Tag Archive: Gmail

Oct
05

Gmail Tip #33: Auto-forward received Gmail!

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October 5, 2004

Want to use your Gmail account as your main email account but have some or all email auto-forwarded to other email accounts? Well, now you can! Read on for more details…

Gmail has added tha ability to forward received emails in two ways: “All” or “Selective”

“ALL” FORWARDING
This is a “global” setting that lets you optionally forward all received email to another email address. Click on the “Settings” link, and click on the new “Forwarding” tab. In there, you have the option do Disable or Enable email forwarding. Click on Enable, enter the email address to which you want to forward, and then select one of the following self-explanatory actions from the associated dropdown:
-keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox
-archive Gmail’s copy
-trash Gmail’s copy

This setting will forward all received email to another email address and take the appropriate action on the received email.

“SELECTIVE” FORWARDING
Filters have also been enhanced with a new “Forward it to: emailaddress” action letting you selectivly forward emails based on filter criteria. You can use the same or different email addresss for each filter if you choose providing very powerful email management. For example, I may get statement notifications from a bank and want to auto-copy it to my wife. I just set up a filter to select emails with the bank’s sending email address and then select the “Forward it to:” action and enter my wife’s email address. Now, she’ll get notified also!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-33-auto-forward-received-gmail

Oct
04

Gmail Tip #32: Drafts!

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October 4, 2004

Gmail now has the capability to save “Drafts” of your messages! This is a long-awaited feature that seems to have slipped in under the radar. Read on for more details…

If you are in the middle of composing a message, but want to finish it later, just click on the “Save Draft” button now located between the “Send” and “Discard” buttons. This droops the message in a new view located on the left side called “Drafts” located under the “Sent Mail” link and above the “All Mail” link. Later, you can just click on the message, complete it, and then click “Send” normally.

Yet another example of Gmail providing what the users need!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-32-drafts

Oct
04

Gmail Tip #31: Improved and New Contacts Features!

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October 4, 2004

The “Contacts” function has been enhanced to provide some additional functionality, and now adopts the familiar Gmail interface. Read on for the details…

Gmail now displays a “Contacts” link in the left column under the “standard views” (Inbox, Starred, etc.) and just above the Labels. Clicking on the link brings up a nicely formatted display that matches the style of the rest og GMail. It displays the contact name, email address, Note, and any additional information (see below). At the top are two “tabs” that display “Frequently Mailed” and “All Contacts”. I don’t know what the criteria for “Frequently Mailed” is, but it does contain the most-used contacts.

Here are some new or expanded features:

RECENT CONVERSATIONS
Clicking on a contact displays the contact information as well as “Recent Conversations” associated with that contact. Clicking on one of these entries opens it normally with all options available. Very nice.

ADD MORE CONTACT INFO
Clicking on “Edit” allows you to update the basic contact information (Names, Email Address, Note). But there’s a new link: “Add More Contact Info” which lets you add additional “Sections” of information. For example, by default there are “Personal” and “Work” sections defined. Each section contains a Section Name field, Two user-selectable “fields” and an “Address” block. Each User Field has a drop-down label containing the following selectable labels: Phone, Mobile, FAX, Pager, Email, IM, Company, Title, Other. You can also add additional fields as needed.

SEARCH CONTACTS
Near the top of the Contacts screen is a Search field and a “Search Contacts” button. Entering text into this field and clicking the button returns all contacts that BEGINS WITH the text. This is important to know because it will search ALL contact fields (even the :extended fields) for words beginning with the entered text. For example, entering “Ste” would return “Stephanie”, “Steve”, and “Stewart” but entering “phani” would not return “Stephanie”. Obviously, it would be nice to have extended search capabilities, but this is an excellent start!

ADD CONTACTS
Clicking on the “Add Contact” link lets you enter the standard “Basic” information, and clicking the “Add More Contact Info” link opens the extended information screen as descrived above.

IMPORT CONTACTS
The “Import Contacts” links is still there letting you import contacts from a CSV file. According to the documentation, “other” information gets imported into a Notes field. There is no mention of importing into the new “extended” fields.

BETTER INTERFACE
What really makes this shine is the fact that it now uses the same interface as the rest of Gmail giving it some better consistency. That has always been one of Gmail’s strengths: a slick, clean, non-cluttered, fast interface. The added Contacts handling keeps with that philosophy.

So there you have it: some improved Contacts functionality!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-31-improved-and-new-contacts-features

Sep
09

Gmail Tip #30: Removing a Label

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September 9, 2004

I just stumbled on this one. (Sometimes during a Beta period, you have to “find” new features yourself!) In the past, when you wanted to remove a Label from one or more messages, you would have to click on the desired Label on the left of the screen, select the message, and then click on the “Remove Label” button. Well, The process has been significantly simplified! Read on for details…

While viewing a message, click on the “More Actions” dropdown, scroll to the bottom of the list, and select the desired Label to remove. Voila…the Label is removed!

If you are viewing a list of messages (say, in your inbox or in a Label view, click the checkboxes of the Labeled messages, click on the “More Actions” dropdown, scroll to the bottom of the list, and select the desired Label to remove. Again, the Label is removed!

