Starting with E-mail
E-mail is the abbreviated form of Electronic mail; it is the cheapest and fastest means of communication. Sitting in any corner of the world you can receive, send and process E-mails, provided that you have Internet browsing device and your E-mail Id. Don’t worry; you need not require purchasing any device right now if you have your PC Ready. Now tighten your seat belts we have started our journey!!!
Here we are featuring Gmail the abbreviated form of Google Mail, the topmost email provider in the world. Once you learn how to use Gmail, you can easily make your E-mail ids on other domains too.
Creating an account
One question a lot of people seem to have is the difference between a Google account and a Gmail account. They are not necessarily the same thing. The catch is, you are allowed to create a Google account using your existing email account. That is not a Gmail account, but an account that allows you access to some of Google’s services. One the other hand, if you do create a Gmail account, it automatically becomes your Google account with access to all of Google’s services using that id and password. So basically, Gmail accounts are always Google Accounts, but Google Accounts aren’t Gmail accounts if you are using a different email from username@gmail.com. So then, how do you create a Gmail account?
Click the button that says “Create an account” on the bottom right box
Carefully fill out all the fields on the form
Click “I accept. Create my account”
You will be taken to an introduction page. Click “Show me my account”. You will be taken to your new email account and there will be some emails from the Gmail Team welcoming you, introducing you to some of the features and helping you import your contacts and old mail.
With your gmail account, you can access other Google services such as listed below
Google Analytics - To track visitors to your website
Blogger - Blogging site
Google Calendar - A calendar directly integrated with Gmail
Google Docs - An online document editor an storage
YouTube - Online video streaming
Google Sites - To create websites and wikis
Google Dashboard - Your portal to all of the Google services that can be accessed with your Gmail or Google account, from one interface.
And many, many more services and sites.
Gmail’s Interface
Though most of Gmail’s email functions are similar to the ones you might have used in other email services, it’s common to have to take a little time to acquaint yourself to a different interface. Below is a simple guide to using Gmail’s web interface:
1 - Inbox
It is where you will find the email you have received and also where you will find replies you have written to those emails. Gmail stacks the messages sent back and forth between 2 or more people so that you can view them all as a single strand, and easily follow conversations up as shown on the example below.
2 - Compose Mail
It is what you would click to start writing an email. You can either type the full email address or start typing the first few letters and Gmail will search through your contact list and give you email address options to choose from. You can also click on the “To” button to be taken to your contact list where you can choose the email you want to use. When writing your email, by putting your mouse over the buttons on the compose panel, you can tell what each button does, be it change colour, font, insert image or link.
3 - Drafts
Gmail will save a copy of the email you are writing as you write it as a “draft”. It will do so on small time intervals, but if you decide to save it yourself, you can always just click on the button that says “Save Now” on the bottom of the compose window.
When you do that, a copy gets saved on the Draft folder, so you can continue to write it later if you prefer. Once you send the message, they automatically disappear from the Drafts folder.
4 - Sent Mail
All the email you have ever sent someone can be found by clicking the “Sent Mail” button. It will separate the emails you have sent from the ones sent to you so you can clearly see only the ones you sent yourself.
5- More
The “More” button opens a series of options such as your “Spam” and “Trash”. You can drag those labels in and out of the more buttons to customise how you want to view the main buttons on your email, so if you decide you want to have your “Trash” button readily available under the inbox, just drag it there, and if you decide you want your “Drafts” under the “More” button, just drag it there.
6 - Report Spam
Gmail tends to do a great job keeping spam out of your inbox, but if you do receive some, or there is some insistent company that keeps emailing you even though you asked to be removed from their mailing list, simply select that email and click on “Report Spam”. It will make any emails from that address go straight to spam, and it will help Gmail recognise it in the future.
7 - Delete
Because your storage space with Gmail is constantly growing, it is unnecessary, for most people, to ever need to delete emails. If you just don’t want to see a certain email on your inbox anymore, check the box next to that email and click the delete button. It will be moved to your trash folder. If you permanently want to remove your email, delete it out of your trash folder as well.
Organising your Gmail
Over time, you may receive thousands of emails, and trying to find a certain email can become a difficult task. That is why it is important to organise your emails so you can easily find important ones in the future. Below are some useful features to help organise all your emails and contacts.
Contacts
There are several ways to add and organise your contacts. Click on the “Contacts” button on the left hand corner bar and you will be taken to a new page. One very useful thing about Gmail is that you don’t really have to add your contacts by hand in the long run. Gmail will automatically add the emails of everyone you replied to or have written to Gmail will, by default, show you initially the most used contacts you have. To view contacts that don’t appear on that list, either use the search feature or click on the button that says “All”.
