Today's time saver: using email to send a text message

13 January 2012

I’m not a big text messaging person. I don’t have kids, so I haven’t been forced to text. I finally bought a smart phone last year (a cheapish Android, the LG Optimus T) and I find texting annoying at best. But certain people (like my husband) like to receive communications via text message.

When I’m at home and he’s out in the world, texting him makes sense. But I’d much rather type a message on my full-size computer keyboard in seconds than take a full minute to agonizingly touch the keys on my little phone.

I’ve learned that I can indeed type my text messages on my computer and send them via email. And you can too.

By simply typing the phone number with appropriate domain after the sign, you can send an email text. For example, to text my husband, I just type 3141234567tmomail.net, since he uses T-Mobile. (That’s not his real number, believe it or not.) If you know the cell phone provider of the person you want to text, all you need to know is the appropriate domain for that cell phone company.

I searched around the internet and found these email addresses for several major cell phone providers:

Sprint: cellnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: cellnumber@vtext.com
T-Mobile: cellnumber@tmomail.net
AT&T: cellnumber@txt.att.net
Virgin Mobile: cellnumber@vmobl.com
US Cellular: cellnumber@email.uscc.net

I can’t verify the validity of these email addresses, except for T-Mobile & AT&T. If you try them and they do or don’t work, I’d love it if you’d make a comment here.

Incidentally, when I email a text to my husband, he responds on his phone by texting a reply and I receive it as an email.

Tagged with: communication, productivity, text message

Comments

Tested it for my cell phone provider (on Virgin Mobile) and it works for me. Only thing to make note though is that it pulls everything. Subject of email (in parens) and all the text (including the signature), BUT it looks like it cuts it off as one text and doesn’t send multiple texts to cover the whole emails. SO I guess be short and sweet in using it.

Oh and the reply works too, email ends up being the same email (number and provider suffix) that I had just used.

Thanks for sharing this tip!

Gil January 13, 2012 01:58 PM

Thanks, Gil! I appreciate the feedback and am glad you found the post helpful.

And I did hear from another reader via Twitter who said that the email formula for Verizon worked in his test.

Janine Adams January 13, 2012 02:20 PM

Great <a href=“http://bigboxstorage.net”> organizing </a> tips in this blog. I really like this text messaging help. I think it will save a lot of time. Thanks.

Samantha February 1, 2012 06:53 PM

Hello! I’m Janine Adams — a certified professional organizer based in St. Louis, and the creator of Peace of Mind Organizing®.

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