Email forwarding option missing on newly setup google hosted domains —25 September 2011

My internet hosting company has a nice feature to make it really easy to use Gmail for all my hosted domains. I’ve been using this for several domains, and I typically create an info@my.domain.com account and have it forward all incoming emails to my personal email account. Usually you do this in Mail settings / Forwarding and POP/IMAP but recently this option disappeared on the the google hosted domains, there is only POP/IMAP Download instead. Google Help pages are useless, there is nothing written about why the option is was removed.

But guess what, the feature is actually still there! You just have to wait! It seems there is a delay, and the email forwarding option is not available soon after you setup the domain. I don’t know why, I haven’t found relevant documentation. I just experienced with several domains already that I just need to wait a couple of days, and eventually the option appears.

You can tell it’s a bug, because if you try to create a filter, you will find a link “Manage your forwarding addresses” which takes you to the POP/IMAP Download page, where in fact it is impossible to setup forwarding addresses.

In short, it’s a gotcha. If you are experiencing this, give it a few days, hopefully the option will appear eventually.