In January 2027 Gmail Stops Collecting Your Other Email — and Stops Sending As It. Here's What to Set Up Before Then.

Plenty of people read two email accounts in one place without ever thinking about it. The old att.net or yahoo.com address from twenty years ago lands in Gmail next to everything else. A small business owner answers customers from Gmail but the reply goes out as info@theirshop.com. Often someone else set it up years ago, a grandchild or a nephew or the person who built the website, and it has just worked ever since.

Google has said that in January 2027 both of those stop working in Gmail on a computer. Your mail isn't being deleted, and nothing breaks today. But if you do nothing, some time in January the second account will quietly stop showing up in Gmail, or your replies will start going out from your @gmail.com address. Most people won't notice until a customer, a doctor's office or a bank says "we emailed you."

Here is what Google has actually announced, how to check in two minutes whether it affects you, and what to set up instead. As we write this in September 2026, you have about three months.

What Google is removing, in its own words

Google's help page on the change lists three features for non-Google email accounts that end in January 2027:

"Check mail from other accounts." This is the setting that logs in to your other email account over POP and pulls its mail into your Gmail inbox. Google's wording: "Gmail will no longer fetch emails from third-party accounts into your Gmail account with POP."

Gmailify. This is the related feature that put Gmail's spam filtering, inbox categories and search on top of a Yahoo or other account you had linked.

"Send mail as" for non-Google addresses. This lets you write in Gmail but have the email go out from another address you own. Google's page says that from January 2027 "you will no longer be able to send mail from third-party email accounts in Gmail on the web or in the Gmail mobile apps."

Google has been phasing this in. The first two were announced earlier: after the first quarter of 2026, new users could no longer set up POP collection or Gmailify, and existing users could keep them "until January 2027." The "Send as" change came later, and Google says affected users get a notice inside Gmail during the third quarter of 2026. Its timeline calls the rest of 2026 a transition period in which these features "continue to work, but Gmail may restrict new configurations."

What is not changing matters just as much. Sending as another Gmail address you own, or as an alias in a paid Google Workspace account, is not affected. Messages already collected into Gmail stay put. Google's answer to "Will my imported messages be deleted?" is simply "No." Programs like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail can still read your Gmail. And the Gmail app on Android, iPhone and iPad can still have other accounts added to it.

Two minutes to check whether this affects you

Do this on a computer, in a web browser, not in the phone app.

1. Go to mail.google.com and sign in.

2. Click the gear icon at the top right, then See all settings.

3. Click the Accounts and Import tab (on some accounts it just says Accounts).

4. Look at the section called "Check mail from other accounts." If an address is listed there, such as an @att.net, @sbcglobal.net, @yahoo.com, @earthlink.net or a business address, Gmail is collecting that account's mail for you. That stops in January 2027.

5. Look at the section called "Send mail as." Your own Gmail address will always be there. If you also see an address that doesn't end in @gmail.com, and it isn't part of a Google Workspace account your business pays for, the option to send as it goes away in January 2027.

If both sections show only your Gmail address, you can stop reading. This change doesn't touch you. If you look after a parent's computer, check their Gmail too. This is exactly the kind of thing that was set up for them once and never mentioned again.

One warning while you're on that page: don't press Delete on anything, and don't remove and re-add an account to "fix" an error. Google has said it may restrict new configurations before the cut-off, so something you remove now may not be allowed back. Leave it running until the replacement is working.

If Gmail collects another account for you: your three options

Google gives two official replacements for "Check mail from other accounts." There's also a third that often makes more sense than either.

Option 1: have the other account forward to Gmail. Instead of Gmail logging in and collecting the mail, the other provider sends each new message on to your Gmail address as it arrives. Google confirms that forwarded mail still arrives normally after the change. The result looks almost the same as today: new mail from both addresses in one inbox. There are two limits. Forwarding only covers new mail, not what's already sitting in the old inbox. And when you reply from Gmail, the reply comes from your Gmail address, because "Send as" is going too.

Option 2: add the account to the Gmail app on your phone. Google says the Gmail app for Android, iPhone and iPad will keep connecting to other accounts in the normal way. If you mostly read email on your phone anyway, this may be all you need, and replies from that account really do come from that account. It doesn't help at a computer, where Gmail on the web will no longer show that account at all.

Option 3: use a mail program on the computer that holds both accounts. This is Google's own suggestion for anyone who relies on "Send as": a desktop mail program set up to connect to each account directly. Outlook, Thunderbird (free) and Apple Mail on a Mac can all hold your Gmail and your other address side by side, keep them separate, and reply from whichever account the message came to. It takes a little more setting up once, and after that it's the most complete replacement for what you have now.

Google also warns about a fourth route: outside services and browser add-ons that promise to recreate the old features. Its words: "Exercise caution with these services, as they often require access to your email credentials or OAuth tokens." We agree. Handing a stranger's app the password to your main email account so it can keep a convenience feature going is a poor trade.

The catch with forwarding: Yahoo and AT&T charge for it

Google's advice is to set up forwarding with your other provider and to "refer to your provider's documentation." For two of the most common old addresses in Southern California, that documentation contains a price.

Yahoo Mail. Yahoo's own help page on automatic forwarding opens with: "Upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus to use the email forwarding feature in your Settings." On a free Yahoo account, automatic forwarding isn't available.

