Are gmail addresses case sensitive?

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
Email addresses, no matter which provider, are not case sensitive.
 

fox64

Member
So this means that [email protected] would get the email message even if I did capitalize the t in his gmail address?

ps
Someone texted me there gmail to my cellphone and only the first letter of there first name was capitalized, there second or last name was not capitalized.
could this be because cellphones and smartphones possibly might automatically capitalize the first letter of a sentence? There was also a dot separating the first and second/last name.
 
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johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You can capitalize all the letters in the first part of the email address and it will still get to the same person. And yes, smartphones will always capitalize the first letter of a sentence.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Why did you specify two different domains in your example?

But as stated, case is not an issue. You can easily test this by sending emails to yourself in various combinations of case.
 

jimav

New Member
Email addresses, no matter which provider, are not case sensitive.

Not necessarily true. The SMTP protocol specification (RFC 5231) says "The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive."

However, the destination server is free to interpret the "local part" of the maxilbox (the part to the left of the '@') in any way it wants, and Yahoo mail and Gmail ignore case. But other systems are free to have case-sensitive names, where "tom" and "Tom" might be separate mailboxes.
 

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
Not necessarily true. The SMTP protocol specification (RFC 5231) says "The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive."

However, the destination server is free to interpret the "local part" of the maxilbox (the part to the left of the '@') in any way it wants, and Yahoo mail and Gmail ignore case. But other systems are free to have case-sensitive names, where "tom" and "Tom" might be separate mailboxes.
True, but the only time you really see that is in large Exchange or other mail system environments where being case sensitive would make having multiple people with the same name easier for mailboxes (not really though)
 

SpriteMidr

Active Member
They are not case sensitive... but if you put capitals in the username, they will be displayed in that case in the Gmail GUI.

So if you are specific about stuff like I am, dont use random capitals in places as it doesnt make any difference but the way the username is displayed can get annoying ;)
 
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