Gmail Series – OLD (20)

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 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 configure your settings in Gmail

In this tutorial, you will learn a little bit about Gmail’s Settings area. If you’ve watched any of the previous demos, you’ve probably seen this area already.

It can be found via the Settings link at the top of every page.

First up is the General tab. This tab contains various settings that control the way Gmail operates.

You can change your Gmail display language using this drop-down menu.

For more language settings, click the Show all language options link.

Here, you can enable Transliteration and support for right-to-left editing.

Next on this tab is the Maximum page size option. The default setting is to show 50 conversations per page.

Let’s change that to 100.

Keyboard shortcuts can help you save time, but they may not work with certain kinds of keyboards.

If you prefer to always connect to Gmail securely, set the Browser connection option to Always use https.

If you want to enter a Signature to append to every message, first click this radio button.

Then type your signature here.

Setting a Vacation responder may be useful if you’re not going to be able to sign in to Gmail for a while. Gmail will send an automated reply to all incoming messages using the Subject and Message you specify here.

When finished here, click Save Changes.

Your Gmail session may need to be restarted, depending on the settings you changed.

Return to the Settings page.

This time, go to Accounts and Import.

We’ve covered much of this page in previous tutorials. Import mail and contacts was covered several tutorials ago, while Send mail as was described in the tutorial directly before the one you’re watching now.

Check mail using POP3 allows you to configure Gmail to check your other mail accounts for mail on a regular basis. New mail will appear automatically in Gmail.

Here, you can also Add additional storage to Gmail. This does cost money, however.

We showed how to change your Google Account settings in the previous tutorial, as well.

The Labels and Filters tabs were covered in previous tutorials, while Forwarding and POP/IMAP, Chat, and Themes will be covered later.

Let’s go to the Web Clips tab.

The Web Clips feature shows Google Sponsored Links, Gmail tips, and custom content at the top of most pages.

It’s enabled by default. Click this checkbox to disable Web Clips.

Now, on to Labs.

Gmail Labs contains experimental features that aren’t quite ready for everyone to use. Features listed here may change, break, or disappear at any time. You can try anything you want here, but remember that it’s at your own risk.

Take note of this link. If you try a Labs feature and have trouble accessing your Inbox, this will disable all Labs features.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now have a good idea what many of the Gmail Settings do, and how to customize them.

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 Create a filter link next to the search bar.

The criteria below are very similar 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.

To test this filter using your existing mail, click the Test Search button.

Below, the only conversation from this person has shown up.

Now that we’ve tested the filter, click Next Step.

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.

We’ll also have it apply a label to the message.

Click this checkbox to ensure that emails matching the filter are never sent to Spam.

You might also want to apply the filter to the existing conversations, listed below. Use this checkbox to toggle that feature.

When finished, click Create Filter.

The filter has been created, and you’ve been taken to the Filters tab under Settings.

Use these links to edit or delete a filter.

Return to the Inbox.

To see the final way to create a filter, we’ll open a conversation.

Click the down arrow next to a specific message.

Click Filter messages like this.

This familiar box will appear, pre-populated with the From address of the message. Proceed to create the filter, just as before.

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

How to invite a friend to Gmail

Back when Gmail was first launched, accounts were given out on an invitation-only basis. This is no longer the case, but you can still invite your friends to Gmail.

Scroll down.

The box we need is entitled Invite a friend.

In this text field, type the email address of someone you’d like to invite to Gmail.

When you start to type, you may see matches appear from your Contacts list. Choose from them, if you want, or continue typing.

Now, you can either click Send Invite or Preview Invite.

We’ll preview ours first.

Here, you can add additional email addresses to send invitations to. You can also add a customized note to the invitation, or leave it as the default.

When ready, click Send Invites.

That’s it! Our invite was sent successfully.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to invite friends to Gmail.

How to change your Gmail theme

Themes allow you to control the overall look of Gmail without changing its functionality. Gmail provides a number of default themes, and you can even create your own.

To change your theme, go to Settings.

Open the Themes tab.

The default theme is Bold Blue. As of November 2009, there are 33 other themes for you to choose from.

You can also pick a Random theme or Choose your own colors.

Let’s choose an existing theme. Scroll up.

We’ll pick the Steel theme.

After a moment, your theme will have been changed. Success!

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to change your theme 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 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 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 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.