How to Clone A Gmail Account Step by Step?

Do you want to clone a Gmail account in a fast and secure manner? You are at the right place. I recently made multiple copies of my personal Gmail account for security purposes, and I am here to teach you the entire process step-by-step. Including all the dos and don’ts.

Duplicating Gmail accounts is not as difficult as people make it seem. All you need is a little bit of guidance, and that’s exactly what this write-up is for. Read it in its entirety and witness the multiple methods you can use to create a second, third, fourth, or as many copies as you want.

Before I reveal the methods, let’s see why people want to duplicate their Gmail account in the first place.

Why Clone a Gmail Account at All?

There are multiple reasons to make a duplicate Gmail account. I have tried to list down the most common ones below. See if you fall into any of the following categories:

• Keep a secondary backup of all email messages.
• Retain data access in case the primary account is lost or hacked.
• Segregate one account into several independent entities.
• Free up some storage in the primary account.

No need to worry if these options didn’t fit your scenario. The methods that I am about to describe work independently of your original situation.

How to Clone a Gmail Account onto an Existing @gmail.com ID?

First of all, check whether the account you are about to clone into has enough storage space to accommodate all the email messages you will move there from the original account.

If it’s not the case, then use state-of-the-art IMAP backup software first to secure all existing mail. Then, delete the emails you just backed up to create some free space in your account, and start the cloning process as per the steps given below.

Also Read: What to Do Before the B2B2C Email Shutdown Happens

We will just forward all the emails. You need to do this one email at a time, as multi-mail forwarding is not available in Gmail. You could set up the original Gmail account in an email client like Outlook and use its mail merge feature. There is also the option to try out some browser/Gmail add-ons that claim to achieve this exact function.

However, there is a big issue while using forwarding to clone a Gmail account, and it’s not the excess time that gets spent. The real issue is that forwarding does not result in a true Gmail account clone.

Let me tell you why. An email’s content is not just what you see after opening a message in your inbox. There is a ton of data hidden behind the main details, called metadata, of an email.

When you forward a message, this data is permanently altered. So it no longer remains the same message you got on your main account.

If compliance is something you cannot compromise on while creating a duplicate Gmail, then use a different approach. We have an option for you.

How to Create a Duplicate Gmail Account from Scratch?

You must have a second brand-new Gmail account for this to work. Here we will set up our Gmail account in any of the popular free-to-use email clients and take advantage of the IMAP protocol’s 2-way sync feature to help us clone our Gmail account.

Step 1. Choose any desktop-based email client (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.).

Step 2. Set up both the account you want to clone and its copy one by one.

Step 3. Open both Gmail accounts’ UIs side by side in a split-screen style.

Step 4. Drag and drop emails from the main account to clone a Gmail account.

Step 5. Keep doing these till all email messages exist in both accounts.

This is not forwarding, and you could check the email header; it should be the same. However, this method too has its drawbacks. You must spend significant time setting up the accounts. If you have not set up email clients before (which would be a majority of Gmail users since Gmail has been purely web-based since its inception), it could be quite challenging.

Not to mention the fact that the more emails you have, the higher the chances that human errors creep in, where you miss some emails or duplicate some emails more than once.

If you wish to avoid all this, you can get our professional solution.

Best Way to Clone a Gmail Account

The SysTools IMAP Migrator is, by all metrics, the perfect Gmail account cloner. With an intuitive UI and scriptless way to add Gmail accounts, validate credentials, and apply filters, it is the perfect tool for this use case. So get yours today.

The best part about this tool is that you can make multiple copies of a single Gmail account. When you reach the account mapping screen of the tool, download the template. In the source column, populate all the entries with the same Gmail account and the same app password. Whereas in the destination column, add all the Gmail accounts where you want to clone the data, along with their corresponding Gmail app passwords.

Then continue with the on-screen instructions. Despite using a tool, some universal challenges remain built into the very essence of Gmail accounts. So let’s study what they are and how to overcome them to ensure a smooth account cloning process.

Challenges While Making New Copies of a Gmail Account & Their Fixes

You are trying the account name again. Every Gmail account has to have a unique email address. This is a major hurdle for all those who wish to create a true clone.

Even if you delete the original Gmail account, you still can’t use its email address for the new account. Moreover, as Gmail only allows the Latin characters (A-Z), numbers (0-9), and the period (“.”) symbol. So you cannot use similar-looking Cyrillic or Greek characters as replacements. The only option left is creating pseudo-homoglyphs from the valid character set.

Here are some combinations you could use to sort of clone a Gmail account name:

• rn – m
• cl – d
• vv – w
• 1 – l

Other combinations like

• I (uppercase i) – l (lowercase L)
• 0 (zero) – O (capital o)

Do not work nearly as well because Gmail’s email name is case-insensitive. Meaning that A and a are considered the same. Although you could use capital letters during Gmail ID creation, it will still display all characters in the email address as lowercase.

Apart from the name reusage issue, there is another major hindrance to creating limitless Gmail account clones. The hidden mobile number verification limit.

To reduce spam accounts, Gmail now asks you to scan a QR code with a mobile device that has an active SIM. This is to verify that the account creator is a human and not a bot.

However, if you have had multiple Gmail accounts connected to the same number, chances are you won’t be allowed to make a new clone. There is no official number on how many accounts you could connect to a single number, but people believe it lies somewhere between 3 and 5.

To bypass this issue, you must use a new mobile number or delink/delete an existing Gmail account connected to your number. Otherwise, clone a Gmail account into an existing account.

Conclusion

Now you know how to clone a Gmail account. However, it is important to remember that cloning is not the be-all and end-all process; you could always migrate mail from one Gmail account to another.

Nevertheless, this tutorial contains all the information that even a non-technical person can utilize whenever they feel the need to duplicate their Gmail ID.