This article is a continuation of our Google Voice series. In this article, we’ll look at some of the surprising limitations Google Voice imposes when you want to manage multiple phone numbers, and some possible tricks for getting around the problem.
Read the rest of our Google Voice series:
- Google Voice: a step-by-step primer on ditching your land line while keeping your number
- Google Voice: the ultimate iPhone how-to
- Google Voice: beyond Gmail. Get voicemail and texts using any client you want
- Google Voice: how to consolidate your virtual phone numbers (this article)
- Google Voice: a cheapskate’s guide to cheap VOIP
- Google Voice: configuring a complex home office
- And, probably, more as I learn more…
This article assumes you’ve already got a working Google Voice account and it’s linked to your phone. If you don’t, please read the first article in this series.
Some background
As I described at the beginning of this series, my wife and I have moved to a new home. We decided to “rescue” our long-valued land line phone numbers, one of which was the “family” number and one of which was my office number (I work from home).
We chose Google Voice because we liked the idea of having numbers independent of the physical location, and because we spent about four months commuting between homes (and never knowing when either of us would be in either house), it made sense to have our phone numbers reach us anywhere.
Obviously, we could give out our cell phone numbers, but we had lots of people who knew and regularly contacted us on our land lines and wanted to keep all that running.
When we set up Google Voice, we decided the “family” number would ring to her cell phone (since she was the one who usually talked to family members, friends, and home-renovation contractors). We decided the “work” number would ring to my cell phone since I mostly talk to the work-related contacts.
We also wanted to be able to answer either phone when we were both at home. I’ll talk more about that in a later article.
So far, Google Voice could work with us. But then a complication arose. I have a second “work” number. I’m the executive director for a nonprofit, and that organization has a separate number.
For the last few years, I’ve had that number running through Google Voice. I set it to ring on through to the “work” land line, so I could answer it through my normal office phone, saving me from having to have a whole separate set of wiring in the home office.
But when I moved my office land line to Google Voice, I discovered a problem. Google Voice will not forward one Google Voice number to another. I could no longer get both the nonprofit calls and my work calls on the same line.
Okay, fine, I thought. I’ll forward the nonprofit phone directly to my cell phone. No joy. Google Voice will only allow you to link one cell phone number to one Google Voice number, in a strict one-for-one correspondence. No exceptions.
So there’s my problem statement. How could I link two separate Google Voice numbers to one cell phone?
Although nothing I found was perfect, there are a few hacky ways to make it work.
