Get the most out of Gmail with tutorials delivered right to your Gmail inbox. The tips come in weekly doses, to nurture and amuse without overwhelming stomach or attention span.
If they know something about Gmail that you don't know, their advantage will be short-lived, because here are the 10 Gmail tips and techniques most frequently requested. If you have a Gmail account, get the most out of it.
Send a message from Gmail to multiple recipients (or copy yourself) while hiding some or all of the email addresses from the prying eyes of the other addressees.
Gmail lets you open many types of attachments right in your browser, without the need for a download or a special viewer.
Want to hear when new mail arrives in your Gmail account? Want to hear something special? Here's how to specify the sound to play when new Gmail messages come in.
Refresh your Gmail Inbox and see whether new mail has arrived by pressing no more than one key.
You don't have to know the labels you will want to have in Gmail before you want to have them. Here's how to create new labels on the fly.
Is "10/15/04" not precise enough and "12:43" lacking the date? Here's how to see the full and exact date of a message in Gmail.
If you can track all the news of the world in your RSS feed reader, why not also your Gmail Inbox? There's even a way to watch and get notified about the new messages arriving in particular labels.
The index and the middle finger can take you through your Gmail messages with astonishing speed and quickness.
Make sure the girl on the next table sharing the public WIFI connection cannot read your emails. Gmail can even enforce such secure connections so you're safe by default.
Want to take Gmail on a flight and through a tunnel or eliminate the distraction incoming emails are? With Gmail offline, you can read and compose messages while disconnected and have Gmail sync automatically when you're back on.
You take your Gmail with you in your phone, and you've brought your to-do list to Gmail. Here's how to access these tasks on your phone — or as a stand-alone web page in your browser.
Windows Live Hotmail Plus Gmail: access messages arriving at your Hotmail address in Gmail and send messages using that address right from within Gmail, too.
Send interesting pages you find on the web via Gmail with unprecedented speed and ease not previously experienced.
Decide on how you want to be seen and upload a picture to Gmail, which others will see when they get mail from you or when you chat with them.
Identify people by image, not by email address. Here's how to make Gmail display pictures (you get to choose which) when you position the mouse over a name or address.
If you just send an email in Gmail, you can add an event to your Google Calendar and invite all recipients of the message to it at the same time and automatically, too.
POPFile can automatically label your incoming Gmail messages — learning from your example whenever you apply a label manually.
Are you getting nothing but jokes you did not ask for and amazing stories you don't read from a particular sender? Here's how to block them in Gmail and have all their mail sent right to the "Trash" folder, or at least out of the way for later review.
Create a shortcut to composing new emails with Gmail in your browser.
Create shortcuts to the Gmail labels, searches or messages you visit most often in your browser.
Conquer your inbox, your tasks, yourself and the rest in single, simple steps. Here's how to create sub-tasks to tasks (and sub-sub-tasks) in Gmail Tasks.
Make your fine print small and your birthday greetings colorful: here's how to change the font face, its size and color as well as choose a background color for highlighting in Gmail.
You already know that Gmail beats all other email providers with its endless customization capabilities, Google product integration and fantastic spam filter. Take it to the next level with these Gmail power user tips and Greasemonkey extensions for Firefox. We haven’t forgotten the Mac users, either. For more great resources, check out the official Gmail blog and the Gmail Power Users group on Google Groups. If you'd like to learn more about other email programs, check out the email category at the web directory.
1. Master the Gmail keyboard shortcuts
If you haven’t already, master the shortcut keys. Compose, mark as read, archive and much more with the press of a button. Sure, you know c for compose and ! for report spam, but do you know g + t for the sent mail folder? You can find a complete list at the official Gmail shortcut page.
2. Google Code Macros
The Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, familiar to many power users, allows JavaScript functionality on any web page. Piggybacking off of this capability, the generically-named Macros script enables a number of keyboard shortcuts. Google apparently integrated some of Macros shortcuts when revamping Gmail, but there are still functions that the Macros programmers believe Gmail needs. “I firmly believe this is *the* essential Gmail trick to end all Gmail tricks,” writes David Chartier at DownloadSquad.