By clicking on the single little person with a + sign on the upper left hand side, you can add individual contacts.
By clicking on the multiple little people with a plus sign, also on the upper left hand side, you can create a group. You can move several people to each group, so when you need to email them you don’t need to select them one by one. For example, when I am working on a project with a certain number of people, I create a group called “Project Whatever Name” and add to it all the people who are part of that project. That way, when I need to send them all a common email, all I need to do is select that group on the email address field and they will all receive the email. You will notice that Gmail has already created a few groups for you if you decide to use them.
They are the “Friends,” “Family” and “Coworkers” groups you see to your left of the screen.
On the upper right hand corner you will notice the import and export buttons. You can import your contacts formatted as CSV files from Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Eudora and some other apps. Gmail also supports importing vCard from apps like Apple Address Book.
The Export button is used if you want to do the opposite, export all of your contacts to use in another program or as a back up.
You can also print contact information if you prefer hard copy. Gmail will also help you manage your duplicate contacts by merging them or removing old contacts. You can also click on someone’s name and view all your recent conversations you have had, which means, you can see all the emails you exchanged recently. You can also do that simply by searching for the email address or the name of a contact on the search bar on the main screen.
Stars
Stars function in Gmail as a way of marking emails that you would like to pay attention to. You can star an email simply by clicking on the little star icon on the left hand side of any email when on inbox preview. When you decide to look for them again, you can simply click on the ‘Starred’ button and it will retrieve all the emails you have chosen to mark with a star.
Labels
Labels are a much more elaborate way of organising your emails. They work in a very similar manner to folders in other email clients. You can create labels by clicking on the button on top of the messages that says “Labels” and selecting “Manage Labels”. You will then be taken to a page that lets you manage all of your labels, whether you want to show them or hide them from the left side menu, and the option to delete them or create new ones.
When you decide to add an email to a particular label, simply check the box next to that email, go to the label pull down and check the label you want to be assigned to that email. Much like the stars, or folders, if at point you want to view only emails that have that label, click on the name of the label on the left hand side menu and all the emails you have attached that label to will appear.
You can also “mute” an email. Let’s say you signed up for a mailing list, you want to receive, so they are not spam, but they send emails so frequently that you don’t want to see it popping up all the time. Well, you can go to “more actions” and select “Mute” or simply type the letter “m” when reading one of the emails, and from then on, all emails coming from that group will bypass the inbox and go directly to archive, where you can find them when you do want to read the message.
Advanced Settings
There are many settings to choose from with Gmail. Some control basic features, some add features to the emails, some determine how you reply, who you receive emails from, and how you use your Gmail services. Below is a brief guideline for some of those settings. You can Access them by clicking on the “Settings” button on the upper left hand corner of your Gmail window.
General Settings
There are many things you can determine from the general settings. A few examples are:
Maximum Page size:
It determines how many emails you see at a time (the default is 50). Just remember, making that number very large can make your page load slower.
My Pictures:
It allows you to upload a picture which will be seen by your friends when they chat with you, move their mouse over your name on the chat bar, on Buzz, or throughout your Gmail pages. It’s a great way to personalise Gmail. There is also a setting to determine whether you get to see the picturesyour friends uploaded.
Signature:
You can write something inside the box that would appear on the bottom of every email you write. Some people use that to add their contact information without having to type it every time. Others use it to add something fun, like a quote or a saying they like.
Vacation Responder:
Let’s you add a message that will automatically be sent to anyone who emails you during a certain period of time. That way if some business email comes in, you can add the auto responder to reply with an alternate contact while you are away and a message saying when you are coming back. It is also useful for friends who might not realise you are away and who will be wondering why you aren’t replying to their emails.
Accounts and Import
It is under these settings that Gmail has options to help you import your email and contacts from other email accounts. Simply click the button that says import mail and contacts and follow the prompts. It will ask for your email and password and email will attempt to import all of the information. In certain cases, such as when you are trying to import emails from your personal website, you might have to add information, such as pop server.
You can also use Gmail as a substitute to use your own URL email, such as yourname@yourwebsite.com, without people realising you are doing it. That’s where the “Send mail as” can be handy. The easiest way to make use of this is to set whatever your other email is to forward to your Gmail account. From that point, click on the “Send mail another address” button. Enter your name and the other email address and click next step. Gmail will send that email a confirmation number that you have to type in that box to prove that you are the person receiving that email. One you have added that number, you can select to either make that email your default responder, or it will be one of the emails on a pull down you can select to respond as. You can also have Google host the email for your domain, by using Google Apps, that way you would use your own domain address but within the Gmail interface
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