Google is often making incremental improvements to Gmail, but many of these new features are not immediately detected by users. Even those times when Google offers a pop-up message about the changes, most people will just click through to get to their email, forgetting altogether about the change. There could be Gmail features lurking in that minimalist UI that could increase your productivity, or even inspire you to use Gmail differently. We'll dig into the depths of Gmail and pull out a few great features you may have forgotten, or maybe never knew about in the first place.
Drag and Drop Attachments
Google rolled out a particularly useful feature just yesterday. Users of the Chrome and Firefox browsers can now finally drag and drop attachments
directly into Gmail. What's really interesting here is how seamless it is. There are no controls in the interface to activate this feature, just grab any file from your computer (from the desktop, explorer, or finder) and drag it into the Gmail window. You can even select multiple files to drag in at once. Immediately, a box will pop up in the customary attachment area indicating you can drop your files there. They will upload just as if you'd gone through the tedious process of digging through the upload window to get to a folder you might already have open.
Easy Labeling
Labels in Gmail can be a powerful organizational tool, and an update last summer made them more powerful than ever. The list of labels is on the left side of the interface. Each entry should have an arrow next to it. Clicking on that will give you access to options to change the color, rename, hide, or delete the label. There's no need to dig through the settings to adjust your label settings. This same update also improved the process of tagging conversations with particular labels. There has always been a label drop-down menu for adding conversations to a label, but you can also drag and drop.
There are two ways to make use of this. If you want some conversations moved to a label (i.e. out of your inbox), you can select them with the check boxes from the inbox view, then drag them by grabbing the tab at the far left of the preview line (you can grab any of them). Release them over the label you'd like to move them to, and they will move to that label. If you just want to add a label but keep the conversation in the inbox, you basically do the opposite. Select the items you want to add a label to, then drag the label from the left pane onto any one of the selected messages and they will all be added to the group.
Pop Out Windows
Heavy multitaskers should take note of Gmail's enhanced "New Window" support. This improvement rolled out just a few weeks ago, and has made the feature much more usable. The old behavior would require the account to reload in this new window, but now the process is instantaneous. For instance, when composing an email, you might want to refer to an older message. Not a problem, just click the new window button. It's the one in the upper right of the composition area, opposite of the send button. You can now click around in your account while composing a new email, and anything you've already typed is present in the new window.
The New Window button is available in other places as well. The chat interface can get in the way at times, but clicking the arrow at the top will give you a new window that loads instantly complete with all the chat history. When replying to a message, simply hold "shift" and click the reply link to open the reply in a new window. The same trick can be used to open a conversation in a new window; just shift-click the conversation in the inbox to pop it out. Finally, while reading an email you can click the New Window link in the upper right corner above the Google ads. This opens a new window with just that conversation so you can read it later.
Contact Syncing with Mobile Phones
Gmail is often the gateway to Google Contacts. Many people find that after a time, most of their important contacts are stored in Google's cloud just as a consequence of using Gmail. So why not get those contacts on your phone? With a little organizing and setup you can do it as easily as users of Google Android can.
First you'll probably want to clean up your contacts. Gmail has a nasty habit of duplicating contacts if someone contacts you with different email addresses. Click the Contacts link on the left side of the Gmail interface and you should see a "Find duplicates" button in the main Contacts pane. Clicking it will start Google thinking and it will present you with any possible duplicates it finds. It's a good idea to click the details link beside each entry before clicking the "Merge" button.
Now that that's done you're ready to sync those contacts. All you need to do is pop over to the Google Sync site and get the full step-by-step for iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile handsets. You will basically be adding Gmail as an Exchange account (Google Sync uses Microsoft ActiveSync technology). Make sure to backup contacts already on your phone in case something goes wrong as Google Sync will delete the phone's existing contacts. Users of iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones can also choose to have their calendar synced as well.
Drag and Drop Attachments
Google rolled out a particularly useful feature just yesterday. Users of the Chrome and Firefox browsers can now finally drag and drop attachments
directly into Gmail. What's really interesting here is how seamless it is. There are no controls in the interface to activate this feature, just grab any file from your computer (from the desktop, explorer, or finder) and drag it into the Gmail window. You can even select multiple files to drag in at once. Immediately, a box will pop up in the customary attachment area indicating you can drop your files there. They will upload just as if you'd gone through the tedious process of digging through the upload window to get to a folder you might already have open.
Easy Labeling
Labels in Gmail can be a powerful organizational tool, and an update last summer made them more powerful than ever. The list of labels is on the left side of the interface. Each entry should have an arrow next to it. Clicking on that will give you access to options to change the color, rename, hide, or delete the label. There's no need to dig through the settings to adjust your label settings. This same update also improved the process of tagging conversations with particular labels. There has always been a label drop-down menu for adding conversations to a label, but you can also drag and drop.
There are two ways to make use of this. If you want some conversations moved to a label (i.e. out of your inbox), you can select them with the check boxes from the inbox view, then drag them by grabbing the tab at the far left of the preview line (you can grab any of them). Release them over the label you'd like to move them to, and they will move to that label. If you just want to add a label but keep the conversation in the inbox, you basically do the opposite. Select the items you want to add a label to, then drag the label from the left pane onto any one of the selected messages and they will all be added to the group.
Pop Out Windows
Heavy multitaskers should take note of Gmail's enhanced "New Window" support. This improvement rolled out just a few weeks ago, and has made the feature much more usable. The old behavior would require the account to reload in this new window, but now the process is instantaneous. For instance, when composing an email, you might want to refer to an older message. Not a problem, just click the new window button. It's the one in the upper right of the composition area, opposite of the send button. You can now click around in your account while composing a new email, and anything you've already typed is present in the new window.
The New Window button is available in other places as well. The chat interface can get in the way at times, but clicking the arrow at the top will give you a new window that loads instantly complete with all the chat history. When replying to a message, simply hold "shift" and click the reply link to open the reply in a new window. The same trick can be used to open a conversation in a new window; just shift-click the conversation in the inbox to pop it out. Finally, while reading an email you can click the New Window link in the upper right corner above the Google ads. This opens a new window with just that conversation so you can read it later.
Contact Syncing with Mobile Phones
Gmail is often the gateway to Google Contacts. Many people find that after a time, most of their important contacts are stored in Google's cloud just as a consequence of using Gmail. So why not get those contacts on your phone? With a little organizing and setup you can do it as easily as users of Google Android can.
First you'll probably want to clean up your contacts. Gmail has a nasty habit of duplicating contacts if someone contacts you with different email addresses. Click the Contacts link on the left side of the Gmail interface and you should see a "Find duplicates" button in the main Contacts pane. Clicking it will start Google thinking and it will present you with any possible duplicates it finds. It's a good idea to click the details link beside each entry before clicking the "Merge" button.
Now that that's done you're ready to sync those contacts. All you need to do is pop over to the Google Sync site and get the full step-by-step for iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, and Windows Mobile handsets. You will basically be adding Gmail as an Exchange account (Google Sync uses Microsoft ActiveSync technology). Make sure to backup contacts already on your phone in case something goes wrong as Google Sync will delete the phone's existing contacts. Users of iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile phones can also choose to have their calendar synced as well.
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