How to Block Emails from Your Psycho "Ex" in Your Gmail Account
Raise your hand if you have an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend that just won’t stop bugging you… Sure, you’ve changed your phone number and moved 3,000 miles away, but changing your email is out of the question! Today we’ll learn how to auto-delete their psychotic emails from your Gmail account.
Rather than a “Block” button like many email clients have, Gmail has a powerful “Filter” feature which you can use for all sorts of purposes, but for today’s lesson we’ll use a filter to automatically delete messages from a specific (and likely obnoxious) person.
Filtering Emails in Gmail
If you are reading one of the emails from the extremely annoying person you wish you had never met, you can click the arrow next to the Reply button and choose “Filter messages like this” (being very careful not to accidentally reply with @!#$$% and open up a whole other can of worms)
Otherwise you can click the “Create a filter” link right next to the search boxes up near the top of the page…
If you chose “Filter messages like this” the From box will automatically be populated with the person’s email address, though you can write in their email address, or even their name. I’d go with the email address, and then click the “Next Step” button.
On this screen, you can click the “Mark as read” checkbox, and then click on the “Delete it” checkbox. This will send their messages automatically to the trash can.
Clicking the “Create Filter” button will make this filter active, and you’ll find it listed under Settings \ Filters in case you want to edit or delete it.
You’ll notice that the message isn’t permanently deleted, as it will sit in the trash can for 30 days until it empties automatically. Somehow that seems appropriate.
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Thanks for the tip!! Looks like some is having trouble with ex-girl friend
Great tip. Sorry to hear about the ex. Can the canned response be used to send back a generic reply stating that she has to let it go? A personal touch may be too intimate.
Actually, Richard, I rather like the “Forward It To” button in the filter options.
Why not forward the obnoxious emails to that persons Mom, Dad, Boss, pastor? The list is only limited by one’s imagination.
AND delete it, of course…
@1fastbullet
That’s a great idea!
Could also just forward it right back to the same person that sent it… wonder if Gmail would let you do that. Will have to test. What would be even more fun is if you could forward the email back 10x for every one that they sent.
Well you can use outlook for all the above
One thing to note about the Forward To idea: Make sure to avoid that on Spam and Phishing emails as the From headers on those are usually forged. Thus either the forward will go to the wrong person or not work at all.
No offense, but some people seem to get really upset about emails from an ex. Send it to her mom or pastor? You seem to have no respect for someone you were once in a relationship with, and by the way it took two people to end the relationship. Not sure why an ex would be hung up over some guys who think too much about themselves. I never email ex’s because if someone breaks up with me I automatically never want to talk to them again.
@Just Me
You obviously haven’t had to deal with constant harassment from an ex. It gets very frustrating to deal with both mentally and emotionally. You even said you never want to talk to the ex again… well that’s the whole point of blocking their emails!
This is a great article, I didn’t know how to block people in gmail before. I just made a new account.
any way to know whether the person you are sending has applied filters or blocks?
ex-lover
thank you thank you! not only wont i receive angry messages but i wont even know they are there
I’ve done this twice, and it still doesn’t work!!!!!
Hi All;
This is an OK approach to dealing with a psycho Ex or even friends that aren’t. But it does not get the idea or implied message acrossed – leave me alone.
A better approach, if I could have my dream granted, would be not to filter their email and delete it, but instead filter it and bounce back an email message something like this system message:
—-
“This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
“Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
” {my_email_account}@gmail.com
“Technical details of permanent failure:
“The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try double-checking the recipient’s email address for typos or unnecessary spaces. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support.....nswer=6596
” —– Original message —–
“MIME-Version: 1.0
“Received: by 10.115.108.1 with SMTP id k1mr3364036wam.190.1247240902625; Fri,
” 10 Jul 2009 08:48:22 -0700 (PDT)
“Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:48:22 -0700
“Message-ID:
“Subject: {some subject here}
“From: PsychoEX
“To: {my_email_address}@gmail.com
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=001636458104f34be1046e5be6d6
–001636458104f34be1046e5be6d6
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001636458104f34bdd046e5be6d5
–001636458104f34bdd046e5be6d5
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
It does not work!!!!!
There is no next step button!!
I am so mad!
I don’t even use google mail, at least not yet, but my question is: can you block e-mails that begin with something particular? because I receive comment notifications on my blog, but don’t want them when I’ve written the comments myself… If anybody knows, I’d love to be contacted! :]
HI,
Suppose if i block particular gmail ID. whether it is applicable to google talk as well. ?
If the person is trying to send mail, what will be messge ( When failure delivery happens)?
Whether is there any option to blck the mail by using the name of the person?
Gmail filter sucks. I wish there was a way to actually BLOCK emails like Yahoo! Mail. Instead of going through all those steps to filter it when the mail is still going through you inbox. Pretty worthless, methinks.