Gmail Series (18)

How to create a new Google account.

Since its inception in 2014, Gmail has steadily risen in popularity.

It’s 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

If you already have a Google Account, you do not need to create another one to use Gmail. You can sign in directly.

Creating a new Google account will give you access to many of Google’s other popular services.

Click More Options

To create a new Gmail account, click Create account.

Enter your First and Last Name.

Type your Desired username.

As you can see, the requested username is not available.

If you want, choose from the list of available usernames…

…or try your luck again.

Our second choice is available.

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

Enter your Birthday and Gender.

Enter your mobile phone number which will be used for keeping your account secure.

Enter your current email address (a secondary email ID)…

… which can help if you ever have problems with your Gmail account in the future.

Configure the Default Homepage option as per your needs.

Google will pick up your location automatically, or you can configure it.

Click Next step.

In order to proceed, you must first agree to the Privacy and Terms.

If you accept the terms, click I AGREE.

That’s it! Your new Gmail account has been created and is ready for use.

Click Continue to Gmail.

You’ll be presented with an optional tutorial that will walk you through how to use your Gmail account.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to create a new gmail account.

How to compose an email message in gmail.

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

Now let’s learn how to compose an email message in Gmail.

To start writing a new message, click Compose.

Clicking the two way arrow icon will allow you to compose your message in a new window.

Use the To field to specify who should receive your message.

Gmail will suggest possible recipients from your Contacts as you type. If you see the correct person, simply click on their name…

…and they will automatically be added to the list. If you wish to add additional recipients, seperate them with a comma.

If you prefer, you can choose from your Contacts list instead of using the autofind functionality.

Click the To link and your Contacts will show up in a new window.

Select a Contacts category.

Click the Select All check box if you want to select all of the contacts.

You can also search through your contacts using the search box.

Or, simply choose one contact at a time.

We don’t need to send this email to the same person twice, so let’s remove the duplicate entry. Simply click X near the contact…

…and the entry disappears from the list.

When finished, click Select.

You can also add Carbon Copy and Blind Carbon Copy recipients in a similar fashion.

Click the Cc and Bcc buttons accordingly to use this functionality.

Carbon copy is meant for listing additional recipients who should not be a primary recipient of this email.

The only difference between that and a Blind Carbon Copy is that everyone who gets the email will know who is in the Cc list…

… while the Bcc list will not be visible to anyone.

If you have more than one gmail account, you can choose which account you want this message sent FROM…

… by clicking the the down arrow in the From field.

Now, let’s give our message a Subject.

If you’d like to Attach a File, click the Attach files icon at the bottom.

Now let’s write the body of the message.

Notice that a message has appeared down at the bottom of the email window informing you that your email in progress…

… has been auto-saved. Gmail automatically saves a draft of your email every few seconds.

All drafts can be accessed by clicking Drafts option in the menu.

Use the menu bar at the bottom to apply formatting to your text…

… or to insert an emotion, an image…

… a hyperlink or a file from Google drive.

If you ever question the purpose of button in the formatting bar, you can hover your mouse over the button to see its title.

You may also want to use Gmail’s spellcheck feature. Just click the down arrow at the bottom for spell check.

Words that have been spelled incorrectly, if any, will be highlighted in yellow.

If you no longer wish to send this message, click the Trash icon at the bottom to Discard.

Otherwise, press the Send button.

Your message has now been sent.

Click View Message to see it.

You can also find this message in the Sent Mail folder, along with any other message you’ve sent using Gmail.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to compose and send a message using 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, Gmail uses a Labels system.

A conversation can have as many labels applied to it as you like, which can be better for organizing that the folders system…

since with folders each conversation could only exist in one folder.

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

Each custom label has a drop down menu 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 visually identify conversations. You can also rename, hide or delete a custom label.

Select a a color to tell Gmail to assign it for this label.

To hide a label, click the drop down arrow next to it, and select Hide.

Notice that the Personal label no longer shows up in our left menu, as it is now hidden.

To find the hidden label in the menu, click the More labels drop down link.

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

Let’s unhide the Personal label.

From here you can Manage labels or Create new labels using the links at the bottom.

You can also manage labels from the Settings menu.

Click the Wheel icon drop down menu, and then click Settings.

Click the Labels tab.

System labels are at the top… and they cannot be removed. All system labels except for the 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.

At the bottom is where the custom labels are listed. From here you can show them, hide them, or remove them altogether.

