google voice is a really useful (and free) google service that allows you to make and receive phone calls without having a landline or mobile phone.
one of the most useful features of google voice is the voicemail feature. it’s a great way to get messages from people through contact forms on your website, or just as a general number you want to give people to leave messages for you without giving them your real phone number.
In this article, you’ll learn how to set up voicemail on your Google Voice account.
don’t you have google voice yet?
If you like the idea of using the voicemail feature on Google Voice but don’t yet have a Google Voice account or phone number, signing up is easy.
- To get started, sign in to your google account and visit the google voice page.
- select for personal use and choose the type of device you want. want to use (android, ios, or web).
- add a home address or personal phone number (optional).
- review the terms of service and privacy policy, and then select continue.
- type the name of a nearby city and choose select next to the number you want to claim.
Follow the on-screen instructions to finish setting up your new number. You can also link this google voice phone number to an existing mobile or landline number if you want calls to google voice to ring on that phone as well.
how to set up voicemail in google voice
Now that you have your own Google Voice account and phone number, you actually have an active voicemail inbox as part of the account.
however, there are a few things you’ll need to do to set up voicemail to work properly.
1. When you sign in to your Google Voice account, select the settings gear icon in the upper right corner.
2. in the settings section, select voicemail from the menu on the left. this will automatically take you to the voicemail settings section.
3. voicemail settings has three sections where you can configure exactly how your google voice voicemail feature will behave.
We’ll explore each of these google voice voicemail settings in the next section.
google voice voicemail setup
The first section to consider is your active salutation. you will see two buttons in this section.
- record greeting: select this option to record a new greeting with your microphone. You can record a greeting of up to 3 minutes. select the stop icon when finished. select save to save the greeting or redo to try again. give your greeting a name and select save again.
- manage all greetings – this will open a window where you can set any of your recorded messages as your current active message (you can only have one active at a time). To choose a message, simply select the three dots on the right and select make active.
You will always see your current active greeting in the active greeting section of the voicemail greeting box.
The second section is the get voicemail via email box. If you enable this, you will get all new recorded voice messages sent directly to your google email account. this will be the email address associated with the gmail account you used to sign up for google voice.
The third and final section is to let google analyze voicemail transcripts. this is a privacy setting option. Enabling it gives Google permission to access your voicemail transcripts in order to tune and improve its voicemail transcription algorithm.
Beyond the settings you’ll find in the voicemail settings section of google voice, there are a few other settings that are relevant to setting up your voicemail.
google voice voicemail setup
Just above the voicemail settings section is a do not disturb box with other voicemail settings.
Enabling this option will not forward any of your messages to the phone number you have assigned to your google voicemail account. instead, it will simply forward all calls directly to voicemail.
This is an option you might want to use if you’re on the road and don’t want to be bothered with calls for a while.
another voicemail option is further down the google voicemail settings page, towards the bottom. look for the security section. The filter spam box is where you can enable spam filtering for three of your Google voicemail features: calls, messages, and voicemail.
enable this option to enable this feature. this is especially helpful if you find that you are receiving a lot of spam messages or voicemails. Google’s anti-spam algorithm is surprisingly effective at blocking these annoying contacts.
other google voicemail tips
using google voicemail is extremely easy and convenient. When you select Voicemail in the left navigation panel, you’ll be taken to your list of recent voicemail messages.
select any message to view the voicemail transcript. you can select the play button below this transcript to listen to the message.
When you select the three dots at the top right of the message, you’ll see a list of options for things you can do with your voicemail message.
The important options here are:
- find the sender of the message in your contact list
- delete or archive the message
- mark the message as spam or block the number
- download a copy of the message as a sound file
The bottom line is that once you set up voicemail in google voice, it just works. it’s also convenient and gives you a place to store incoming calls where you can access them on your own time and on your own schedule.