How to export contacts from gmail

How to export contacts from Gmail

In this tutorial, you will learn how to export contacts from Gmail.

Exporting contacts from Gmail is easy. You can export in several different formats, and can even choose to export only certain groups of contacts.

Go to Contacts.

Then click Export.

First, tell Gmail who you want to export. My Contacts contains only those contacts you have added, while All Contacts contains everyone you have ever been in touch with using your Gmail account.

We’ll choose a specific group.

Then, select a format for the export file to be in.

Finally, click Export.

After a moment, a download box should appear. Click OK to save the file to your disk.

That’s it! You’ve successfully exported your contacts from Gmail. Now you just need to import the file into your favorite mail client.

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to export contacts from Gmail.

How to import contacts into gmail

How to import contacts into Gmail

This tutorial will show you how to import contacts from other mail clients into Gmail.

Before you begin, you’ll need a contact list that you exported from your old mail client in CSV or vCard format.

To import the file, go to Contacts.

Click Import.

Use the Browse… button to find your file.

When you’ve found the correct file, double-click to select it.

If you would like for these imported contacts to be added to a group, click this checkbox…

…then choose the group from the list.

To finish, click Import.

That’s it! The four contacts have been imported successfully.

Click OK to return to your contacts.

Here are the four new contacts. They’ve also been added to our Internet Friends group.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to import contacts into Gmail.

How to use gmail’s chat feature

How to use Gmail’s chat feature

As with most online email services, Gmail provides you with instant messaging capabilities. Gmail Chat works inside your browser, while GoogleTalk is a program that you can install on your computer.

Both of these allow you to communicate with your Gmail friends, and both have their advantages. In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to use Gmail Chat.

Scroll down.

Here is the chat area of Gmail. It’s visible on the left column of every page.

As these two notes tell you, text chats are saved and searchable just like with email conversations, and you can even have a video chat with a friend.

Click each X to close the notes.

In the Options menu, you can sign in and out of chat and choose who shows up in your chat list, among other things.

Your name is first in the chat list. From here, you can change your status, set your availability, etc.

Click this arrow for more options.

Let’s set our status to Busy.

We’ll change that back to Available.

With this box, you can search through and find contacts to add or invite to chat.

When you start typing, entries from your Contacts list should appear. At right, you’re given a number of actions that you can perform on that contact.

Click on a contact’s name to switch the actions menu to that person.

Click anywhere in the background to cancel and close the contacts list.

Let’s chat with Demo User. Click on his name.

A chat window will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Click here, type a chat message, then press Enter to send.

Note that this person is currently offline. Messages you send to an offline contact will be delivered when he/she comes online.

When he logged in, the currently offline message disappeared, and his icon changed from grey to green.

When you receive a response, the title bar of the chat area will be highlighted in orange, as will the user’s name in your chat list.

Let’s respond.

You will be notified when the other person is typing a message.

Click the X to close the chat window. It will reappear if he responds again.

Scroll up.

Go to the Settings area.

Open the Chat tab.

There are a number of chat-related settings here. Most of these, you’ll probably want to leave as the defaults.

One useful feature in Gmail is the ability to sign in to an AIM account. This allows you to use Gmail to chat with your buddies on AIM as well as your Gmail chat contacts.

Click Sign into AIM.

You will need an AIM account in order to log in. If you don’t have one, you can get a screen name via this link.

Enter your login info, then click Sign in.

Or, click Cancel.

If you make any changes on this page, be sure to click Save Changes when you’ve finished.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to use the Chat feature in Gmail.

How to search for messages in gmail

How to search for messages in Gmail

This tutorial will show you the basics of performing a search in Gmail.

Just like with Google searches, search queries in Gmail can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be, so we won’t be able to cover everything.

To start, let’s perform a search for the word definitely, which appears right here in our latest email conversation.

Type your search queries in this text box, located at the top of every page in Gmail.

Then, click the Search Mail button.

Your search results will be displayed below, as if you were viewing your Inbox or some other label’s contents.

You should recognize all of the action buttons at the top and bottom of the results box. These will function exactly as you were shown in the previous tutorials, as will everything else you see.

