Although all modern smartphones offer built-in email capabilities and a wide variety of email apps to choose from, you may still sometimes find it better to send a short text message to someone’s email address instead of a regular email. For example, you may not have email set up on your phone or would prefer not to reveal your personal email address to the recipient. Or maybe you’re not on a data network or you don’t have an internet data plan on your device.
The good news is that almost all carriers still allow you to send a text message directly to an email address even when you don’t have a mobile data or Wi-Fi connection available. That’s because SMS and MMS text messages travel over a direct mobile connection that doesn’t require internet access, so they’re a great way to reach someone when the only other option available to you is a phone call.
While text messages sent to other phone numbers use only SMS (Short Message Service), messages to email addresses use MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). MMS is the same service used to send text messages that include photos and videos; most cell phone plans include this by default, but some may still charge a per-message fee for sending MMS instead of SMS. We recommend that you check with your carrier if you are not sure how MMS messages are handled on your plan.
Text messages sent to e-mail addresses still travel through your carrier’s MMS network, where they are converted into e-mail messages and delivered to the recipient’s inbox from the carrier’s e-mail server. How the message will appear to the recipient varies depending on your carrier, but in most cases it should come from an address that includes your phone number, such as [email protected], so the recipient can also reply to the message through their carrier email to SMS, allowing you to continue a full conversation.
Let’s take a closer look at how it works on an iPhone or Android smartphone.
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How to send text to someone’s email (Android)
Sending an SMS to an email address is as easy as entering your email address instead of your phone number in the “To” line of your messaging app. In the case of Android, it will probably be Google Messages, but it should work just as well in Samsung Messages or other SMS/MMS apps — as long as they support MMS.
Step 1: Open the Messages app on your Android phone.
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Step 2: Choose Start Chat to start a new conversation.
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Step 3: U To type the email address you want to send the message to.
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Step 4: After entering the full address, select Send to prompt that appears below the address.
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Step 5: Compose the text message as usual. When done, select Send the send button. On newer versions of Android, you can also hold Send button to schedule a message to be released later.
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How to send a text to someone’s email (iPhone)
In theory, sending a text message to email from iPhone should be as easy as it is on Android — just enter your email address in the “To” line. However, there is another wrinkle that can complicate things thanks to Apple’s iMessage service.
Most iPhone users will automatically have their primary email address registered for iMessage. This means that when you try to send text to an email address from the iPhone Messages app, it can travel over Apple’s iMessage network instead of going to the recipient’s inbox. Fortunately, it’s easy to tell when this is happening, thanks to the green-blue bubble. There are also ways around this if you really want to send a text message to the inbox of a person who is registered for iMessage.
Step 1: Make sure MMS is turned on by going to settings > Messages and searching MMS messages switch. This is usually enabled by default, but if it’s turned off for some reason, you’ll need to turn it back on before you can send text messages to an email address.
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Step 2: Open the Messages app on your iPhone.
Step 3: Select the write message button in the upper right corner.
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Step 4: U To type the email address you want to send the message to and select Return button on the keyboard.
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Step 5: If the email address turns green, it means your message will be sent via MMS and you’re good to go. You should also see the words “New MMS” at the top of the screen and “Text Message” in the text box.
Select that new message box, type your message and select green arrow send him on his way. That green send button is another sign that you’re using SMS/MMS, not iMessage.
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Step 6: If the email address turns blue, it means it is registered to receive iMessages. You can still send the message, but it won’t go to the recipient’s inbox; instead, it will be sent to their iPhone, iPad or Mac. Furthermore, if you don’t have data available, the message won’t go out until you’re back in coverage, since iMessage requires a data connection to access Apple’s servers.
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Step 7: If you want the message to be sent via MMS instead to make sure it goes to the recipient’s inbox, the simplest solution is to open settings > Messages and turn off the iMessage switch. This completely disables iMessage on your iPhone, so everything from the Messages app will be sent via SMS and MMS. You can follow the same steps to turn iMessage back on after sending a message.
Also check if Send as SMS option is enabled under settings > Messages. This will allow your iPhone to revert to sending iMessages as SMS/MMS messages when you’re off a data network or have turned off cellular data and Wi-Fi.
How to forward texts to someone’s email (Android)
Sometimes you’ll want to forward a text message you’ve received to someone’s email address. For example, if you received an order confirmation or a party invitation via SMS and want to forward it. While you can usually simply copy and paste text into an email, you can also easily use the forwarding capabilities built into your messaging app to send it to an email address as simply as a phone number.
Step 1: Open the Messages app on your Android phone and select the conversation with the message you want to forward to an email address.
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Step 2: Press and hold a specific message in a conversation until it changes color. Depending on your phone, you may also feel tactile feedback for confirmation.
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Step 3: Select the three-dot menu in the upper right corner and select Forward. Alternatively, you can also use Share option here if you’d rather send the text message through an email app like Gmail or forward it through another messaging app like WhatsApp.
Step 4: After selecting the Forward option, select from the list of recently used addresses or select New message to enter a new email address and then continue sending the message in the same way as described above to send a new message.
How to forward texts to someone’s email (iPhone)
Forwarding a text message to email from iPhone is similarly easy, although the same caveats regarding iMessage apply when forwarding a message as when sending a new one, so you may need to work around this if you see the email address turn blue and want to to force him to exit via email instead. Also make sure MMS is enabled settings > Messagesas described above.
Step 1: Open the Messages app on your iPhone and select the conversation with the message you want to forward to an email address.
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Step 2: Press and hold the message you want to forward. A popup menu of options will appear.
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Step 3: Choose More. The current message will appear with a blue check mark next to it.
Step 4: Select the additional messages you want to forward.
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Step 5: Choose Forward arrow in the lower right corner. A box for composing a new message will appear with the text of your selected messages.
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Step 6: Enter the email address in the To line, edit or add to the text in the composition box if you want and select green arrow send a message on the way.
Note that if you see a blue arrow instead, the message will be sent directly to the recipient’s iPhone via Apple’s iMessage service; it will not reach their inbox. See the section above about sending an SMS to someone’s email to learn how to override this.
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