Let’s remove the Travel label by clicking the remove link.

Note that removing a label will not delete the messages with that label. Message that have no labels will still show up under All emails.

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

To finish editing the label, click outside the edit box, or just press Enter.

The labels will automatically re-sort in alphabetic order.

Click Create new label to create the Travel label again.

We’ll also show the Receipts label… click it’s show link.

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 is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage 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.

There are two ways to label conversations… you can use the Move to or the Labels options.

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

We’ll start with the Labels option… click the labels icon below the search window.

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.

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

When ready, click Apply.

The selected conversation has now been labelled as Business and Personal. You can see its labels next to its title.

There’s a shortcut method for applying a single label.

Deselect the previously selected conversation, and select the two above it.

Click Labels icon.

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 where not all the conversations selected share the same labels.

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 similiar to the Labels feature… the difference being that Move to will remove the label we are currently viewing (Inbox) from the conversation and replace its with the new one we choose.

To demonstrate, let’s select the only conversation that hasn’t been labelled yet and deselect others.

Click the Folder icon.

As you can see, this has the same basic layout as the Labels submenu, except 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 or Trash… these weren’t options under Labels.

Let’s move the selected conversation to Travel.

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

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

From here, you can remove labels from the conversation.

Or if 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 create email filters in gmail.

This tutorial will show you how to create email filters in Gmail. Filters tell Gmail what to do if it encounters mail that meets specific conditions.

To create a filter, click the Wheel drop down icon…

… then click Settings.

Now, click Filters and Blocked Addresses.

Here you can either import existing filters from your other gmail account or create new filters.

Click the Create a new filter link to create a filter.

The criteria here is very similiar to what you’d see when performing an advanced search.

We’ll use the From field to filter all messages from a specific person. You can use a name or an email address.

When ready, click the Search icon.

The only conversation from this person has shown up.

Let’s go back to the Filters page.

Now that we’ve tested the filter, click the Create filter with this search link.

Choose one or more of these actions to tell Gmail what to do when it encounters a message that matches the filter. Note that the actions will be performed in the order they are listed.

Let’s have Gmail automatically Star the message as important… click Star it.

Let’s also choose to apply a label.

Enable the Never send it to Spam option.

Enable the Also apply filter to matching conversation option for the existing emails.

When finished, click Create filter.

The filter has been created and you have been taken to the filters tab.

Use the edit and delete links to edit or delete the filters.

Let’s return to the Inbox.

To see the final way to create a filter, let’s open a conversation.

Click the down arrow next to the message.

Then click Filter messages like this.

The filter has been applied, as we can now see a yellow star being displayed beside the message.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to create and manage filters in Gmail.

How to manage contacts in gmail.

In this turotial, you will find out how to manage your contacts in Gmail.

Click the Gmail drop down icon and then click Contacts.

This is your contact list. you can add, remove or edit contacts, and and organize them in groups. You can also search, Import and Export contacts… or even print them.

To create a new contact group, click Create Label

The new group has been created.

To view a contact’s information, click the contact name.

Here you can see all the information for the contact.

To add this contact to a group, click the 3 dots icon…

Then select the group to add them to.

The contact has been moved to the Internet Friends group.

To edit the contact’s information, select the contact ….

…then click the Pencil icon.

Click the MORE button to view more details about the contact.

Once you are done with editing the contact, click Save.

To add a new contact click the Plus icon.

Simply complete the form to create a new contact.

You can assign a label to a contact as you create it.

If you want to add additional email addresses for this contact, click the plus button.

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

Click the MORE button.

We can also add an address for the contact.

When finished, click the SAVE button.

That’s it! The new contact has been added successfully.

You can always edit existing contacts by clicking on their name.

You can also upload a photo for a contact.

From here, you can either hide the contact, delete it, or change its label (or group).

Let’s go ahead and delete the contact we just created.

Click DELETE again to confirm.

You can undo this action by clicking the UNDO button here.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage contacts in Gmail.

How to export contacts from gmail.

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

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

Click the Gmail drop down icon….

….and then click Contacts.

Click the More drop down option…

… then click Export.

Since this version of Google Contacts doesn’t support the Export option, we will have to switch to the older version.

Click the More drop down button.

Then click Export.

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

We’ll choose All contacts.

Then, select the format you want your export file to be in.

Finally, Click the Export button.

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

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 is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to export contacts from Gmail.