Help Scout | Forward Gmail To Your Help Scout Email Address

In this Help Scout video tutorial we're going to show you step by step how to forward your Gmail email address to your Help Scout email address so that you can collect support requests using your Gmail account.

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INTRODUCTION

In this Help Scout video tutorial we’re going to show you step by step how to forward your Gmail email address to your Help Scout email address so that you can collect support requests using your Gmail account.

Forwarding your current Gmail email address to your Help Scout email address is one of the easiest ways to have your customers contact you for support.

As soon as a support email hits your Gmail account, it will automatically get forwarded to your Help Scout mailbox as a support ticket.

If you don’t have your free Help Scout account already created, use our referral link and you will receive a free trial of Help Scout (no credit card required) and you will receive a $50 discount on your plan.

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COPY HELP SCOUT EMAIL ADDRESS

The first thing we need to do is copy our Help Scout Email Address.

  1. Log into your Help Scout account.
  2. Click on “Manage” from the top menu, then click “Mailbox” from the drop down.
  3. Click on the Mailbox (there should only be one at this point).
  4. Now we’re in the Mailbox Properties.  In the “Mailbox Address” section, you will see your Help Scout email address.
  5. Click on the “Copy” button to copy the “Mailbox Address”.

That’s all that we need to do in Help Scout at this point…

ADD FORWARDING ADDRESS IN GMAIL

Now we need to add the Help Scout email address as the forwarding address in Gmail.

  1. Let’s go log into our Gmail account.
  2. In Gmail, up at the top-right, click on the “cogwheel”.
  3. Click on “See All Settings”.
  4. Inside of the Gmail settings click on the tab called “Forwarding And POP/IMAP”.
  5. Click on the “Add a Forwarding Address” button.
  6. Paste in the Help Scout email address that you have copied.
  7. Click the “Next” button.
  8. When the pop-up window appears, click on the “Proceed” button.
  9. Another pop-up box will appear where you only need to click on the “OK” button.

Now that we’ve added our Forwarding Address, we need to go check for the Email message in our Help Scout account.

FORWARDING CONFIRMATION EMAIL IN HELP SCOUT

At this point it’s important to make sure the “Gmail Forwarding Confirmation” email from Gmail is in our Help Scout Mailbox.

  1. Head back over to your Help Scout account.
  2. At the top-left click on “Mailbox”.
    The Mailbox is where you will be able to see all of our support tickets and messages.
  3. In your Mailbox make sure you have received the “Gmail Forwarding Confirmation” email.
  4. YES! We do have a new message from the Gmail team!

IMPORTANT: If you do not get the “Gmail Forwarding Confirmation” email in your Help Scout Mailbox, it means that something went wrong with the forwarding setup process. You will probably need to go back through all the previous steps to make sure everything is setup correctly.

Since we did receive the email from Gmail, we can get the confirmation code from inside the email.

CONFIRM FORWARDING EMAIL ADDRESS

Now that we have received the confirmation email into our Help Scout Mailbox, we know that that connection is working.

Next we need to get the code inside the email and use it in our Gmail Forwarding settings.

  1. From your Help Scout Mailbox, click on the “Gmail Forwarding Confirmation” email to open it.
  2. Inside the email you will see a “confirmation code”.
  3. Highlight the code and copy it.
  4. Go back to your Gmail account.
  5. In the “Forwarding” section, paste in the confirmation code and click the “Verify” button.
  6. We should see a message saying that we have verified the Forwarding Address.

Next we need to set our incoming email forwarding.

FORWARD A COPY OF INCOMING MAIL

Now that we have verified our forwarding address, we need to tell Gmail how to forward our email.

  1. Click on the radial option called “Forward a copy of our incoming mail to…”
  2. Use the drop-down menu to select the “mark Gmail’s copy as read” option.
  3. Scroll down the page and click on “Save Changes” button.

Now all of our incoming mail will be marked as “Read” in Gmail, and automatically forwarded to our Help Scout Mailbox.

DELETE CONFIRMATION EMAIL FROM HELP SCOUT MAILBOX

Now that we’ve received the confirmation email, and used the confirmation code, we can delete the email from our Help Scout Mailbox.

  1. Go back over to your Help Scout account.
  2. Click on the “three dots” at the top of the “Gmail Forwarding Confirmation” email.
  3. Click on “Delete” from the drop-down.
  4. When the pop-up box appears, click on the “Delete” button to confirm deletion.

At this point we are done working inside our Help Scout account. Go ahead and log out if you like.

DELETE CONFIRMATION EMAIL FROM GMAIL INBOX

Go back over to your Gmail account and click on “Inbox” from the left-side menu.

In our Inbox we can see that we have the same email message that was in our Help Scout account.

This is because the email message came into our Gmail account, and then was successfully forwarded to our Help Scout account.

Remember, if you don’t get this message in your Help Scout account, something went wrong, and you need to repeat the steps from the beginning.

Since we already got the confirmation code from this email, we don’t need to keep it in our Gmail account, so you can go ahead and delete it.

REPLACE OLD FORWARDING ADDRESS WITH NEW ADDRESS

It’s actually not possible to change or modify the forwarding address in your Gmail “Forwarding” settings.

What you have to do instead is delete the current forwarding address, and then create a new forwarding address.

Here’s how to delete the current forwarding email address:

  1. Click on the drop-down that has your Help Scout email address inside.
  2. Select the “Remove” option.
  3. When the “Confirm active forward address removal” pop-up box comes up, click the “OK” button.
  4. You should now see a message saying that “You have removed the forwarding email address”.

Now the forwarding address is gone, and forwarding has been disabled.

CONCLUSION

Now that we have set up email forwarding, any email that gets sent to your Gmail account will get forwarded to your Help Scout Mailbox.

This is one of the easiest ways to start collecting support messages from your customers!

Get started with Help Scout for free, plus get a $50 discount when you use our link.

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