Email Normalizer
Reduce emails to a canonical form (Gmail dots and +tags) to spot duplicates, locally.
Collapse Gmail dots and +tags to a canonical address
This tool normalizes an email address the way Gmail itself treats it: it lowercases the address, drops anything after a `+` in the local part for every provider, and for gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses also strips dots and rewrites googlemail.com to gmail.com. It's useful for spotting duplicate accounts in a signup list or a support queue where the same person used [email protected] and [email protected]. Since email lists are personal data, normalization runs on your input in the browser and nothing is uploaded.
How to use the Email Normalizer
- Paste an email address into the input field.
- Read the normalized result and whether it differs from what you entered.
- Copy the canonical address to compare against other entries.
- Repeat for each address you're checking for duplicates.
Only gmail.com and googlemail.com get dot-stripping, matching how Gmail actually routes mail; other providers like Outlook or Yahoo keep dots as significant characters in the local part, since they don't ignore them the way Gmail does.
The `+tag` subaddressing convention is dropped for every domain, not just Gmail, since most major providers (Gmail, Outlook, Fastmail, and others) support plus-addressing and route the tagged mail to the base inbox.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does it only strip dots from Gmail addresses?
- Gmail is unusual in ignoring dots in the local part of the address entirely, so [email protected] and [email protected] reach the same inbox. Most other providers treat dots as significant, so stripping them there would be incorrect.
- Does this verify the email address actually exists?
- No, it only reformats the address into a canonical string for comparison; it doesn't check DNS records, send mail, or confirm the mailbox is real.
- Is my email list uploaded when I normalize addresses?
- No, normalization is plain string processing that runs in your browser tab, so the addresses you paste in are never sent to a server.
- What happens to the +tag part of an address?
- Everything from the `+` onward in the local part is removed before the domain check, so [email protected] and [email protected] both normalize to [email protected].
- Does googlemail.com normalize the same as gmail.com?
- Yes, googlemail.com is Google's alternate domain for the same Gmail accounts, so the tool rewrites it to gmail.com and applies the same dot-stripping before comparing.