Removing a gmail account from a specific computer

I need to fix my wife’s laptop so that extraneous gmail accounts are not available. Is there any way, once a specific gmail account has been enabled on the computer, to instruct the computer to stop accessing that account?

Gmail’s FAQ’s are silent on the issue.

Thanks in advance.

You can reset any saved passwords on your browser, but other than that, not really. If someone has the password and login for a specific account, they can log in to it. If you can log into one, you can log in to any… You could block Gmail completely, but that would keep her from logging into her account, as well.

Disappointing. Is there at least a way to change which account gmail defaults to?

I’m a bit confused, but I think it comes down to what EatTheSun said. Just hit the log out button in Gmail/YouTube/Google and don’t log back into that account.

Additionally, you can go to a log in page, go to the username box, hit the down arrow and Ctrl-Delete the username from the box, but it’s still going to come down the user just not logging in anymore.

Log into the account you want it to be logged into and tell it to stay logged in.

Is your aim to provide simplicity for the primary user of the computer, or security for your own account?

And that would depend on what the endgame here is. You mentioned blocking gmail, but depending on what the OP ultimatly wants to do, to totally stop someone from (easily) logging into gmail, that would also involve blocking youtube and Google (and possibly G+, I’m not sure if that’s separate from Google.com). There’s probably some other things they own that I’m not thinking off, plus other places you can log onto gmail as well from.

Oh, and the Android Play store. That’s Google too, IIRC. I know it works with the Google Wallet.

I think the easiest way is going to be to just log on, tell it to stay logged on and don’t log off. But until we have more info as to what exactly you’re trying to accomplish, that’s about the most help I can offer.

We’re in agreement there, I was just trying to get a little clarity, as well.

Surely gmail is a web service. As such, it is not really meaningful to talk about it being enabled or disabled on a particular user’s computer.

If you want to prevent someone getting into particular accounts, change the password and log out, and take care that your browser is not set to automatically log back in with the new password.

Your computer doesn’t store your gmail inbox, does it? It just saves some cookies with your user names and passwords (if you tell it to save them), right? I guess it’s a matter of clearing the correct cookies.

But that’s not going to stop someone else from entering their user name and password after you do that.

No is the answer. Gmail will default to the last gmail account accessed. This function is very embedded. I tried to get around it so I could launch specific gmail accounts from desktop links and it still defaulted to the last account accessed.

Not just that, but it will switch accounts if you log into a different service under another user name. If I’m in my work gmail account, and then open another window to log into my personal YouTube account, the gmail window will switch over to my personal one that’s attached to YouTube. Of course, this is at home where everything logs in automatically. If I do something similar at work, where no passwords are saved, it will still switch, but to the login screen. I don’t see any way around it.

Okay, my wife is blind,and her laptop had been set up to only open emails from the webmail on her ISP account. This account is now hosted as a gmail account, but it’s accessed through her logon at dslextrreme.com, not through gmail.com. Last week in order to assist a houseguest with obtaining services from a Library of Congress service for blind users, I created a gmail account for the guest (my computer was broken at the time). Yesterday, in the middle of a remote training session, her instructor tried to open her email, and it logged into her friend’s gmail account.

The friend has now returned home, where she doesn’t have a computer, but that could change any time. For this reason, I’m hesitant to simply delete her account. I just want it to not be the one that presents itself when my wife tries to open her email.

I believe the lesson is to click “signout” when you are finished.

Gmail will normally only “remember” one account, so once you log in to another, it won’t automatically log in to the old one until you do it manually first. It does this using cookies stored on your computer, rather than through some setting on Google’s servers.

Go to the email you don’t want to see, then logout. If necessary, delete your cookies. If you want another one to log in by default, log in to that one and make sure you have the “Stay signed in” or “Automatically log me in next time” option selected.

Your situation seems a little unusual. I’m not certain exactly how or why the laptop is only supposed to open emails on the ISP account, and what this has to do with Gmail. The email addresses are all @gmail.com, but you can log in to them from another website? Is it impossible to log in from gmail.com?

Gmail does domain email hosting - my work gmail account is SeaDragon@ Workplace.org (of which the @ addresss is also our website) no one would know it was a Gmail account unless I told them. So the OP’s situation makes sense. kaylasdad, deleting the guest account cookies should do the trick, and making sure your wife’s account is signed back in with “stay signed on” selected should make it the default again. It sounds like it just went to the last email account that was opened, which Gmail is wont to do IME.

Use several browsers.

I believe this is a cookie issue.

This, or for this particular case have the guest use a guest-access login on the laptop itself so that nothing done will mess with the wife’s stuff.

Is there any reason you and your wife are not using an email client program on your pc? Such as Outlook or Windows Live. I never use webmail because I like to have all of my email accessible whether there is a web connection or not. Plus using an email client is more user friendly.