Argh!

I’ve just spent quite a long time, trying to figure out the following problem, and blaming my hosting company and all sorts, before realising this is a STUPID quirk of Gmail.

Here’s what problem I was looking at

You’ll notice this site is ben-park.co.uk. However, I use Gmail for my email, and ben-park.co.uk isn’t the only domain name I have.

So say I want to set up an email address yo@ben-park.co.uk – I set this to forward to my Gmail account.

Now, to test if it’s working – what do I do? Well of course. I send an email from my (Gmail) account to yo@ben-park.co.uk, and wait. And wait. And wait some more.

Does it come back to me?

No.

Does it bounce back?

No.

Did I have any idea what was going on?

No.

I immediately blamed the company that looks after the domain, fiddled with forwards, set up a few more to see if it just hadn’t set up properly. Then I started testing some of the other forwards I have set up already. Some work, some don’t.

How can that be?

How can some forwards work, and others not, on the same domain, with the same host, all going to the same Gmail account?

I’ll save you the hours of trying to work it out, and just tell you.

IF the email starts and ends at the same Gmail account, THEN you can only send Gmail -> yo@ben-park.co.uk -> Gmail, IF yo@ben-park.co.uk is in the ‘send mail as’ list, in Gmail.

You can send email other-provider -> ben-park.co.uk -> Gmail – fine.

But Gmail account to ben-park to same Gmail account, only works if ben-park address is in the ‘send mail as’ setting, even though I’m not sending as that address.

Stupid bloody thing.