Mrs T we got her an Ipad xmas 2012 set her up with a gmail address and its been great for her until .
this xmas we got her an Iphone and wanted to set it up for her emails

but no one can remember the password
tried all the reset methods on Google but it wants to send the reset code to the phone number she does not have anymore.

so following the reset forms we get to a point where it says what is the last password you can remember well she has only ever had one and we cant remember that one so cant progress past that bit of the form .

apart from binning the current email and starting again has anyone got any ideas ( she can still access her mails on the ipad but not on her phone .)

Set up a second acct and use ipad to sync them? Then new acct on phone should open both mailboxes, this works on my android devices, no experience of apple

Your best bet is to write such an email to google quoting the story and the old phone number. I’m quite surprised Google don’t have a feature to send a password reminder / reset link to the actual google email address, other services do.

Hindsight is wonderful but that’s why you setup a second email address and associate it with google and keep your phone number current.

EDIT: I just checked google and it said to wait 24 hours them follow the instructions on this page link
From what I’ve read if you don’t have the phone or remember the answer to your security question or didn’t set one up up you can fill in an online form. The fact you still have access to the account t should convince them easily it’s a genuine request

@trout by the way if she has an iPad and iPhone I wold suggest you set her up,with an iCloud address either the same as google one (first part obviously !) or something “better” and migrate to that one.