What is a "Global Inbox" and how is it used?

Answer: A Global Inbox is an e-mail feature that consolidates the Inboxes of several e-mail accounts. For example, a user may have three different e-mail accounts, such as a work account, home account, and a free Yahoo! Mail account. A global inbox would store the messages from all three accounts in a single inbox.

E-mail programs like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird allow users to select the "Global Inbox" option within the program's preferences. If this option is selected, all incoming e-mails will be saved in a universal mailbox, making it easy to view all the messages at one time. However, this can also make it difficult to determine which address each message was sent to. Fortunately, you can still check the "To:" field in each message's header to see which account received the message.

Apple's Mac OS X Mail program lists individual Inboxes by default, but also displays a Global Inbox at the top of the list. The user can select this Inbox to view an aggregate of all messages received by the mail program.

Published: July 8, 2008 — by Per Christensson