3. Create bookmarklets for frequent searches
This form created by Steve Rubel generates a bookmarklet for searches in Gmail. (By the way, a bookmarklet is a baby bookmark that acts a single click tool for a webpage or browser—thanks, Wikipedia). Take Rubel’s form further by dragging the bookmarklets to your bookmarks bar.
4. Resize your compose box
The aptly-named Resizeable Textarea Firefox extension allows you to click and drag the edge of your compose box without resizing your browser window. Note that any browser built with the newest Opensource.org webkit—Safari, for example—will already have this capability. For more browser info, check out the internet software category.
5. View unread messages first
Search on the string “label:unread label:inbox” to force all of your unread messages to the top of the list, writes Matt Cutts. (Note: you don’t have to create any labels for this to work.) Try bookmarking Cutts’s search and dragging it to your bookmarks bar to view all unread messages first.
6. Streamline adding attachments
Wouldn’t it be great if you could drop attachments directly into the attachment box? Check out the Firefox extension Dragdropupload if you are running Firefox 2.0 (as of this writing, it hadn’t been updated for 2.0.0.12).
7. Quickly switch between Google accounts
If you have multiple Google accounts—a Gmail with Google Apps account and a regular Gmail account, for example—streamline them with this script for Firefox with Greasemonkey. The script adds a “change user” drop-down bar in place of the “sign out” link.
You can also try Gmail Manager (also a Firefox extension), which adds a Gmail menu bar to the Firefox window. Juggle multiple accounts, sign in and out.
8. Bookmark a single email
As of November 2007, all Gmail messages have dedicated URLs (according to the official Gmail blog). Rather than killing a tree by printing the message or laboriously copying down the info, you can CTRL-D (or ?-D) an important email and refer to it at your leisure.
9. Automate frequently repeated text
Signature functionality is built into Gmail, but frequently typed phrases can be automated with Firefox extension Signature, which allows you to insert designated text with a keystroke. (As of this writing, Signature is not yet compliant with Firefox 2.0.0.12.) Also try a Windows app called AutoHotKey or Mac app TypeIt4Me. Both apps allow you to create keystrokes to automate text in virtually any application.
10. POP3 & IMAP forwarding
“I recommend using IMAP (where the mail is both on the server and on your local machine(s)/device(s)) and uploading all your email onto Gmail,” writes Mark Wheeler, a Gmail power user. “You can keep copies on the Google servers and your desktop/laptop/phone so that they are all efficiently accessible and available anytime anywhere. Don't have to worry about backups, or disk space...I have 25,000 emails and have only used 9% of my space!”
To upload old email like my friend did, set up a Gmail IMAP account in your desktop email client. In the client, establish folders that correspond to your Gmail labels, and drag and drop your non-Gmail into the folders. If you're using Outlook with .PST format or Outlook Express, you will have to convert or export the emails to mBox data file format before the messages will translate. The process may take some time, and your client may hang. Also, the original dates and times attached to the messages will appear in Gmail as the dates and times that the messages were imported into Gmail. But it's worth the trouble to utilize your tricked-out Gmail, right? Click here for a tutorial from My Digital Life.
11. Mute a conversation
Ever found yourself subscribed to a mailing list and the current conversation has nothing to do with you? If you don’t want to unsubscribe, you can easily stop the friendly spam with the Gmail mute function. Select a message in the thread and hit the m key to auto-archive all incoming messages in the conversation. The thread will stay muted until you unmute it; it will also un-mute itself if your address appears in the To or CC box.
