"Send mail as" from Google Group email as an external user

[nick4]

Hi!

I'm a member of Google Group that sits within a separate Google Workspace account and I want to "send mail as" from that Group's email from within my current Google Workspace account. To recap, I want to send email as team@externaldomain.com, which is a Google Group within the Google Workspace account for externaldomain.com, from my personal inbox at me@mydomain.com, which is my personal email within the Google Workspace for mydomain.com.

I went through the Settings>Account>Send Mail As route I enter in the email of the Google Group (team@externaldomain.com) and hit "Next Step."

On the next screen I am asked to configure mail to be sent through externaldomain.com SMTP servers. Since the email for the Google Group doesn't have an associated password, I tried entering in my personal credentials to authenticate instead of entering a password for team@externaldomain.com.

In doing so, I get this error.

 

I've searched the forums and found one user who said they got this to work using their personal credentials, but can't find any documentation or guides on how to go about setting this up to actually work if my issue is the SMTP server and port number and not my authentication credentials.

As a side note, I have Admin access to both accounts, so can make any Admin changes necessary to enable this to work, I just need instructions on what to config to make this happen.

Thanks in advance!

[KAM]

@nick4 Perhaps when they posted to the group from instance B, they actually relayed their mail through Instance A using something like Thunderbird and SMTP?  That's the closest thing I can think of that might achieve what you are talking about.  -KAM

[nick4]

Thanks for the reply. I think using the SMTP route is probably what I need, but I don't know what the steps are to do that. Can you point me in the right direction?

[christiannewman]

@nick4 Route outgoing SMTP relay messages through Google

[KAM]

@nick4 Well, for example, at the Apache Software Foundation, our Workspace instance is gsuite.cloud.apache.org.  So we relay all mail out the Apache.org mail servers and send as our @apache.org addresses.  Here's the KB about it (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en) and a a rough outline I wrote some 3 years ago for it that might help you get an idea:

You can also use the gsuite.cloud.apache.org account for your ASF Email by doing two steps:
#1 on id.apache.org, change your forwarding email address to yourid@gsuite.cloud.apache.org
#2 Change the Send As. For example:

Send mail as:
(Use Apache Software Foundation Mail to send from your other email addresses)

Your Name <yourid@apache.org>

Mail is sent through: mail-relay.apache.org
Secured connection on port 587 using TLS
default

When replying to a message:
Always reply from default address (currently yourid@apache.org)

You will now get inbound and outbound mail on this account, you can set it up on your phone, etc. The phone might require setting the default send as BTW.

[bill_pier3]

I'm not sure that it's doable ... what's the problem with sending as the group .. from within the Group desktop/web service?

[StephenHind]

If you want to send as the group for the external domain via SMTP then you need to provide the SMTP details for a user within that externalk domain that's a member of the group, e.g. if you want to send as team@externaldomain.com, the you need to prvide sign in details for me@externaldomain.com.  If you don't have details to do that then, as @bill_pier3 has already suggested siomply use the Google Groups web interface.

[home2mars]

Hi StephenHind,

I was not able to follow your method. I got authentication error.

Here all the elements:

A personal Gmail account:  xxxxxpersonalxxxxx@gmail.com
An .org Gmail account: yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org
A Google group: zzzzzcommitteezzzzz@aaabbbcccc.org with 2 members: yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org and xxxxxpersonalxxxxx@gmail.com

What I want to accomplish:

That the xxxxxpersonalxxxxx@gmail.com can email from that account but AS IF it is coming from yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org (the Google group).

Steps #1:

1. On the xxxxxpersonalxxxxx@gmail.com, Setting - Accounts and Import - Send email as - Add another email address - Enter 'zzzzzcommitteezzzzz@aaabbbcccc.org' - Check Treat as Alias (also trying unchecking that) - Next Step
2. SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com Port 587, TLS; Username: yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org; Password: yyyyychairyyyyy@ google password

Unfortunately, this did not work

Is the password supposed to the App Password created by yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org instead of its google password (aka Winter's post)?

Following Winter's post/comment, I was able to create an Alias and it seems all working. BUT!

Even though from my end (ie: xxxxxpersonalxxxxx@gmail.com) it looks like I am sending an email from zzzzzcommitteezzzzz@aaabbbcccc.org, the person I am sending the test email to (say, aaaaanother@gmail.com) see the email coming from the yyyyychairyyyyy@aaabbbcccc.org instead of the zzzzzcommitteezzzzz@aaabbbcccc.org.

I hope I explain my steps clearly so you / someone else can help me further. Thank you in advance.

[nick4 · Accepted solution]

Just to close the loop here...the best solution was to use an App password for the authentication part and smtp.gmail.com as the server. Thanks all

[f3g4t0]

Hey sorry could you explain? thank you!

[kim_nilsson]

You need to read the comment by @StephenHind .

[Winter]

Here is what I found that works: 

Step 1:

Create an Application (if not already done)

1. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
2. Sign into your Google workspace account
3. Name your application.  “Gmail” works well for this app
4. Copy the password key and save it somewhere safe

Step 2:

Adding as an Alias

1. Go to your gmail account (the one you want to add the group alias to)
2. Go to settings
3. Go to accounts and import
4. Scroll down to: Send mail as
5. Click “add another email address"
6. Add the google group email address that you want to use
7. Make sure the check mark is next to “use as an alias”
8. Click “Next Step”
9. In the SMTP, type: smtp.gmail.com
10. In the username, type the Google Workspace main account admin name
11. In the password, paste the Google app key you got in Step 1

Step 3

Verify

1. Check email of current email address
2. Copy and paste verification code
3. Click Verify

For this to work for an external address, you must make sure all the permissions are correctly set in your google group.

[home2mars]

Hi Winter,

Using your steps I was able (or seemingly able) to create an Alias, unfortunately, it did not 100% working as I would like it to be. Please see my reply-post to Stephen (https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Workspace-Q-A/quot-Send-mail-as-quot-from-Google-Group-email...)

Hope you can help me further. Thank you!

[Woosh]

Thank you for the solution. The problem with this is that instead of sending messages as Google Workspace group (team@organization.com) it sends the messages as that admin (name@organization.com) unless I did something wrong

[Mech]

Hi, winter,

Just made a profile to thank you!

Thanks.