Aug 052013
I know it sounds weird to have a filter for ALL incoming mail, as it’s not really filtering anything. But sometimes there are actions you want Gmail to take on all of your email. This could include not sending anything to the spam folder, forwarding the email to a different address, or marking it with a label.
There is not ‘catch all’ setting, so you have to use a simple trick. When setting your filter search options, enter a nonsense value in the “Doesn’t have” field. Example: ‘ash87slkjhsdkjfsd8fsdf99889’. No real email coming in should ever have that value in the mail, so that will essentially match all your new mail.
Seems kinda silly, but it works! Here’s a screenshot:
Hope that helps!
Nice! This helped.
Ahah very good idea, thanks!!
This perfect solution helped so badly. Thanks a million bro!
Brilliant!
Clever 🙂 I’m kinda kicking myself for not seeing that myself. Thanks!
You know that there is a built in option to do that, right?
Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
The first option is to choose the address you want to forward all you emails to.
this option is only valid if you are forwarding messages to ONE recipient. If you want to forward ALL messages to multiple recipients you need to configure filters
Nifty solution. Filters/rules are helpful for more than forwarding. E.g., Gmail messages that I accessed via Apple mail would often come through marked “Important” for reasons known only to gremlins. Thanks to your tip, they no longer do.
“You know that there is a built in option to do that, right?
Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
The first option is to choose the address you want to forward all you emails to.”
The different between a filter/forward and forward is that filter/forward can forward to multiple email address.
a forward can only send to one email address.
Wow, thanks, neat workaround! Exactly what I needed haha!
@Arik, that feature simply resends the email. If you want to “decorate” the email in some way, for example, add the tag “[EMAIL2]” to the subjectm then you have to use a filter.
@Arik unfortunately some mail does goes into the spam.
Of course, there is always the possibility that there is an email with that character sequence. Best way to do it is with the “Smaller Than” Filer, and set it to something like 7000 mb
Yes, forward works with one address at a time only though.
You can also do “larger than: 0 bytes”
This will return even a blank email with no subject or body; and that way you don’t accidentally miss a message containing your random text
If your filter has “from:(-me)” then sent items will be excluded..
BRILLIANT suggestion! It works with all receiving settings (“To”, “Cc” and “Bcc”)… You’re a genius, thanks so much!
Glad to help!!
I searched for this answer and found it, thanks!
Thanks. very helpfull
Thanks, it makes sense!
Shere genius XD
I’m with some of the others who are kicking themselves for not being the brilliant one to think up this solution. Thanks so much for sharing, you saved my brain a lot of work today!
You can also put * to any of the fields.
great simple idea. You are the man, thank you for sharing that!
Brilliant!
4 years later, and still helping, thanks.
Thanks a million bro!!!! Love you for this!!
Thanks so much
it is working
Still a greats solution!!! Thanks!
Oh thank you ! =)
Years has passed and no such function has ever been introduced to gmail. Shame. However, I’ve found a slightly more elegant solution. Set a filter for messages that contain:
{cutelittlekitty -cutelittlekitty}
The letter string is arbitrary of course. The point is, braces make gmail search for both the mails that do and do not contain the string – making every possible message a match. (Contrary to parentheses that would always give 0 results here).
One more solution: to set filter “From: (*)”
HELP!! I can’t get the filter to work after repeated attempts. I have a mailbox that is to be autoforwarded to several others hence the need for a filter. I setup the filter for anything matching the to address and I also did one for the example here. NOTHING WORKS!. There are no filters setup though I try again to set one up for one already done I get a message the a filter exists though not on the list of filters. HELP!!
Hmm…is there a chance that the filter would result in a loop? I’ve noticed gmail is smart enough to know when it’s forwarding too many times to the same accounts and tries to prevent an infinite loop.