Note 1: your username will be the part of your new email address before the @ symbol.
For example, if you fill in
duckbilledpterodactyl
for the username, and if GMail
accepts this, your new email address would be
duckbilledpterodactyl@gmail.com
.
Note 2: for technical reasons, usernames can't have spaces in them, and
likewise many other punctuation and special characters are not allowed. The letters a-z and
the digits 0-9 are always allowed, and GMail also allows you to have one period (.
)
in your username.
Note 3: your username must be globally unique. If your name is Susan Roberts
and you fill in susanroberts
for your username, GMail will tell you that this name is
already taken, because somebody else named Susan Roberts already signed up for GMail.
In fact, GMail has billions of users, so unless your name is something genuinely unusual
(Mehitabel K. Takedaimyoshiichirovichnyakovski van der Ng), you will almost certainly have
to include something additional besides your name. Be creative. Or, if all else fails,
let GMail add a bunch of numbers on the end.
Click in the Password
field and type in a password for your new GMail account.
Note 1: The best way to make a password more secure, is to make it longer.
Avoiding common names, dictionary words, and obvious sequences (abc, 123, qwerty, etc.)
also helps, but nearly any password over 30 characters long is unlikely to be compromised
by the common types of automated attacks, even if it's an easy to remember sentence.
Note 2: Even if you don't care about security, your password still
has to meet Google's minimum requirements. As of July 2020, this means it must be
at least eight characters long and contain a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation.
Click in the Confirm
field and type the same password in again.
This is necessary to convince Google that you know what you typed.
If the confirmation doesn't match the password, you will have to enter them both again.
Click the Next
link. Google will check everything you've typed in so far, to
make sure it is ok.
If Google hilights some of the fields you've filled out in red, this means you need to change
what you typed into those fields.
For example, if the username field is red, this usually means
the username you wanted is already taken. If the password field is red, it means your password
doesn't meet Google's minimum security requirements. Change whatever you need to change. Keep
trying until you manage to find values that Google will accept.
On paper, write down the following:
Fill in the username and password that you ended up with, on the paper.
Important Note: Passwords are always case-sensitive.
This means that for example
a
and
A
are completely
different characters. (When the computer does
password-checking math,
it counts
a
as 97, but
A
counts as only 65. So if you
change the capitalization, the password won't add up to the same
hash value
,
and the computer will think it's a different password — and different is wrong.)
Also, spaces and punctuation are allowed,
but they
matter, and specifically they have to be
reproduced exactly the same.
(A space counts as 32.
Yes, really.)
If you typed
Ithinkpasswordsaredumb
but wrote down
I THINK PASSWORDS ARE DUMB
, and then some other
day you try to log in by typing what you wrote down, the computer
will tell you that your password is incorrect, and it will not give you
access to your account. Make sure you write down
exactly
the same thing you typed, with
exactly the same
capitalization, punctuation, spaces, and everything, exactly. The
computers aren't being mean on purpose, they're just nowhere near smart enough
to understand when something
means the same
as something else, even if
the computer remembered what your password was, which it doesn't: it remembers
the answer to the password-checking math problem.
So for the computer to understand that what you typed is
the same
password as
the other time, it has to be really
exactly the same.
For the email address, write the username again and then add @gmail.com
You will want to keep this paper somewhere safe, so that you can refer back to
it if you ever lose track of your email account information. I usually recommend keeping it
where you keep other important papers, such as your birth certificate.
Some people think they won't forget their username and password. A few months later,
they come to me for help. Invariably, they no longer have the phone they used when
they signed up, and there is nothing I can do to help them. Don't trust your memory.
Write your account information down and keep it in a safe place.
Some people think they are never going to need email again, after they finish the
thing they are currently doing that requires it. This doesn't generally work out
the way they expected. Keep your email account. You'll probably need it
again in a few weeks or months.
Google will now ask you to verify your phone number. Unfortunately, this step is no longer
optional. Enter your phone number and click the Verify
link.
By default, Google will assume that your phone is a cellphone, and will attempt to send you a
text message, with a verification number that you need in order to proceed. Get the number
from the text message. You will only need this number once, right now, to sign up.
If for any reason you cannot receive text messages, you can click the Call instead
link, and Google's computer system will call you and read your confirmation number over the
phone twice. Enter the number into the verification code field and click the Verify button.
The Recovery email address
field is optional. If you don't already have an email
account, you can just leave this field blank.
Click the Month
drop-down and select the month you were born.
Click the Day
field and type in the day of the month, that you were born
Click the Year
field and type in the year that you were born.
(Type in all four digits. Computers are dumb. If you type 86, the
computer will think you are claiming to have been born in the first century AD.)
Click the Gender
field and either specify your gender, or choose Rather not say
.
Click the Next
link.
Google will now offer to sign you up for additional services, using your phone number.
However, you can always come back and sign up for these services later. For now, in
the interests of keeping these instructions simple, just click the Skip
link.
At this point Google will show you their privacy policy and terms of usage. Read as much of it as you care about, scrolling down as needed. The short version is, they will definitely gather data from your email usage, and use it to decide what advertisements to show you. A lot of websites show Google advertisements, so if you exchange a lot of email with your AARP representative, you may see advertisements for retirement-related services on just about any website you visit.
Once you reach the bottom of the policy, click the I agree
link.
Google will now take you to your GMail inbox, but will show an advertisement in front of it, for
one of their other services. For now, click the Got it
link to dismiss the advertisement.
Congratulations, you have signed up for an email account. Take the piece of paper where you
wrote your account information, and store it in a safe place.
If you can't remember the information even right now and need to carry it with you, make a second copy.
Carry one copy, and keep the other in a safe place.
The above sign-up procedure only has to be completed once, as long as you don't lose your account
information. And you're not going to lose it, because the above instructions said to write it
down and keep it in a safe place, and of course you listened and did that, because you immediately
realized that you don't want to have to go through all that signup hassle again.