So my gmail address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. I have a relatively common name, and so I get emails intended for other people all the time. I feel bad just ignoring them, and so I always reply with something to the effect of "wrong person, sorry." About 9 times out of 10, these emails are sent to firstnamelastname@gmail.com, rather than how I have it formatted, and so I will often get the same email sent back to me from people thinking they must have typed the wrong thing in the first time. At which point I have to send a second email explaining gmail's disregard for periods in their email addresses. This whole process can best be described as really fucking annoying.

I know that I can set up a filter to automatically archive or delete messages sent to firstnamelastname@gmail.com so that I never have to see them, but, as I said earlier, I like to at least inform the sender that they should find another way of contacting the person they were intending to. So, is there any way that I can set up an autoreply for just that particular formatting of my email address? And if not, shouldn't there be?

I don't know the answer to your question, but I'm also firstname.lastname@gmail.com, and I had no clue I could remove the period. Huh. I always wondered why they told me firstnamelastname wasn't available, since my name isn't at all common. Apparently, they're just forcing unnecessary periods.

I don't have an answer for you but I have the same problem but my email address is not my name. I like gmail and all but i think they suck for disregarding characters in an email address. There IS an different between firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com.

it's actually kind of useful to know this, because you can sign up for shit that you know is going to result in spam with an extraneous period somewhere and then set up a filter to automatically delete/archive stuff sent to that variation on your email address. it's like having a junk mail account built into your real account.

Speaking for all men, this is just wrong.

But if gmail sees all variations as the same, wouldn't the filter stop you from getting email altogether?

Someone try it and get back to me.

In a typical email client, if you filter on the "to" field, it should go by exactly what the sender typed. No matter how it gets routed to your inbox. But I dunno much about gmail.

um, well, it doesn't see them as the same, per se. it recognizes that an email is being sent to, for example, firstlast@gmail.com as opposed to first.last@gmail.com, it's just that these are considered the same email address. it is definitely possible to filter the first.last email from the firstlast, i currently have one set up. i feel like i'm still not explaining this difference well enough. just try it with self-sent emails or something, i promise it works.

this was probably only ever my ridiculous problem due to my very common name, but fyi, gmail finally allows you to do this, through the "canned responses" application in gmail labs. very useful. to me, at least.

The gmail labs have some really awesome features. I've been a big fan of the custom label color creator instead of having like eight different hues of grey for labels.

And the Gmail Goggles are silly, but still a pretty cool thing to have. I tried sending an email this past weekend to try and test how tough the math problems are and they're pretty easy, but finishing them in under a minute is no small task. I wound up not getting my faux email sent because I couldn't get past 'em.

what is a gmail lab?! i feel left out.

that's really fucking weird about the periods. mine is firstname.lastname@gmail.com; surprised they let you use characters at all if they don't distinguish b/w those with and those w/out..

I created a new email address, Sweet.Beat.Happening@Gmail.com just now.

:king:

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