Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 : Work-Around

Alright… I did the lamest. I changed a password, and must have mistyped it twice, because now I can’t change it. Even better, I must have set up a secondary email address for my account to an email that no longer exists.

This kind of thing happens to the best of us. Sure.

Dilemma: If you forgot your password and have a secondary email account? Google will send your password reset information there and you’re good to go.

Problem: I must have set up my Gmail account with a secondary email address for an ancient domain that’s now dead. Hence the email being dead.

Can you still log in with anything?

I was still fortunate enough to have Google Talk with access to my inbox available through it set up in Trillian (isn’t it spelled Trillion - isn’t Google spelled Googol? Anyway - funny). I also had the Firefox extension for Gmail Notifier installed. So I was ok… I could access my account. So what to do?

Dilemma: If you can access your account, you can reset your password using your secret question.

Problem: My answer to my very obvious secret question didn’t work - which led me to believe that there’s a problem with altering ancient data in your Google account.

This just kept getting better and better.

The Work-Around

So, Google will let me do “something” if I don’t access my Gmail for five days… FIVE DAYS?! WITHOUT EMAIL!? ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME?! If you can access your account via a Firefox extension or Trillian, or other application that has your password saved, try this:

Step 1: Get into your Inbox via something
Step 2: Open a seperate browser (most people these days have two installed - i.e. - IE 6 or 7)
Step 3: Via your secondary browser & set up a new Gmail account
Step 4: Via the Gmail account you don’t have the password for? Forward that to your new one (Leave on server if you’d like - so you don’t lose mail once you get into your account again after the 5 day waiting period).
Step 5: Via your secondary Gmail account click on “Settings” (top right) >> “Accounts” >> “Add Another email address” under Send Mail as.
Step 6: Wait for the confirmation code to show up from Gmail Team, input it in the pop-up window, and you’re happy.
Step 7: Change your default “Send Mail as” address to your “locked out” Gmail account.
Step 8: Dance around happy.

I was lame enough to have two other email accounts in my “locked out” Gmail account, so I set those up in the new Gmail account as well - since the forwarding is only for your Gmail email address.

Aftermath

Now, I’m not sure if the forwarding is going to still count in my five day holding pattern to get me back into my regular Gmail account, but I’ll tell you this much: Since I still have GTalk on Trillian with the password saved, and I can still get my emails via Gmail with my new account - I really don’t have much reason to get my password sorted out… except now I have to make sure I don’t forget this password too, which would suck. Oh, and I can’t really take new contacts and add them to my old GTalk stuff through the Gmail interface, but whatever, I’ll live until I can get their stuff to fix my stuff.