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⚠️ A newer version of this document exists, for Google Workspace |
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Article date: 2017-07-22
Oh, hi. It’s Google. Let’s Set Up a Catch-All Address in G Suite with More (Counter-intuitive) Steps than Ever Before.
Remember how easy it used to be to set up a catch-all when setting up G Suite (or Google Apps) on a new domain? Apparently, those days are gone.
If you’re scratching your head wondering what the f*** happened, and why there’s not a lot of documentation, you’ve come to the right place. I broke down and reached out to Google support, and – after carving my way through bulls*** and language barriers (i.e. “Google ah-NA-lytics”), I found an answer. Mostly, the documentation is hard to find because they’re no longer using the term “catch all”, as they once did.
So, here are the directions for you, as briefly as possible. (I hate when bloggers make it all about themselves).
Start by heading on over to https://admin.google.com/ and logging in to your domain.
1. From the Admin console dashboard, go to Apps and then G Suite > Gmail > Advanced settings.
Scroll way way down to the routing section. (Or search the page for ‘Routing’). It should look like this. Until it changes next month.
Hover over the ‘Routing’ line, and a ‘CONFIGURE’ box will appear. Click on ‘CONFIGURE’.
In the next screen…
1. Give your filter a short description. You know, like, “Catch-all”.
AND
2. Check the boxes for Inbound and Internal – receiving
Scroll further down this box, and find ‘also deliver to’, then put a checkmark beside ‘Add more recipients’.
Enter your catch-all address as the recipient.
Curve-ball (optional).
By default, this will filter not forward spam messages. If you want to forward spam (just in case), then you should now click on ‘Basic’ and change it to advanced.
Then, uncheck ‘Do not deliver spam to this recipient’.
Click on ‘Save’.
You should now have a confirmation screen like so:
Next, just below this confirmation and to the left, you’ll want to click on the ‘Show Options’ link.
This opens up a new set of options, one of which is ‘B. Account types to affect’. Be sure to uncheck ‘Users’ and check ‘Unrecognized / Catch-all’.
At the bottom click ‘Add Setting’.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART.
In the next screen, at the bottom-right, you must click SAVE.
That’s it. You’re done. Test it out.
Did it work? Let me know. It’d make me so happy to know I helped you out.
Thank you :)
Do you know if there is a setting to get all the copies if there is multiple adresses that would be in the range of the catch all setting?
I have a catch all set up inside a gsuite domain.
I use it to send E-mail like [email protected] and [email protected].
I need to be able to see all adresses used in the inbox that the catch all forwards to. If possible also the ones in the BCC field. Today I only get the first one.
One solution could also be to recieve one email per adress so that I basically get multiple copies but at least then I can see all adresses used to send to the domain.
I’m not sure. 😭 Sorry, Tom.
Good luck!
Thank you for going to so much effort to save so many other people so much of their time, Chris. Hugely appreciated! :)
Thanks for saying so! I understand that this article needs updating – I believe the workflow is the same, but the layout is quite different. I’m glad you were still able to find value from this article. Best wishes!
Thank you so much! You saved me, I’d say, 16 hours of my time.
Thanks.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!! This was one of the best step-by-step instructions I have read in a long time. Google should send you a check.
Thank you! This made it incredibly easy as a solopreneur to get all email addresses for my domain routed to my inbox.
I’m so glad to hear this! Thanks, Lisa. :)
Chris- I spent well over an hour trying to figure this out this afternoon and finally decided to look at something OTHER than the Google support pages, which appear to be out of date (I’m beginning to remember why I ditched G-Suite three years ago). But I found your post and it took me two minutes. MANY, many thanks!!!
YESSSS!! Thanks for telling me that. I’m so glad to hear it!
Same experience here. Many thanks, Chris!
Woohoo!
Yes! Thank you!
Thank you so much. Could do with your help every time!
Thanks!! Sorry these directions are already a little out of date. But I’m glad you were able to work with them, all the same!
I’ve been able to set this up and get it working for my regular @domain.com, which is the primary domain for my g suite account, but I’ve been unable to get anything to work with my secondary domains.
My normal user account is and @domain.com, @secondary.com both work, and with your help @domain.com now works again, but @secondary.com still doesn’t work.
Can anyone expand on the above to make secondary domains work again?
Hello, does this allow me to have both some real mailboxes (eg, [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]) and have any other email come to the catch all address? That is, emails sent to _______ get delivered to _______ as below, with “sales” as a catch all:
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
[email protected] –> [email protected]
Will that work?
Thank you!
Yup, that’s how I have it set up, and it works like a charm.
I have several “real”, paid email addresses on my domain (eg. [email protected]) with real addresses.
But plenty of [email protected] addresses.
Google will check the recipient for each incoming email. If it matches a real address, it sends it there. Otherwise, it’ll go the catch-all. :)
Great, thank you.
I finally found time to do this (just takes 5min or less), and it worked. Thank you again.
Very nicely done ! Perfect execution the first time – don’t get that often :-)
Thank you! Would never have found that.
Thank you.
Why easy when you can make it complicated… thanks Google :-)
Bahaha.
I’m glad it helped.
Many thanks. I never would have figured this out on my own.
