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Is it possible to use a shared Gmail inbox with Thunderbird?

  • 3 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by Wayne Mery

Martÿn
Martÿn
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I tried to access a shared Gmail account via Thunderbird, let's say shared@gmail.com. I don't have a password for this account, but when I log in in the browser, Gmail knows it is a shared account and says "log in using another account" and then I can use personalmail@gmail.com to log in.

I tried this in Thunderbird by adding shared@gmail.com and then using personalmail@gmail.com as the OAuth2 option. I found some tutorials at university websites that use this, but all with Exchange and not Gmail. At first this didn't work; I got an "incoming server already exists" error. By using imap.googlemail.com I circumvented that and the account was added, but it showed the personalmail@gmail.com inbox, not the shared@gmail.com one.

Is there a way to make this work or is it simply not possible?

I tried to access a shared Gmail account via Thunderbird, let's say shared@gmail.com. I don't have a password for this account, but when I log in in the browser, Gmail knows it is a shared account and says "log in using another account" and then I can use personalmail@gmail.com to log in. I tried this in Thunderbird by adding shared@gmail.com and then using personalmail@gmail.com as the OAuth2 option. I found some tutorials at university websites that use this, but all with Exchange and not Gmail. At first this didn't work; I got an "incoming server already exists" error. By using imap.googlemail.com I circumvented that and the account was added, but it showed the personalmail@gmail.com inbox, not the shared@gmail.com one. Is there a way to make this work or is it simply not possible?

All Replies (3)

david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Maybe I'm not understanding, but my grasp of Gmail's shared account is that, once you accept the invitation, Gmail directs all shared mail to your personal account. When you reply, it sends from the shared account. That would mean that you do not setup a shared account on Thunderbird, but respond to shared messages from your personal account. This URL explains it that way: https://www.keeping.com/content/gmail-shared-mailbox/

Martÿn
Martÿn Question owner
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Looked it up and Google uses shared account for Google Groups like accounts. What I mean is called a 'delegate' in Google terminology: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/138350?hl=en&sjid=7417693787115493203-EU#zippy=%2Cadd-a-delegate

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
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Martÿn were you able to sort this out?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1383283 cites the same error.