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A long time ago, I created a Google mail account. I fell for a trap that was common back then (not sure how it is nowadays) and ended up with two Google accounts—one for Gmail (using the Gmail email address I would like to use) and one for everything else (using an email address at an external mail provider).

Hoping that I could associate my Gmail and my actual Google account, I deleted my Gmail account only to discover that deleted account names cannot be used again. So basically my old Gmail account along with the Google email address I would like to use is gone.

My main Google account got assigned a different Gmail account in the mean time.

Do you know if it is possible to re-use my preferred Gmail address? If possible, I would like to assign it to my main Google account. But I'd also be happy to have it as a second Google account, anything is better than the current situation.

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In some cases we can recover recently deleted accounts. If the account was not deleted recently, it can't be recovered, and the Gmail username cannot be re-used.

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Try the recovery form from this support article.

I don’t know if this applies to purposefully closed accounts as well. In general it will be pretty hard because Google has to ensure that you are the one who owned that account before. Otherwise all kinds of scamming can happen.

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