Don’t forget that if the message has been Archived and you remove all Labels, it will be visible only in the “All Mail” view.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-30-removing-a-label

Aug
20

Gmail Tip #29: A Small Quirk With Gmail Notifys mailto: Handler

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August 20, 2004

Read on to better understand a small idiosyncracy with Gmail’s Gmail Notifier application…

One cool feature of Gmail Notifier is that it can be configured to act as the default “mailto:” handler. When set up to do this. Gmail Notifier will open a Compose Window in a new browser window with the email address auto-filled in.

Just be aware that unless you check the “keep me logged in for two weeks” checkbox on the login screen, you will have to log in every time…even if you are already logged into Gmail in another browser window.

While it can be a bit cumbersom, it’s certainly worth the new features!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-29-a-small-quirk-with-gmail-notifys-mailto-handler

Aug
20

Gmail Tip #28: Gmail Notifier released to beta!

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August 20, 2004

Those crazy yet wonderful Gmail Developers have once again brought us a new toy: Gmail Notifier! Read on to see what it is, what it can do, and how you can get it…

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

You can also have it be the default “mailto:” handler so that when you click on an email address on a Web page, Gmail Notify will open a Compose Window.

You can even define a sound to play when new mail arrives!

To download, go here:
http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/

For FAQ’s, go here:
http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/faq.html

Have fun!!!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-28-gmail-notifier-released-to-beta

Jul
21

Gmail Tip #27: Adding Hotmail Contacts to Gmail

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July 21, 2004

Do you have a lot of Hotmail contacts that you would like to add to your Gmail Contacts? “Montevino” submitted this tip on how to do just that. Read on to see how simple it is…

By leveraging Gmail’s new “Import Contacts” (see Gmail Tip #24), you can easily generate an importable file from your Hotmail Contacts.

Just set up Outlook Express to access your Hotmail account (by creating a new account, making it HTML, not POP3, and giving your Hotmail account name and password.) Then, open Windows Address Book, and synchronize. Address Book finds and auto-ads your Hotmail contacts. You can then easily output your addresses to a *.CSV file, which can then be imported into Gmail.

Thanks, “Montevino” for the tip! His home page can be found at www.livejournal.com/users/montevino.

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-27-adding-hotmail-contacts-to-gmail

Jul
20

Gmail Tip #26: Creating a Pseudo Address Group!

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July 20, 2004

Gmail currently does not provide the facility to send emails to a Group or a List or email addresses. But thanks to an excellent tip submitted by “arianj”, we now have a very doable workaround! Read on to see how to set up a pseudo Group Contact…

Although Gmail doesn’t currently support Groups in your Contacts, you can simulate a Group list by doing the following:

1. Create a new Contact

2. In the “Name” field, enter the name of your Group (eg “My Friends”)

3. In the “E-mail” field, enter your list of email addresses in the following format:

friend1@gmail.com>,<friend2@blah.com>,<friend3@foo.com

Note three things:

1. You must enter “>,<” (without the quotes) between all addresses

2. Be sure NOT to include a leading “<" or trainling ">“. This is intentional, because during auto-complete, Gmail adds these characters to the beginning and end of the full string that is in the e-mail field.

3. Also, there should be no spaces in the string.

Again, thanks to “arianj” for submitting this tip!

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-26-creating-a-pseudo-address-group

Jul
19

Gmail Tip #25: Find Your Unread Messages

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July 19, 2004

Want a quick and easy way to view all of your "Unread" messages? Here’s a neat tip submitted by Mark Worsham describing how…

If you have assigned Labels and archived unread messages, finding them later can sometines be challenging. Simply create a Gmail Label named "Unread", and you will see all of your unread mail in that folder. Though there are other ways to display unread messages, the nice thing about this method is that it displays the number of unread messages right in the Label list.
Thanks Mark for the tip!
 
Important Update: This no longer works.  A while back, Gmail made the "Unread" label a reserved label, so you cannot create it rendering this tip inoperative.
 
But a simple workaround is to do this: In the search box at the top, enter the following Advanced Search string:
 
is:unread
 
This will return a list of all unread messages.
 
 

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-25-find-your-unread-messages

Jul
16

Gmail Tip #24: New feature! Import Contacts

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July 16, 2004

Once again, the hard working Gmail Developers have implemented yet another much-requested feature: Import Contacts! Read on for more details…

For the best explanation of just how to Import Contacts, log into your Gmail account, click on Contacts, and click on the new “Import Contacts” link at the top of the Contacts screen.

But what can you import and how do you import? Gmail will let you import address books into Contacts from Yahoo!, Orkut, Outlook, and pretty much any other service by uploading CSV (Comma Separated Value) files to your Gmail account. You can even manually edit and create CVS files for importing using Microsoft Excel.

Just remember that currently, Gmail’s Contacts fields are limited to just “Name”, “Email Address”, and “Notes”. According to the Help screen, all other fields will be imported into the Notes field.

Gmail’s COntacts aren’t sophistocated, but now that you can Import, they certainly are more useful!

One small side note: On the Import Contacts Help page, it reads, “Because Gmail does not offer group or distribution list functionality at this time, this information won’t be transferred from other address books into your Gmail Contacts list.” The key words to me are “at this time”…not sure if this implies these functions will be incorporated or not, but we can dream…

Permanent link to this article: http://jimstips.com/gmail-tips/gmail-tip-24-new-feature-import-contacts

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