Gmail Series – OLD (20)

How to create and manage tasks in Gmail

Like many other mail services, Gmail allows you to create a Tasks list. With this feature, you can maintain a sort of To Do list, to remind you of upcoming events and due dates.

In this tutorial, you will see how to create and manage your tasks and task lists in Gmail.

To open the tasks system, click Tasks.

As soon as you open the Tasks window, Gmail will automatically create a new task for you and let you type its name.

Click below the task name or press Enter and you’ll instantly be able to type in another task.

To mark a task as complete, click its checkbox.

Click the arrow to enter further details about this task.

Select a Due date for this task.

Enter a Note about this task here

Scroll down.

If you have more than one task list, select it here and the task will be moved.

When finished, click Back to list.

The date and note you just entered show up here, below the task’s name.

The Actions menu below may be useful to you, at times.

These five functions will only work when you have a task selected.

Click this icon to manage your task lists.

Click here to create a New list.

Enter a name for the list.

Then click OK.

To return to the default list, open the lists menu again.

And select it here.

You can also create a task based on an e-mail conversation.

Minimize the tasks window.

Select a conversation from the list.

Then open up the More actions submenu.

Click Add to Tasks.

Your conversation has now been added to the task list.

You can click the Related email link to view that conversation.

Click the arrow to edit this task.

Everything here should look the same as before, with one exception.

Clicking the X next to Related email will dissociate this task from the email.

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

How to configure forwarding and POP/IMAP access for your Gmail account

With Gmail, you get quite a bit of access to your mail. This tutorial should help you understand how to put that access to good use.

Gmail gives you the option of activating POP and IMAP access on your account. This allows you to check and send mail using an email client like Mozilla Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook.

You can also have Gmail forward all your mail to a specific email address.

To do any of this, you’ll need to go to Settings.

Then click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

If you’ve watched the tutorial on Filters, you should know that you can set up a filter to forward some of your mail to another email address.

The Forwarding feature here is similar, but this will forward all of your mail.

Click this button to enable forwarding.

Then, select the phrase email address and replace it with your email address.

You’ll also need to decide what you want Gmail to do with your mail after it’s been forwarded it to you.

We’ll set ours to archive.

Forwarding has been configured. Now to set up POP/IMAP access.

Mail accounts with POP and IMAP access are not usually given away for free, but fortunately Gmail does this. These two protocols are how you’d typically access an email account given to you by your web hosting provider.

POP access to your mail should be enabled by default.

If this isn’t the case, you have two options, described here. We’ll choose the first.

As before, we’ll tell Gmail to archive mail after it’s been accessed with POP.

Scroll down.

To finish setting up POP access, you’ll need to configure your email client. Instructions can be found via this link.

IMAP access is generally preferred over POP, as long as your mail client supports it and is supported by Gmail.

IMAP is disabled by default. Click here to enable it, if you want, but we’ll leave ours disabled.

When finished here, click Save Changes.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to configure forwarding and POP/IMAP access for your Gmail account.

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 edit your personal information in Gmail

In this tutorial, you will find out how to edit your personal information in Gmail.

Start by going to the Settings page.

Then, open the Accounts and Import tab.

The first thing you can do here is change your Send mail as setting.

Click edit info to do so.

This window will pop up. The default option here is to use your name as specified in your Google account settings.

If you would prefer, use this box to specify something else for your name.

If you want to send mail with a different reply-to address, click this link…

…and enter the address in the text field that appears.

When finished here, click Save Changes.

Your name will update automatically both here and in the Chat display.

You can also configure Gmail to send mail from another address, rather than just sending a different reply-to address. Use this button to do that.

Scroll down.

Most of your personal information is stored under your Google Account settings. Click here to go there.

At right, you can change your account password and password recovery options.

As far as personal information goes, you have two choices. You can either create a detailed public profile, or just edit your personal information.

We won’t create a public profile right now. Click edit your personal info.

To start, we’ll change the First name listed here.

Then, let’s specify a Zip code.

Scroll down.

If you want, you can specify an alternate email address to use for your account.

When finished, click Save.

Click the Back link to return to your Settings page.

That’s it! You now know how to edit your personal information in Gmail.

How to compose an email message using Gmail

In this tutorial, you will see how to compose an email message in Gmail.

This tutorial assumes you have already logged in to Gmail.

To start writing a new message, click Compose Mail.

Clicking this icon will allow you to compose your message in a new window.

First, use the To field to specify who should receive your message.

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

…and he will automatically be added to the list. If you wish to add additional recipients, separate 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.

Use these links to select All of the contacts listed below or None of them.

You can also search through your contacts using this 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 on a box…

…and the entry disappears from the list.

Click Done to close this window.

You can also add Carbon Copy and Blind Carbon Copy recipients in a similar fashion. Click the Add Cc and Add Bcc links 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.

Now, let’s give our message a Subject.

If you’d like to Attach a file, click this link to do so.

Now let’s write the body of the message. Scroll down.

Notice that a message has appeared down here informing you that your email in progress has been autosaved to Drafts. Gmail will automatically save a draft of your email every few minutes.

All drafts can be accessed by clicking this link in the menu.

Type your message in this field, as shown.

Since you’ve edited your email, the Saved button has changed to Save Now. Clicking this button will allow you to manually save a draft.

You can also do so by pressing CTRL+S whenever your cursor is in a text field.

Use the menu bar above to apply formatting to your text, or to insert an emoticon or hyperlink.

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

You may also want to use Gmail’s spellcheck feature. If you’ll be writing in a language other than your default chosen language, just click the arrow to choose the correct language.

Then, click Check Spelling.

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

If you no longer wish to send this message, click Discard.

Otherwise, press the Send button.

If all went well, your message has now been sent.

Click View message to see it.

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

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to compose and send a message using Gmail.

How to import mail and contacts from another email account into Gmail

Before you begin manually copying any of your contacts and mail from other email accounts, you should know that Gmail can automatically import mail and contacts from many popular free email providers.

This tutorial will you show you how to use that feature, simply titled Import mail and contacts.

It can be found under Settings.

Go to the Accounts and Import tab.

Then, click Import mail and contacts.

First, tell Gmail the email account you would like to import mail and contacts from.

Click Continue.

Then, enter the account’s password.

Continue.

Next, you need to specify the import options, or just leave it all as the defaults.

By default, Gmail will import all contacts and mail from the account, as well as all new mail the account receives for the next 30 days. All imported mail will be labelled with the account’s email address.

Let’s change the label to simply Yahoo.

When finished here, click Start import.

It could take several hours or even up to 2 days for the import to complete. You will be notified when the import has finished.

Click OK to close this window.

The import we started now shows up under the Import mail and contacts section. You can check on its status here.

To stop an import, click its stop link.

When the import is complete, you’ll receive a notice at the top of Gmail. Its status will also be updated in the same place as before.

Once the initial import has completed, you can still stop the import to prevent any additional mail from being forwarded. All the data the initial import retrieved will remain intact.

Let’s go to the Inbox and verify that our messages have shown up.

Here are two messages, both labelled as Yahoo.

If we view the Yahoo label, they’ll show up there, as well.

Now, we’ll check that our Contacts have shown up.

Here they are. You should note that any contacts that are already in Gmail when the import occurs will not have duplicate entries created.

To dismiss the Import complete message, click Hide.

This completes the tutorial. You now know how to import mail and contacts from another email account into 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.

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.