Here's a tip inspired by a question from Ethan Lipman, an active Gmail Chat user. He wants to be able to search his Gmail messages for key words, but the Search Results often return hits from his Chat session logs. Read on to find out how to simply exclude Chat session logs from your Search Results….

The solution turns out to be really simple, but not necessarily obvious. It appears that all Gmail Chat session logs are simply standard messages Labeled with a hidden Label of "Chat". So this means that many functions you use on Labels should work.

So, to exclude all Chat session logs from your Search Results, add the following text to your search string:

 -label:Chat

Likewise, if you wanted to include words found ONLY in Chat session logs, just add the following to your search string:

 +label:Chat

…making sure that it is the only "label:" string (unless you also want to include other Labels.)

Thanks to Ethan Lipman for the question!

Gmail Tips, Gmail Tips - The Complete Collection find, Gmail

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{josquote}New feature!{/josquote}Deleting Spam and emptying Trash in Gmail just got a whole lot easier! Instead of being limited to deleting just a page-at-a-time, Gmail now lets you select all Spam and Trash conversations for deletion in one simple step. Read on to see some screenshots of the new features…

One of the great annoyances of managing Gmail has been in dealing with Spam and Trash. When you had  more than screenful of messages, clicking "select all" would only select all messages on the current screen. Deleting numerous messages could mean navigating multiple screens just to select and delete.

The Trash view now displays the message "Empty Trash now (messages that have been in Trash more than 30 days will be automatically deleted)"  Here's a screenshot:

{mosimage} 

When you click on the "Empty Trash now" link, Gmail will display a confirmation prompt displaying the number of conversations it will delete. Click "OK" to delete, or "Cancel" to not delete.

For Spam, the Spam view now displays the message "Delete all spam messages now (messages that have been in Spam more than 30 days will be automatically deleted)" Here's a screenshot:

 {mosimage}

Clicking on the "Delete all spam messages now" link displays a confirmation prompt displaying the number of conversations in Spam to delete. Click "OK" to delete, or "Cancel" to not delete.

Yet another example of Google refining Gmail's capabilities.

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At this time, Google Notebook only lets you print out entire Notebooks, not selected Notes. This can become very frustrating, especially if a Notebook contains a LOT of notes, and you only want to print one of them. So until Google adds a "Print selected notes" function, I have a workaround for this that's a bit of a kludge, but it works. Read on for details…

Open the Notebook that contains the note you want to print.

Next, click the "Actions…" dropdown and select "Print notebook". This will open another window or tab containing a formatted page of the entire Notebook and will open the Print dialog. Printing this, of course, will print the entire notebook and that is what we don't want, so…

Dismiss the Print dialog box by clicking the Cancel button, and navigate to the note you want to print.

Using your mouse, click on the beginning of the note, and hold the mouse button down. Drag the mouse cursor to the end of the note or notes you want to print. Release the mouse button, and you should now have a selected section of text and/or images.

Next, click "File" on your menu bar and select "Print…" from the menu. This opens the Print dialog again. Note: If you are using Internet Explorer, do not just click the print icon on your browser's toolbar–you must open the Print dialog!

Finally, click the "Selection" radio button, and then click the OK button.

Only the text you selected should print!

Google Notebook Tips browser, Google, Google Notebook

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Once you have learned to select one or more notes, you can perform several actions. Read on to see what special actions Google Notebook provides…

Once you have selected one or more notes, click the "Actions…" dropdown on the right side of the Google Notes screen. There are currently two actions you can perform on selected notes:

Show note details

This simply displays an additional line under each note title that displays the date that the note was created, and if the note has been changed, it displays the date it was last edited.

Delete selected item

This will delete all selected notes. Google Notebook will prompt you to confirm your deletion just in case.

That's it for the "Actions" at this time. I'll update this if Google adds additional actions.

Google Notebook Tips case, Google, Google Notebook

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Using standard selection methods, you can select multiple notes to Drag & Drop and to perform other "Actions". Holding down the [Ctrl] key will let you select multiple notes. Holding down the [Shift] key will let you select a range of notes. Read on for some examples…

Create Some Test Notes

First off, create a notebook with several notes. They can be Web clippings, or just simple random text. The idea here is to provide a few notes to play with. If your notes are lengthy, consider "collapsing" them–this just makes them easier to work with.

Selecting a single note

When you hover your mouse over a note, you should notice that it gets highlighted in a pale grey background, and on the left edge of the note, a grey selector bar appears. Click on the grey bar, and notice that it gets outlined in blue. This means that the note is "selected". When a note is selected, you can perform various actions on the selected note using the "Actions…" dropdown on the right. Example actions include Drag & Drop, Delete, and Show Details.