AT&T email (att.net, sbcglobal.net, bellsouth.net and the other old AT&T addresses). AT&T's mail runs on Yahoo's system, and AT&T's own comparison page lists automatic forwarding as a feature of "Yahoo Mail Plus for AT&T" at $5 a month, not of the Standard (free) account. That page also notes that automatic forwarding "can only be set up on Desktop Webmail", meaning in a web browser on a computer.

So for these two, Option 1 costs about $60 a year to keep an old address flowing into Gmail. That may well be worth it to you. If the att.net address is on your bank, your pharmacy and thirty years of Christmas cards, $5 a month is cheap. But it's a choice, not a given. Options 2 and 3 cost nothing.

Outlook.com and Hotmail. Microsoft's instructions for Outlook.com are free and straightforward: Settings, then Mail, then Forwarding, turn on Enable forwarding, enter your Gmail address and save. Tick "Keep a copy of forwarded messages" so the originals stay in Outlook too. Note that Google's help already says you can't add an Outlook account to Gmail on a computer, because Microsoft now requires newer sign-in methods, so if Outlook mail still appears in your Gmail, forwarding may already be how it gets there.

Everyone else, including other internet-provider addresses and business email at your web host, should look in that account's webmail settings for "Forwarding" or "Auto-forward." If it isn't there, or it's behind a paid upgrade, use Option 2 or 3.

Whichever provider it is, after you turn forwarding on, send yourself a test from a different account and check Gmail's Spam folder as well as the inbox. Microsoft's own instructions give that tip. Forwarded mail sometimes gets flagged at first.

If you reply as your business address from Gmail

This is the half of the change that will cause the most trouble, and it hits small businesses hardest. A very common setup for a sole trader or a small shop is a free Gmail account doing all the work, with the business address, say bookings@yourstudio.com, forwarded into it and added under "Send mail as" so replies look professional. The mailbox for that address really lives at the web host or domain company, and Gmail sends through it.

From January 2027, the "From" choice disappears and replies go out as yourname@gmail.com. The customer who wrote to your business address gets an answer from an address they don't know. Some will ignore it. Some spam filters will treat it with suspicion, and a reply from an unfamiliar Gmail address is exactly what a scam looks like. People save that reply, so your business address slowly disappears from your customers' address books.

Google is direct about what it recommends here: move to a desktop mail program with IMAP/SMTP support, use the provider's own webmail, or "use Google Workspace for a custom domain." In practice that means one of two things:

Keep the mailbox where it is and read it properly. Set up the business address in Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail, connected directly to your web host's mail server, alongside your personal Gmail. Replies go out from the business address because they really are sent from that mailbox. This costs nothing extra if your hosting already includes the mailbox, and it takes about an hour to get right, including your signature and your phone.

Or move the business address to Google Workspace. That's Google's paid service for businesses with their own domain. It's charged per user per month, so check Google's current price. Your business mail becomes a real Google mailbox with its own Gmail inbox, and Workspace "Send as" and aliases keep working. It's the better choice if several people answer the same addresses, or you want business mail fully separate from your personal account. It involves changing your domain's mail settings, and that's the step people get wrong. If whoever registered your domain has since left, sort out who controls it first.

Either way, one quick change helps straight away: add a line to your email signature with the business address, so customers know which address to use.

What happens to the mail you already have

Nothing, according to Google. Everything already collected into Gmail stays in Gmail after January 2027, labelled the way it is now. You aren't going to lose ten years of AT&T mail because the collection stops.

There is one thing worth knowing before you set up Option 2 or 3. When the POP collection was first set up, there was a choice about whether to leave a copy of each message on the other provider's server. If that wasn't ticked, Gmail took each message and the original was removed. The old account's own inbox may look almost empty when you first open it in the phone app or a desktop program, while all the history is in Gmail. That's normal, not a hack or a data loss. It just means Gmail is where your archive lives, and it will stay there.

It's also a good moment to make sure that archive has a backup of its own. Google can export a full copy of your Gmail, and you should have one before any big change to how your email works.

Or: take this as the push to retire the old address

For many people the honest answer is that they haven't really used the old address in years. It only hangs on because Gmail collects it quietly. If that's you, the next three months are a good time to move the accounts that still use it.

Open the old account in a web browser, search for the companies still writing to it, and change your email address with each one, starting with the bank, credit cards, medical portals, utilities, Apple or Google account recovery, and anything you pay for. The old address is often the recovery email for more important accounts, and that's the dangerous part. If a free Yahoo or AT&T account is left unused and you lose access to it, you also lose the way back into whatever used it for password resets.

Keep the old account alive and forwarding, or check it now and then through the phone app, for a few months while the stragglers turn up. Our guide to moving email to a new provider takes you through the full process.

The short version

Check Gmail on a computer: Settings, See all settings, Accounts and Import. An address under "Check mail from other accounts" stops being collected in January 2027. A non-Gmail address under "Send mail as" can no longer be sent from.

Don't delete or re-add anything there in the meantime. Mail already in Gmail stays. Forwarding from the other provider still works, but at Yahoo and AT&T it's a paid Yahoo Mail Plus feature ($5 a month on AT&T's page). The Gmail phone app and desktop programs like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail are free replacements that keep both accounts working properly.

If you reply to customers as your business address from a free Gmail account, fix that before January. Either run the business mailbox in a desktop mail program, or move it to Google Workspace.

If you'd like a hand, this is a short visit for us. We can check which of your (or a parent's) accounts are affected, set up forwarding or a mail program so nothing goes missing, move a business address properly with its domain settings, and make sure the old address isn't still the recovery email for your bank. We'll do it before January, not after the first missed email.