Now, let’s perform another search. The next word in that email is takes, so we’ll try searching for take.

The new results show up here, but our message isn’t part of the results. This is because Gmail searches are more specific than your typical web search. For example, if you want to find all emails containing the word takes, you must search for takes and not any variations like take in order for it to work.

To finish, we’ll show you how to make an advanced search. Click Show search options.

With these options, you have more control over the search results that are returned. We’ll test out the From field.

Enter a name or email address.

You also have the ability to limit where you want the search to be performed.

Of note is the Mail and Spam and Trash Option. Unless you choose this option, Gmail won’t display search results labelled as Spam or Trash.

We’ll leave ours set to All Mail.

Now, click Search Mail as before.

It worked! The only conversation containing mail from Demo User has shown up.

As this message indicates, even if you don’t choose Mail and Spam and Trash, you’ll still be informed if Gmail finds a match in your Trash. This won’t happen for Spam, though.

This tutorial is now complete. You now know how to perform a search in Gmail.

How to use labels in gmail

How to use labels in Gmail

This tutorial will show you how to use labels in Gmail to organize your email conversations.

If you’ve seen the previous two tutorials, you should know what labels are and how to manage them, and how to manage conversations. If you haven’t watched the previous tutorials, we recommend that you do so before proceeding with this one.

The Move to and Labels submenus in the actions menu, directly below, are the two ways you have to label conversations.

To use either, you must first select at least one conversation.

We’ll start with the Labels submenu. Click this button to activate it.

Here, you can choose one or more of your existing labels to apply to the selected conversation(s). The search box may be useful if you have many labels.

You can also create new labels and go to the label management area using these links.

Let’s label the selected conversation as both Business and Personal.

Click Apply.

This conversation has now been labelled Business and Personal. You can see its labels here, next to its title.

If you watched the first tutorial on Labels, you will have seen how to change a label’s color. Let’s do that again now, to show you its usefulness.

Click here.

Choose a color.

Notice — the color has changed here, too.

Next, let’s see a shortcut method for applying a single label.

Deselect this conversation, and select the two beneath that.

Open Labels.

This time, instead of clicking on the checkbox next to the label, click on its name.

Now, let’s see how Gmail treats a selection wherein not all conversations have the same labels.

Select this conversation.

Instead of showing a checkmark in the box next to each label, a line is displayed to let us know that some but not all of the conversations use this label.

Simply click the box as before to apply a label to all selected conversations…

…and the line becomes a checkmark.

Click Apply.

The Move to feature is similar to the Labels feature, the difference being that Move to will remove the label we are currently viewing (Inbox) from the conversation and replace it with the one we choose.

To demonstrate, let’s select the only conversation that hasn’t been labelled yet. Click None.

Select this conversation.

Open Move to.

As you can see, this has the same basic layout as the Labels submenu. The checkboxes have been removed — you can only move a conversation from one label to one other. We’re also now able to move conversations to Spam and Trash (these weren’t listed under Labels).

We’ll move this conversation to Travel.

Another way to move a conversation is to drag it over to the label in the menu.

Click and drag this conversation over to Personal.

Let go of the mouse once the label is highlighted.

There is one last way to manage a conversation’s labels. Open a conversation.

At the top of the conversation, you can see a list of labels with an X next to each.

Click a label’s X to remove it from this conversation.

If instead you click on the label’s name…

…you’ll be taken to a list of all conversations that share that label.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to use labels in Gmail.

How to manage email conversations in gmail

How to manage email conversations in Gmail

In the previous tutorial, we showed you how to manage labels in Gmail. Before you find out how to actually apply those labels to conversations, you need to learn how to select and manage conversations.

To begin, you should know the different ways to select conversations in Gmail. First, you can select them one by one.

Use their checkboxes to do that.

We are currently viewing the Inbox, so clicking the All or None links will select or deselect all conversations in the Inbox, respectively.

Read and Unread will select only those conversations that have or have not been read.

Starring a conversation allows you to keep track of those you feel to be more important.

Click the greyed out star next to a conversation to star it.