You’re so welcome! :)
Hello thanks a lot for sharing… But I follow all the steps but the Unrecognized / Catch-all options is not available, only the ‘Users’ can be check… =(
Any ideas?
Onces again thanks a lot.
Regards, from Colombia
You’re the GENIUS of my day, you saved my social life (for this week end)
If I can do anything let me know !
Best regards
This is why I love the internet. You took the time to figure this madness out and shared it in a really concise way. What a pain in the ass. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Worked like a champ. If you have any more “guides” please post a link.
Google should employ you to write easy user guides – their’s isn’t easy to follow for this process.
Incidentally, if you have multiple domains, is there a way to set catch all to only catch emails sent to a specific domain?
Aw, thanks Michael.
Hmmmm, I’m not too sure about the multiple domains. Actually, I’d find that awesome.
As it is, for my secondary domains, I create the above catch-all rules so that all mail goes to one address on that secondary domain.
Then I set up forwarding rules for that main address, from within GMail Settings, to forward all mail to my main domain’s main address.
It’s not the prettiest set up, but it works.
Thanks for taking the time to share. Helped me get a reset password email from Instagram from a deleted account.
I hadn’t even been aware that G-Suite offered a catch-all mail address. As administrator of my account (but not an actual user), I had received complaints from my users that “somehow” email sent to a non-existent email address was being delivered to one of the registered users.
I stumbled upon this article that allowed me to easily set up a PREDICTABLE catch-all address.
Thank you!
Hello,
Can you please update the post to include new screenshots from Google Apps? They seem to have changed the interface and the options.
http://take.ms/9afqq
Thank you.
Uggh, they *would* change it. Let me see what I can do to update things. Thanks for letting me know!
You ARE AWeSOME!! This worked!! I am not techy at all and all of the screenshots were spot on! Thank you so much!!!
Thank you sir. Took me ages to figure this out. But once I found this article, everything cleared up and it worked!
Kinda weird they completely dodged the catchall phrase, thus hard to find. I wouldn’t expect email routing in the configuration…
This works for me; it delivers the email into my inbox where I can see in the header that it’s going to an address that doesn’t exist (expected).
what it doesn’t do is send it to the additional recipient address (the catch-all, defined as an alias in g-suite for my account) which would then get caught by a filter that skips the inbox, archives it and applies a label
This is the 2nd time in a month I have used this blog post to fix the catch-all problem.
Thanks for your great write up!
Great tut, man! Got everything done!
Superb Work… Great help! Thanks.. I was playing around with these options but, in vain. Kudos!
Great work. Thank you!!!
Thanks for this – very much appreciated, and seems to have worked like a charm.
Thanks, totaly usefull
Thanks, very helpful. THis is why the Internet works
Yup it worked.
Thanks a lot.
I was about to gave up after 20 minutes trying to figure out the rhetorical documentation.
Merry Christmas!
I have never posted a comment but your diligence to figure this out are commendable. Great work! Works perfectly!
Thanks!! :D
It seems to have worked.
But especial thanks for exemplary lucidity and self-effacing public service!
Tony
So glad it worked. Thanks for the good words! :)
Hi thanks for this detailed walk through, I have been scratching my head for some time. I still cant get it to work..emails are still not coming through and Im not getting a bounce email ? Any ideas?
Hi Cesur.
For me, when that happened the first few times, it was because I was failing to do the last step I mentioned. It feels absolutely redundant to me, but it’s essential.
It just makes no sense to me. The ‘SAVE’ button is inconspicuous. But absolutely necessary.
But, still, that’s two people in a row that have commented here, saying that this doesn’t work, so maybe Google made another change (for the worse). Booo!!!
I can’t think of any other suggestions at this time. :( Sorry.
I go through this tutorial step by step and at the end under “Show options” -> B. Account types to affect, I uncheck Users and I have the other two options disabled. Please help this is so annoying
I haven’t encountered that particular roadblock with this procedure before. Hmm. Darn. I don’t know what to suggest. Except to say that I originally got all this information from a Google support chat session. So, although it’s an excruciating experience (because they’re going to treat you like you know nothing, and work very slowly), they’ll probably be able to diagnose the unique issue with your G Suite setup.
I got there by going to the G Suite Admin Dashboard, clicking on the ‘?’ icon in the top right, then selecting ‘Contact support’.
So sorry I can’t be of better, more direct, help.
When you find the solution, can you report back? Someone else reading this might have the same problem. Thanks & good luck. YOU GOT THIS! :)
seriously… I was beginning to think I made a mistake with this switch.. Thank you!
you are the best
OH MY GOD THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH.
I search through all the internet and I only found the old way to do that. Not even google itself has a google article explaining how to create catch all mailboxes.
Thank you again.
I owe you a beer for this article
Thanks =. You are a life savior! Can’t believe they decided that catchall funcionality had to be obscured like this. I was at a loss. And that show options uncheck users…. wtf.
They should open their mind than more options is not always beneficial… very un user-friendly.
Reminds me of the old google of pure engineer no UX guy decisions…
Worked a treat! Very much appreciated peeling back the layers of this – thanks.
NICE! So glad to hear it worked. :)