmail. For instance, you can forward emails to Gmail in order to delete them from Outlook and save space. How you forward Outlook mail to Gmail depends on what Outlook service your organization utilizes.

Many work organizations use the Outlook Windows or Mac program to handle their incoming and outgoing email. If yours does, then you may find that you don't have access to your work emails when you're away from your work computer. You may also want to permanently preserve your work emails or make a backup copy of them off your organization's email server. One easy way around this is to set up mail forwarding from the Outlook program to your Gmail account.

Set up forwarding by first clicking the "File" menu in the top left corner and then choosing the "Manage rules & alerts" option. Click "New rule" on the window that appears and then select "Check messages when they arrive" under "Start from a blank rule." Leave all options unchecked in the "Rules Wizard" window to forward all emails from Outlook to Gmail. Choose "Yes" when asked "This rule will be applied to every message you receive. Is this correct?" Check the "Forward it to people or distribution list" option under "What do you want to do with the message?" and then click "Next." Type your Gmail address in the "To:" field. Hit "OK" and then "Next." Leave all options in the "Setup exceptions" box unchecked and then click "Next." Finally, type in a name for your rule and check the box next to "Turn on this rule." Check the box next to "Run this rule now on messages already in Inbox" if you want to forward every email that currently exists in your inbox. Click "Finish" to forward emails from Outlook to Gmail.

Some work organizations have begun using Office 365 or Exchange Server 2016, which means that Outlook is online and not a program on their computer. Email forwarding can still be done from the Outlook Web App, but the process is a bit different. Forward Outlook to Gmail online by going to the Outlook Web App and then clicking the "Settings" icon. Choose "Options," then "Organize email" and then "Inbox rules." Click the "+" icon, then click "Create a new rule for arriving messages" and then choose "Apply to all messages" under "When the message arrives." Select "More options," then "Forward, redirect or send" and, finally, "Forward the message to." Type in the Gmail address that you want to forward your messages to in the "To" field and then hit "OK" to save the rule. All Outlook emails will be forwarded to Gmail.

Forwarding all emails from the Outlook program or online app is easy, but what about forwarding only specific emails? It involves more steps, but can be done. Set up the forwarding of specific emails in the Outlook program by clicking "File" and then "Rules and alerts." Choose "New rule," then "Check messages when they arrive" and then "Next." Select the emails you want to forward by checking the options under "Which condition(s) do you want to check?" Choose from options like "From people or distribution list," "with specific words in the subject," "with specific words in the body" and many others. Select the options you want to apply and then type in the criteria for each. Click "Next" and then check the box next to "Forward it to people or distribution." Then click "Next." Type in your Gmail address, click "OK" and hit "Next." Type in a name for the rule, check the box to "Turn on this rule" and then click "Finish" to begin forwarding these emails.

The process is essentially the same for the Outlook Web App. Launch the app, click the "Settings" icon and then choose "Options." Select "Organize email" followed by "Inbox rules" and then click the "+" icon followed by "Create a new rule for arriving messages." Choose "Apply to all messages" under the "When the message arrives" option. Click "Forward, redirect or send" under "More options" and then set the criteria by checking each option you wish to apply. Type in the Gmail destination address for forwarding the emails and hit "OK" to save the rule.