How To Associate Google Voice With Your Existing Phone Number

So Google Voice finally introduced a feature that will allow you to use Google Voice with your existing phone number(s). So now, instead of giving out a new phone number that sends everyone to Google Voice, they can call your old numbers, and leave you a message that gets transcribed, emailed, sent via SMS and more. Here is how you set it up.

First, login to your Google Voice account. Then go to the Settings screen. Next to the phones you have associated with Google Voice, you will see a link that says Activate Google voicemail for this phone. Click that link.

You will be asked to verify the phone number. If it is a mobile phone, you will also need to select your carrier from the drop-down list.

After you have done that, click continue and you will be given a specific number to call from the phone you want to associate to your Google Voice account.

Once you have done that, you should get a confirmation screen and/or message on your phone saying that the association process is complete. Here is what it looks like on my iPhone.

After that, go ahead and make a call to test it out. When the phone switches over to voicemail, it will ring once, play your recorded greeting, and let you record your voicemail. Within seconds, it shows up in your Google Voice inbox and transcription comes in within a few minutes.

And that pretty much does it.

A few caveats to make note of. If you are associating your iPhone with Google Voice, you will loose the Visual Voicemail features. If that is important to you, then you may not want to go through with this. On the flip side, Google Voice will send you an email and, if you so desire, an SMS whenever you have a new voicemail. That may balance out the lack of Visual Voicemail.

If you are just in love with Visual Voicemail and decide you don’t want your phone associated with Google Voice, it is easy to deactivate the service. Just visit your settings page and click the deactivation link. You will go through a process similar to activation by dialing a number into your phone.

UPDATE: If you are getting a new Google Voice account, make sure you know the difference between getting a number from Google and associating an existing mobile number with your account. The features are limited if you don’t get a Google number first.