12. Get it all in one place
Gmail’s built-in Mail Fetcher allows you to receive and send from up to five different accounts via POP3. Unlike a simple forwarding feature, Mail Fetcher allows synchronizing of your Gmail actions with the home server. Go to your Gmail Settings ? Accounts, then Add another mail account. One caveat of sending from non-Gmail accounts: the recipients may see FROM you@Gmail.com on behalf of you@otherdomain.com, especially if the recipients are using a client like Outlook.Archiving
Gmails best function (according to me) is definitely the Archiving feature. This allows you to mark a Email-message, as "not important enough to keep in the inbox, but not unimportant enough to delete", which just keeps a copy of your mail, but not in the inbox. That way you can keep a clean inbox, without losing any data. (When search, archived mail is automatically searched as well)Searching
The search-function of Gmail, is its strongest side to-date. The search function easily and quickly searches through several gigabytes of emails in a matter of microseconds. When using it together with some of its more special features, you can easily find almost any email ever sent or received, based on the few things you remember about it.Special Things
| from:me | # Mail is sent by you |
| has:attachment | # The message has one or more attachments |
| after: | # The email was recieved/sent sometime after the specified date |
| before: | # The email was recieved/sent before the specified date |
- to:
- from:
- subject:
- in:inbox
- is:starred
- has:attachment
- before:
- after:
Any search-tag can be negated by the use of a "-" before the searchtag.
Labels
Gmail has decided against using conventional folders, and instead uses "Labels", also known by the public as "tags". This means that you can assign a message several labels, and use any (or many) labels in the search to find these messages.One neat way to use this, is to have a label for work-related mail, another for account information (login-information, and account-registrations), and another for an interest organization, for example...
Then you can search for "label:work label:account" to find any work-related account-emails.
IMAP
Filters
When you start to receive large amount of mails, filters are your friend. You can use filters to automatically assign labels, forward, archive, star, remove, or mark emails as spam. If you are part of some email-based newsgroup, you can set up a filter that automatically assigns those emails an label for that newsgroup, If you're forwarding emails from another email-account, you can create a filter so that those mails get a label for that... You can create a filter that automatically deletes mails that comes from your ex-girl/boyfriend... With filters you can automate a lot of your otherwise manual labor.Second Email-address, and more
Gmail has support for acting as another email-account. As long as you have POP-access to the account, you can manage that email-account through Gmail. That works by Gmail fetches you'r emails via POP from that account, presents it to you in the Gmail interface.And you can also configure your gmail account to send emails, posing as your other email account. (But first you must via Gmail send that account an confirmation code, that you must give back to Gmail).
You configure this in the Settings menu, accounts-tab.
Gmail help about Accounts.
Security
Gmail has the support for using SSL-connections (and even enforces it, at some times) which means that you are safe against man-in-the-middle-attacks (These are web-attacks where someone in the way between you and Gmail, that has the possibility to listen to you traffic) by encrypting the connection between your browser and Gmail.SSL-connections are enforced when logging in via the web-interface, and whenever you are accessing Gmail via POP/IMAP/SMTP. However after you've logged in, you might be bounced back into a standard HTTP-connection (NON-SSL). If you go to gmail with a https-address then you will use an SSL-connection the enitre time, and will be secure from man-in-the-middle-attacks.
Now Gmail offers an option to force the use of SSL connection all through the web-interface session. This is selected in the settings, menu, general-tab. Near the bottom.
(thanks to Aksha Kini for pointing out that I had missed this feature)
Third-party clients
Gmail has support for using third-party clients to access your email via POP/IMAP/SMTP over SSL-connections. This feature allows you to use any email-client of your choice. For example, if you are not a fan of the conversation-threading in Gmail, or you want to sort your emails, you need to use a third-party application.IMAP
Google help about IMAP.
POP
Google help about POP.
Other Settings
Vacation Message
The vacation-period will reset if you disable/enable the vacation-message, or change subject or body of the vacation-message.
Gmail Help -- About Vacation Message
Signature
According to General Netiquette Rules signatures shall start with double-dash and a space, and a carriage return ("-- ↵"), and should not contain more than 4 lines.
You can set your signature in the Settings-menu, under the General Tab.
Gmail Help -- About signatures
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