How to Block a Sender in Gmail

By | December 1, 2022
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How to Block a Sender in Gmail

If you want to block someone and prevent them from sending mail to your Gmail address, it’s easy to do.  Most of you remember the old “Block sender” feature on Windows Mail (and Outlook Express). Thankfully, Gmail works better and it’s easier to block and unblock senders.

Here’s how to block a sender in Gmail.

Open an email that came from the sender you want to block. Just to the right of the “Reply” button, you’ll see an icon with three vertical dots. Click on that icon.

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You’ll see a drop-down menu (see below). On the menu, you’ll see “Block (whatever the sender’s name is)” for instance “Block Mister Irritating”.

The sender will be immediately added to your block senders list and all mail from them will be blocked from your Inbox and placed in the spam folder. Also, from the same menu, you can report the email as spam or phishing email from the same menu.

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How to unblock a blocked sender in Gmail

But what if you want to allow the sender you blocked?

Right! Now, what happens if you patch things up with the sender you blocked and you want to unblock them so you can get emails from them again? We’re glad you asked. It’s easy to do!

Open Settings and click on “See all settings”.

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Click on “Filters and Blocked Addresses” from the menu at the top.  All of your blocked addresses (if any) will appear in the list when you click the button labeled “Unblock selected addresses”.  (As you can see we have not blocked anyone.)

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Just remove the sender from the list of blocked addresses and he or she is then back in your good graces and all mail from them will be sent to your inbox again.

2 thoughts on “How to Block a Sender in Gmail

  1. Constance Tyler

    I’ve been doing this for a long time and it doesn’t always work very well. I blocked many the other day and they are still coming into my inbox. I think I will also have to use the unsubscribe as well.

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      It does not work for most professionally sent spam – and do you know why? Because those who send spam professionally use thousands of ‘from’ email addresses so “block sender” is not meant as a remedy for spam. But it works if you want to block mail from legitimate senders.

      Reply

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