I have two accounts with Google. I want to delete/remove one of them. All the information I can find on Google help, etc., doesn’t say if removing account one, will affect account two? I do not want to impact my account two in any way. Is it safe to remove account one and still retain account two? The emails are my primary concern. I understand that all emails in account one will be permanently removed. I think each email is separate but I’m uncertain? Your response would be very helpful.
Ron Applebach
Maintaining two accounts at the same service can be quite a challenge especially when there are many people using them and some of them are still learning the ropes. For instance, in a previous post I mentioned an issue of using two Hotmail accounts from the same computer – the person who had written to me found himself quite at sea.
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Now tackling the immediate problem – Can deleting one Gmail account affect the other? The quick answer is – NO! If you have 2 Gmail accounts and delete one, nothing ‘should’ happen to the other – but care needs to be taken.
Stating the obvious at the beginning: The 2 Gmail email accounts will have different usernames. This means they are separate entities. However, the two may be linked and we shall check this out in a moment. Thus, deleting Gmail account #1 will not affect account #2. Yes, the name (first and last) of the user may be the same, the address too but, as far as I can logically deduce, there should be no harm to account #2 if account #1 is removed.
Are the 2 Gmail email accounts linked?
The Gmail email service, like Yahoo and Hotmail, allows you to forward messages from one account to another. So if emails are being moved across the two accounts, they would be ‘linked’. I suggest getting rid of this from the options in the Gmail settings section – check under “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
It’s quite simple to close a Google account. And as you know, when a Gmail account is deleted all the email messages be trashed. You also need to provide an alternate email address by which you would be able to use other Google services such as a YouTube, Orkut etc. that are presently being access from that account (unless, of course, you want to get rid of everything).
But ask yourself – Do I really need to delete the account? Can’t I maintain 2 Gmail email accounts by having emails from account #1 forwarded to #2?
FYI, once email forwarding has been set up you can access messages of two (or more) accounts from a single one!
Finally, if emails from Gmail account #1 are important, I recommend having them forwarded to account #2 and then, just before you delete the account, disable the forwarding.
