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Phone As A Text Message
Phone As A Text Message
Unified communications is the future. No more landlines for voice calls and mobiles
for SMS, it�s all being mixed up so we can use any medium with any format of
communication. It has taken a while but we can now communicate in almost any way we
want. Today I�m discussing forwarding email to your phone as a text message.
Most smartphones are capable of handling email through a dedicated app. In fact
most smart phones come with email apps installed or available from most email
providers. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and others all have dedicated mobile apps. But
sometimes that isn�t what you need. Sometimes you need to quickly send the gist of
an email over SMS for quick digestion. That�s what we will do here.
Some carriers have relaxed the maximum character limit for SMS while some have not.
If the email contains HTML, hyperlinks, images, video, audio or other rich media,
this may not work. It is advisable to strip out any of these before hitting forward
to make sure the email is forwarded properly and not corrupted on the journey.
Here are the email addresses for some US carriers. If you�re outside the US or
yours is not listed, the address should be on the company website.
There are a couple of Chrome extensions that allow you to do the same from within
the browser. One is Send Your Email to SMS (text). It was suggested to me by
someone in the office as a reliable extension that makes short work of forwarding.
It works best with Gmail and installs a button within Gmail that provides a popup
window where you can add the cell number and the message to forward.
There are likely other browser extensions for Chrome or other browsers that work
just as well.
You can of course just type the gist of the email into an SMS window and send it
that way but it�s hardly ideal. Fine if it�s a one-off but not so good if it
happens often.
Those are the ways I know of to forward email to your phone as a text message. I�m
sure there are many others. Do you have any methods to suggest? Tell us about them
below if you do!