With that done, we can now take advantage of the Starred and Unstarred selection links to select those conversations that have been starred and those that haven’t.

Now that you know how to select conversations, let’s see what we can do with them once they’ve been selected.

Click More actions.

This submenu allows you to perform a number of useful actions.

Let’s mark this conversation as unread.

Notice that it now shows up in bold.

Now, let’s Archive all the Unstarred conversations.

When you archive conversations, they are no longer visible in the Inbox. They haven’t been deleted or moved to the Trash; they’ll still show up everywhere they would normally, just not in the Inbox.

That means our archived messages will always show up under All Mail.

Here they are, in All Mail. Archived conversations can be moved back to the Inbox using this button.

Next, let’s select the same messages, but this time Delete them, thus moving them to the Trash.

As this message informs us, if we move conversations from All Mail to the Trash, they will no longer be visible anywhere but the Trash. All labels previously applied to the conversations will not work unless they are moved back out of the Trash.

Click OK to proceed.

Let’s find the conversations in the Trash.

With this button you can delete specific messages forever, while Empty Trash now allows you to delete every message that currently resides in the Trash.

You should note that messages that have been in Trash more than 30 days will be automatically deleted.

Google recommends you don’t move conversations to the Trash unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t want them in the future; instead, use the Archive feature. With over seven gigabytes of storage available to every Gmail account, you’re more than capable of keeping every single message ever sent or received by your account.

We’ll move these back to the Inbox. First, select each one.

Then, click in this area, hold down the mouse button, and drag the cursor over to the inbox.

You should see a message pop up underneath your cursor indicating how many conversations you’re dragging — in our case, three.

Now let go of the mouse button.

The conversations now reside in the Inbox. Go there now.

You should also know how to report a conversation as spam.

Simply choose one in the list…

…then click Report spam.

Notice that Spam now has one unread message in it.

Spam functions similarly to Trash. You have a Delete forever button plus a Delete all spam messages now link. Messages that have been in Spam for more than 30 days will automatically be deleted — just like with Trash.

If you have incorrectly marked a message as spam, the Not spam button will be of assistance.

Choose the message.

Then click Not spam.

The conversation has been unmarked as spam and moved back to the Inbox.

You should note that all of the management buttons will function exactly the same way when viewing a conversation. Having already selected a conversation by viewing it, the buttons will function right away.

For example… open a conversation.

All of these actions will function using the conversation that is currently open.

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to manage conversations in Gmail. To find out how to put all the knowledge from the past two tutorials together, watch the tutorial that follows.

How to manage labels in gmail

How to manage labels in Gmail

You may be surprised to notice that Gmail doesn’t allow you to create folders to store your emails in. Instead, you have the Labels system.

A conversation can have any number of labels applied to it — not just one, as is usually the case with mail clients that use folders.

By default, Gmail has a number of different Labels that can be applied to your conversations, such as Inbox, Sent Mail, Personal, and Travel. Some of these are System labels, while others are Custom labels.

Each custom label has a box next to its name, providing you with a quick way to edit its properties.

Here, you can add or remove a color to a label, allowing you to identify it at a glance. You can also rename, hide, or delete a custom label.

Click on a color to tell Gmail to use it for this label.

Now, let’s hide this label.

Notice that Personal no longer shows up above Travel.

To find it in the menu, click the link entitled 7 more.

Now you can see all the other labels that have been marked as hidden.

Let’s un-hide the Personal label now.

You can Manage labels or Create a new label using the links at the bottom of this popup menu.

Or, do so by first clicking the Settings link in the top right corner of the page…

…and then going to the Labels tab.

System labels are at the top, and you’ll notice that they cannot be removed. All system labels except for Inbox can be shown or hidden.

Let’s show the Spam label. Click its show link.

Notice that Spam is now visible in the main menu, and that the 6 more link has changed to 5 more.

Scroll down.

Here are the Custom labels. All of these can be shown, hidden, or removed to your liking.

Let’s remove the Travel label by clicking here.

Click OK to confirm.

Note that removing a label will not delete the messages with that label; a message that has no labels will still show up under All Mail.

