You can delegate access to your Gmail to another person so they can read, send, and delete messages on your behalf. For example, you can delegate e-mail rights to an admin in your organization, or delegate your personal email access to your spouse. The delegate can also access the other person's contacts by clicking the Contacts link. Clicking the To,Cc, or Bcc links in the mail compose window will also bring up your contacts.

 

Google's provided video instructions on Setting up Gmail Delegation:

 

 

You won't be able to give anyone permission to change your account password ,account settings, nor chat on your behalf. You can specify up to 10 users. Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers can specify up to 25 users. Here's how:

1) Access the Settings options in Gmail

 

2) Select the Accounts tab (It may also be labeled “Accounts and Import”)

 

3) Scroll down until you find the Grant access to your account section, once you find it, click the Add another account option

 

4) This will open a dialogue box which will prompt you to add an email address, enter the email of the account you would like email to be delegated to, and click the next step button. Please note that you can only grant access to Google accounts in the same Google Apps organization.

For example: student, faculty, and staff who attend, or work for a particular organization, in this instance, Azusa Pacific University, have an email address ending with “@apu.edu” those with this account cannot delegate emails to an address outside of this domain e.g. @gmail.com or @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com. Likewise, if you have an address @gmail.com, you will only be able to delegate to someone with a @gmail.com address.

 

5) Once you have done that you will be asked to confirm that this is the correct email you wish to give delegation privileges to, if it is correct, click the Send email to grant access button

 

6) The one you delegated to will receive an email where they must accept delegation privileges.

Note: After the delegate confirms the request it may take up to 30 minutes for the verification process to be completed. To see if the delegate has confirmed access to your account, look at the Accounts and Import tab in Settings

 

7) You can revoke access to any account you have delegated responsibility to by going to the Grant access to your account section, and going to the right side, and deleting that account.

 

Remember that each Gmail account is intended and designed for use by an individual user. If you have multiple users frequently accessing the same account from various locations, you may reach a Gmail threshold that might result in a degradation of service or temporarily lock down your account.

Any messages someone else sends from your account will have your name listed in addition to the other person's name, so they'll show the sender as: Your Name (sent by Delegate).

If someone has granted you access to their account, you can access it by clicking on your profile picture or email address in the upper-right corner. Choose your delegate's email address.

Limits: A delegatee can access up to 10 accounts. Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government customers can access up to 512 accounts.

In order to use delegation, both accounts must be enabled and verified, and neither account may require a password change on the next sign in. Otherwise, setup will fail with an error.

Google Apps users can grant access to any other user in the Admin console of their organization. Only domains which have completed (or skipped) the MX record setup can be used when granting access from another domain.

 

Last Updated: 07/17/15