8 Gmail Tips and Tricks

So, you’ve heard that Gmail is all the rage these days and you want to jump on the bandwagon. Good for you, this is actually a great bandwagon to latch on to. Gmail isn’t some flash in the pan trend like Paris Hilton’s jail time or a pro sports team’s winning streak. Gmail is one of the best (if not the best) free email clients available today. There’s no reason not to have a Gmail account. I have several: one for personal, one for business, and others with random uses.

It’s not hard to get started with Gmail, all you need to do is click here and sign up for a Google account (The great thing is, that once you have a Google account, you have access to everything Google has to offer. Which is a lot). If you spend a lot of time on the internets, there’s no reason not to sign up for a Google account. Besides, it’s FREE! Who doesn’t love free stuff?

Now that you’ve got your free Gmail account, with over 2,000 gigs of storage space (and growing by the second), you’re probably itching to get your hands dirty. What I have here isn’t a general FAQs list, for that you should check out Google’s own Help page. These are just some helpful tidbits I’ve found and compiled that may interest you and help make Gmail even more useful.

1. Access Gmail in Outlook or Apple Mail – It’s easy to configure Gmail to work with both Microsoft Outlook and Mac OS X Mail.app. All it takes is a few simple steps, no computer savvy required, and bam! you’re receiving emails in your favorite application just like a pro.

The steps are similar for each application, but instead of taking up space here describing each of them, I’m just going to give you some links. You can handle a bit of clicking, can’t you? Access Gmail in Outlook Express, Outlook 2002/2003, Outlook 2007, and Mail.app.

2. Create and Use Labels – Gmail doesn’t have traditional folders. Instead it has labels. Labels allow you to find messages quickly, and unlike folders, a single message can have multiple labels simultaneously.

You can create a bunch of labels first, and then add them to messages, but I find it’s actually easier to label messages on the fly. To do this: Check the message (or multiple messages) in the message list, click the More Actions drop down, select New Label, enter a name for your label and click OK.

To open a label and find your message, expand the green Labels box on the left side, then click whatever label you want. It will bring up a list (like your Inbox) of all messages attatched to that label.

3. Add a Picture to your Gmail Profile – You can add a face to your name (if you want) by displaying an image in your profile. This will allow other Gmail users to recognize your handsome mug (if you have a scary mug, perhaps this isn’t for you) whenever they get an email from you or chat with you.

Go to the Settings menu, click on My Picture, browse for and upload the desired image, choose the size and crop, save the changes, and viola! You now have a picture to go along with your email address. Amazing, huh?

4. Chat with Friends Using Gmail – In the previous tip I mentioned chatting. Yep, Gmail isn’t only for sending emails. If you know someone else who has Gmail you can chat with them just like an IM client. You can even set “away” messages!

You can check if a contact is online by looking in the Quick Contacts box on the left. If they are (they’ll have a green dot next to their name), click on the name and a chat box will open in the Gmail window. Type a message, press enter, and gossip away!

5. Find All Unread Messages – If you’re like me, your Gmail Inbox and Archives may get cluttered and unweidly from time to time. What if you want to quickly find any unread messages you may have? It’s a pain in the butt to click through page after page. Luckily for you, there is a solution.

To find any unread messages, all you have to do is run a search for label:unread and it will return any messages you haven’t read for some reason (perhaps you forgot, or perhaps you didn’t much want to read about Aunt Edna’s latest mystery ailment). Incidentally, Gmail treats “unread” as a label, so you can replace it with the name of a label to find any labeled messages you want.

6. Set Up an Auto Response Message – You’ve seen it in Outlook, you’ve received them at work; yes, the auto response feature is alive and well in Gmail! Gmail allows you to set up a message to automatically reply to anyone who sends you an email. Great if you’re leaving for a vacation or feel like taking a break from the wonderful world of online communication for a few days.

It’s easy to set up a “vacation responder.” Go to Settings and scroll down to Vacation Responder, click Vacation Responder on and type in your message. Make it as vague, descriptive, or snarky as you want. It’s your message! Just remember to go back into Settings to turn it off when you’ve returned.

7. Print an Individual Message (not the whole conversation) – Gmail has a great feature called “conversations.” Basically, conversations are messages grouped together by original recipient or sender, so it keeps all related messages in one thread. Makes things easy to find.

Sometimes you might want to print a single message out of the whole conversation. You can do this. Open the message you want to print, click the little “down” arrow on the top right corner of the message, click Print and a new page will come up with only that message. Print this page.

If there is quoted material you want to print, you’ll have to print the original message, or print all of the messages in the thread, because Gmail doesn’t print quoted messages. That’s just not how they roll.

8. Set up an Address Book – You can’t set up an address book in Gmail, it’s impossible. This is because in Gmail “address books” are called Groups (ba dum ching!). Groups allow you to send a message to multiple people without typing in individual names, and creating one is easy. Go to Contacts on the left side, click Create Group, enter a name and any contacts you want to include (Gmail will automatically fill in contacts you already have, but you can manually add any email address you want), click Create Group to finish, and you’re done.

Now to send an email to your newly created group, you can click the Compose To Group button in the Group window, or you can compose a new message and type the name of the group in the To: field, press tab, and your group is automatically added.

As you can see, Gmail has many useful features.  I don’t use some of these (I decided to create the post while searching for more information on labels), but I will definitely start.  I have a Mac and I have my Gmail account linked to Mail which works beautifully (both sending and receiving), so I would encourage you to hook that up also.

For more Gmail “how to’s,” check out About.com’s Gmail Tips, Tricks, and Secrets.