To rename a custom label, simply hover over its title and click into the text field that appears.

To finish editing the label, click off of it or just press Enter.

The labels will be automatically sorted in alphabetic order.

Next, let’s recreate the Travel label using this form.

Click Create.

We’ll also show the Receipts label.

To finish, let’s scroll up and examine our changes.

As you can see, all of the changes we made on this page took effect immediately.

This tutorial is now complete. You’ve seen how to manage labels in Gmail, but watch the tutorials that follow to find out how to put them to use.

How to view and reply to email conversations in gmail

How to view and reply to email conversations in Gmail

In this tutorial, you will learn a little bit about the unique way Gmail displays your messages.

This tutorial assumes that you are already logged in to Gmail.

Rather than showing a single entry for each individual email, Gmail groups an email together with all replies – sort of like a thread on a forum. This is referred to as a conversation.

As indicated by the (4) aside the first conversation, it contains four messages. The participants in the conversation are listed to the left of that.

To view a conversation, you can click anywhere on its row in the list, except on the controls at left.

Notice that this conversation only contains one message.

Click the Newer link to go to the conversation directly before this one in the Inbox.

The Older link works in a similar fashion.

There are a number of actions that you can perform on this conversation using the buttons directly below; we’ll look at how to use some of these in the tutorials that follow.

Click this link if you want to open the conversation in a New window.

Use this link to Print all messages in the conversation.

Scroll down.

Gmail will collapse all the messages in a conversation that you’ve read before, except for the newest one. Click on a message’s title to expand it.

Or, click Expand all to expand every message in the conversation.

Collapse all reverses that action.

Clicking show details will display some more information about this particular message.

In addition to Reply and Forward, you can also perform a number of actions on a specific email in a conversation.

Click the down arrow button to show these options.

To begin making a reply, you can also click in this textarea…

…and a standard Gmail composition form will appear.

Click Discard if you no longer wish to make a reply.

To return to the Inbox, click the Back to Inbox link.

That’s it! You now know how to view and reply to email conversations in Gmail.

For more information about managing your email messages and conversations, be sure to check out the tutorials that directly follow this one.

How to login to gmail with your Google account

How to log in to Gmail with your Google Account

If you already have a Google Account, you can use it to log in to Gmail.

Use your browser’s location bar to go to gmail.com.

Enter your Username. Putting @gmail.com on the end is not necessary.

Then, enter your Password.

By default, you will be set to Stay signed in. Deactivate this checkbox if you would prefer to be logged out automatically.

To finish, click Sign in.

You have now been logged in to your Google Account and taken to your Gmail inbox.

To Sign out, simply click this link.

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to log in to Gmail using your Google Account.

How to manage your contacts in gmail

How to manage your contacts in Gmail

In this tutorial, you will find out how to manage your Contacts list in Gmail.

It can be found via the Contacts link, over here.

This is your Contacts list. Here, you can add, edit, and remove contacts, and put them into groups. You can also Search through your contacts, Import and Export contacts, and even Print your contacts.

If there is anyone that you’re frequently in touch with that isn’t already in your Contacts, Gmail will suggest that you add them to your Contacts. To see Gmail’s suggestions, click the View Suggestions button, below.

Right now, we only have one contact in our list. Let’s view his information.

Click the contact’s name.

Here you can see all the information we entered for this contact.

To add this contact to a group, use the Groups menu.

Choose from an existing group, or create a new one.

We’ll name our new group Internet Friends.

Click OK to create the group and add this contact.

The new group has appeared here, along with an indicator that there is 1 person in it.

To a view a list of recent conversations with this contact, click the Show link.

Press your browser’s Back button to return to the Contacts list.

To edit this contact’s information, click the Edit button.

The form is pre-filled with the contact’s information. Change whatever you want, then click the Save button when finished.

Now, let’s add a new contact.

If you’re in the middle of editing a contact when you try to create a new one, Gmail will remind you that unsaved changes will be lost unless you save.

Click OK to tell Gmail it’s all right that we haven’t saved.

The form has been reset and is ready for us to input our new contact’s information.

