So you’ve set up an alternate email address in Gmail to save on having to check multiple inboxes every day AND you’ve set Google Calendar up so you can respond to invitations sent to another email address
BUT when you reply to those invitations, the RSVP comes from your main Gmail address, not the address used by the person inviting you.
What gives? Surely Google can’t mean for you to send calendar responses from a completely different email address?
Well… it turns out, that is exactly what Google means (for some strange reason).
Basically if someone sends an event invitation to your alternate email address, then your RSVP will be sent from your main email address and there’s nothing you can do to change that.
The workaround to make sure you RSVP from the correct email address
Don’t despair quite yet – there is a workaround but … it’s clunky and time consuming so use at your discretion.
If you want the RSVP to come from your alternate email then you need to respond directly from that email, not from the main or default email.
So that means you need to:
- open up another email client;
- log into the email account there;
- respond to the event invitation;
- log out and close the email client.
As you can see – very time confusing and completely negates all the productivity gains of having your email accounts in the email client.
What if you don’t want to use different email clients?
If you don’t want to use that particular workaround to respond to event invitations then my recommendation is to look closely at how you’ve set up your email accounts.
For example – if you’ve added your work email address to your personal Gmail set up, and your personal email address is (let’s say) a little unprofessional, REMOVE your work email address immediately.
Instead, set your work email address up as the main email account and then add your personal email address as the alternate email. I’m sure your friends and family won’t mind getting invitation responses from your work account whereas work clients might wonder why slightlyunproessional@gmail.com is responding to their request for a meeting.
TL;DR
Sadly, there’s no way to RSVP to a calendar invitation using the alternate email set up in your Gmail or Google Calendar.
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