Selecting Multiple Notes

Hold down the [Ctrl] key, and click on another note. Now, continue holding down the [Ctrl] key, and click on various notes in no particular order. As you click, notice that each note will highlight and remain highlighted.

Release the [Ctrl] key and the notes you selected will remain highlighted. Clicking on any note's selector bar while the [Ctrl] key is not pressed will un-highlight all other notes and highlight just the note you clicked on.

Selecting A Range Of Notes

First, click on any note's selector bar. The note will highlight. Next, click on any other note's selector bar, and notice that both notes, and all notes listed in between the selected notes, are highlighted. This is a quick way for selecting, for example, all of your notes at once. Because you cannot user the [Ctrl]+[A] to select all, you can just select the first note in the list, scroll to the bottom of the list, hold down the [Shift] key, and select the last note in the list. All notes in between are now selected!

Now that you know how to select single and multiple notes, you can move on to performing various "actions" on the selected notes. More on that in another tip…

Mac users: I don't own or have access to a Mac, so I don't know the key combinations to make selections, but this should be pretty basic for Mac users. If you are a Mac user, contact me with proper selection methods, and I'll update this tip.

Google Notebook Tips Google, Google Notebook

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OK, so you have captured a number of notes, but you really don't like how they are organized. Google provides a very simple way to move your notes around letting you organize them as you prefer. Read on for details…

Google lets you Drag & Drop your notes both within and between notebooks. This gives you great flexibility to organize your notes in whatever order that best suits your needs.

Moving Notes Within A Notebook

To move notes within a notebook, you must first be logged into your Google Notebook Web page in a Web Browesr. At this time, this will not work while managing notes from within a browser extension–you must be browsing your Google Notebook page.

Next, hover your mouse over any note (collapsed or expanded) and notice that the left margin of the note turns into a grey selector bar. This helps you visually identify which note is "active". Hover your mouse over this grey area, you should see the mouse pointer change to four arrows indicating that you can drag the note.

Click on the grey area to "grab" the note, and drag it up or down holding the mouse button down. If you have more than one note in your notebook, Google Notes displays a horizontal blue line in the notebook indicating where the note will be placed when dropped. When the note is positioned where you want it, release the mouse button, and the note will be moved to its new location.

If you have Section Headings defined, you can also Drag & Drop Notes from Section to Section, and you can Drag & Drop Sections within a Notebook to reorder them! (Note that a Section Heading must be expanded for you to drop notes into it.)

Moving Notes Between Notebooks

You can also move notes from one notebook to another. Simply follow the steps above to grab the note, but this time, drag it over one of the notebooks listed in the left column. The notebook name will highlight. Dropping the note on the notebook will move it into that notebook and remove it from the current notebook. (Note that at this time, Google Notebook does not have a "copy" function–you can only "move" notes.)

Open the other notebook, and you should see the note you moved into it. If you have multiple notes in the notebook, you can then Drag & Drop the note to your desired position in the notebook as described above.

If you have Section Headings defined, you can also Drag & Drop entire Sections from one Notebook to another!

Google Notebook Tips browser, Google, Google Notebook

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Google Notebook provides a nice feature that lets you better organize your notes: Section Headings. These are definable, collapsible, and movable making organizing a snap. Read on for details…

Open any Notebook, and then click the "Actions…" dropdown on the right of the screen. Select the "Add section heading" option. This displays a green Section Heading bar across the Notes pane with a Title field open for you to edit. Enter the name you want to give the Section Heading, and click the OK button. You can create notes within a section, or move notes into or out of a section. Section headings can also be moved within a notebook to reorder them, or moved from one notebook to another. I'll be posting a tip detailing how to move notes and sections.

You can also rename a Section Heading's title. Hover over the Section Heading with your mouse, and you will notice that a "Rename" option appears on the right side. Click on that, and the Section Heading title opens for you to edit.

You can also delete any Section Heading. Again, hover over the Section Heading with your mouse, and notice that a "Delete" option appears on the right. Click on that, and a Dialog box will appear confirming the deletion. Note that deleting a Section Heading will also delete all of the notes contained under that Section Heading. This operation cannot be undone.

One feature I would love added to Google Notebook is more than one level of Section Headings. This would give us the ability to create collapsible outlines. Currently however, we only have one level of Section Heading to work with.

So play around with Section Headings to better organize and categorize your notes!

Google Notebook Tips Google, Google Notebook

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This tip is a very simple one: If your notes are lengthy, consider "collapsing" them by clicking the small triangle next to the note's title. This toggles the note "open" (displaying the fill notes contents) and "closed" (just the title and note summary displays.) It makes for a nice, neat, organized view…and Google Notes remembers the settings! It works for Section Headings too!

Google Notebook Tips Google, Google Notebook

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