Start with the Name.

All other fields are optional, but adding a contact isn’t very useful if you don’t enter at least some additional information.

Type an email address here.

Clicking the add link next to many of these fields will give you space to type additional entries.

Let’s also add a phone number for this contact.

Then an address.

The Add button down here is another way for you to add additional fields of the same type as above, as well as a few other kinds.

When finished inputting the contact’s information, click Save.

If you hover over a contact’s image, you’ll be given a link to change it.

Finally, to delete a contact, click this button.

Note that you cannot undo a contact deletion.

Click OK to acknowledge this.

The contact has been deleted.

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to manage contacts in Gmail. Find out how to Import and Export contacts in the two tutorials that follow.

How to create a new Google account

How to create a new Google Account

Since its inception in 2004, Gmail has steadily risen in popularity. It is now used by millions across the world to send emails of all sorts, whether personal or business-related.

To use Gmail, you’ll need to create a Google Account. Let’s see how to create one now.

In your browser, navigate to gmail.com.

Look down the page.

Click the Create an account button.

If you already have a Google Account, you do not need to create another one to use Gmail. Simply click the sign in here link.

As stated below, not only will this account give you access to Gmail, but also to many of Google’s other popular services.

Enter your First and Last names.

Type your Desired Login Name.

Then, click this button to check its availability.

As you can see, the requested login name is not available.

If you want, choose from one of the available usernames listed below…

…or, try your luck again.

Our second choice is available.

Now, Choose a password. It will need to be at least 8 characters in length and of sufficient strength.

Re-enter your password.

Indicate if you would like to Stay signed in or Enable Web History, then scroll down.

Next, choose and answer a Security Question.

Entering a Secondary email address if you have one can help if you ever have problems with your Gmail account in the future.

You should update the Location field to reflect your country of residence.

In order to prevent automated account creation, you must enter the verification text.

Clicking this icon will play back an audio clip of the text being read, for the vision impaired (or if the picture is simply too hard to read).

In order to proceed, you must first agree to the Terms of Service. Read through the terms, if you like.

If you accept the terms, click this button to create your account.

If successful, you will receive a Congratulations message, along with a quick run through of some of Gmail’s unique features.

When ready, click Show me my account.

That’s it! Your Gmail account has been created and is now ready to be used. Watch the tutorials that follow to find out how.

How to manage modules in Drupal

How to manage modules in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Now let’s learn how to manage modules

Click the Administer link

Modules are plugins that extend Drupal’s core functionality. You can add modules fro blogs, search, comments, contact forms, forums, and more

Scroll down

Then click the Modules link here

This is the Modules main page

Let’s use the Search module… select it here

Then click Save configuration

That’s it! The Search module has has been activated, as we can see here

We can return to this page at any time to activate, deactivate, or uninstall modules

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage modules in Drupal

How to manage menus in Drupal

How to manage menus in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Now let’s learn how to manage menus

Click the Administer link

Scroll down

Click the Menus link

This is the Menus page where we can add, edit, or delete menus to our web site

Click the enable link

As we can see, some menus are currently disabled, let’s enable a disabled menu now

Scroll down

When ready, click Submit

We can edit the details of the menu item here if we wish

The menu item we just enabled now shows here

Now let’s disable a menu item, scroll down

Click the disable link for the menu you want to disable

Click Disable to confirm

Now click the Settings link

That’s it! The menu item has been disabled

Scroll down

After making any changes to the settings of the menus you wish, click Save Configuration here

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage menus in Drupal

Maintaining your site in Drupal

Maintaining your site in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Now let’s learn how to maintain our Drupal web site

Click the Administer link

Scroll down

Click Site maintenance

This is the Site Maintenance page. Under normal circumstances, your Site Status should be set to Online. If you wanted to work on the website and didn’t want people to have access to it while you worked, you would want to change this setting to Off-line

Scroll down

Click Save configuration

If you want, you can further personalize the Site off-line message here

The site is now off-line. Turning the site back online is just as easy

The site is now online. We can return to this page at any time to toggle between online and offline while working on the site

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to maintain your site in Drupal

How to install Drupal from Fantastico

How to install Drupal from Fantastico

This tutorial assumes you’ve already launched the Fantastico application

Now let’s learn how to install Drupal

Click the Drupal link here

This is the Drupal installation screen

Drupal is an advanced portal with collaborative book, search engine friendly URLs, online help, roles, full content search, site watching, threaded comments, version control, etc.

Click the New Installation link here

Enter the name of the directory you want to install in… or leave this field blank for installation in the root directory

Enter an admin username and password in the following boxes

Enter an admin email address

When ready, click here to install

Click here to finish the installation

That’s it! Drupal has been successfully installed in your account, and is ready for you to start configuring it

Click here to login to your new installation

Login using the admin username and password you assigned during installation

From here you can visit the site by clicking here…

… or remove the script from your account by clicking here

Your new installation is now listed here on the script’s home page

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to install Drupal to your account from within Fantastico

Setting up your account information in Drupal

Setting up your account information in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Now let’s learn how to setup our account information

Click the My account link

Then click the Edit link

It is from here that you can change your username and email address…

This is the edit account page where we can configure our account

You can also change your password, and set your signature

When finished, click the submit button here

You can change the time zone as well

Click here to return to the home page

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to setup your account information

Getting help in Drupal

Getting help with Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Click the Administer link

Now let’s learn how to get help understanding and using Drupal

Then click Help

This is the Drupal help guide that provides context sensitive help on the use and configuratiuon of Drupal and its modules

Simply click any of the Help topics listed here to learn more about them

You can get further and more extensive help by going to the Drupal handbook… a link to which is located here

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to get help using Drupal from within your Drupal installation, or from the Drupal handbook

How to create menus in Drupal

How to create menus in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Click the Administer link

Now let’s learn how to create a new menu

Scroll down

Click the Menus link

Then click Add Menu

Enter a Menu Name here… it must contain all lowercase letters and have no spaces

Then enter the title of the new menu here

Click Save when ready

Now let’s add items to our menu

Enter the path this menu item links to

Then enter a menu link title

You can optionally enter a description

Make sure you have the proper menu selected as your parent item

Click Save when ready

Let’s repeat the process and add a second menu item

Our new menu item has been created, which you can see here

There it is!

In order for the new menu to show up in your website, you must create a new block for it, and configure where it should go

Locate the Demo Menu, and enable it by configuring its location

Be sure to click Save blocks to save our configuration

There it is! The new menu we just created, along with the two menu items

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to create menus in Drupal. Remember that you have to enable the menu block after creating it

How to manage blocks in Drupal

How to manage blocks in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Click the Administer link

Now let’s learn how to manage blocks

Then click the Blocks link

This is the Blocks management page

Blocks are boxes of content that can be arranged and displayed in certain areas of your web page

Click the Add block link

Enter the Block description here

Scroll down

Click Save block

That’s it! The new block has been created

Now let’s edit the new block

Here we can see a list of all blocks in our website, including which ones are enabled…

… and which ones are currently disabled (including the New Block we just created)

Click here to show the new block in the left sidebar

When finished, click Save blocks

That’s all there is to it!

To delete the new block we just setup, click the delete link here

Click Delete to confirm

The block we created has now been deleted

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage blocks in Drupal

How to manage users in Drupal

How to manage users in Drupal

This tutorial assumes you’ve already logged in to Drupal

Now let’s learn how to manage users

Click the Administer link

Scroll down

Click the Users link here

Let’s add a user now… click Add user

Enter a Username for the new user here

Then enter the new user’s Email address

Enter and confirm a password for the new user

When finished, click Create new account

Click the List link here

That’s it! A new user account has been created

Scroll down

Or we can delete the user… which we’re going to do now

Here is the user we just created

From here we can edit the user, including changing their password

Select Delete the selected users

Then click Update

Click here to confirm you want to delete the account

Click the User management link

The user we created has now been deleted

Then click the Roles link

Click the User settings link

A role is a way of giving selected permissions to a group of users… which you can do from here

… and from here you can change many settings for the users of your site

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage users in Drupal