Gmail: 4 of My Favourite Features

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The following list describes 4 Gmail features that have helped my productivity and sanity.

1) If you have other email accounts and you want to administer them all from Gmail you can.

It's easy to do. First you need to log in to your other account and forward all emails to your Gmail account.

In Outlook click the cog icon then choose More email settings then under the heading Managing your account there is the option Email Forwarding, select Forward your emails to another email account and set your gmail account to receive all your forwarded email. (You may have to verify your account by giving your mobile number to receive a code)

For Yahoo mail, go to the cog icon, then Settings, then click the Edit link in the top right hand corner of the pop up box. Then go to Access your Yahoo! Mail elsewhere and select Forward and type in your gmail address.

Other email clients will have a similar setting somewhere, dig around.

If you have another account say associated with your websites domain name get your webmaster to have your emails forwarded to your gmail account.

Good, now you receive all your emails from other accounts, but how do you send as that email account.

Go to the cog icon, choose Settings then Accounts then find Send mail as: and click Add another email address you own. You then add the email address of your other account, follow the steps to send it a verification code. Now because you have all emails to that address forwarded to your gmail account the verification code will arrive in your gmail inbox. Copy the verification code into the box provided or click the link in the email. You should now be able to send emails with that accounts identity. When you compose an email you will get a drop-down list of all your email properties in the From field, as shown below. Simply select as appropriate.

Example of using Gmail for multiple email addresses

The following 2 features are all part of Google Labs and aren't enabled by default, I have found them very useful.

2) The Undo Send Function.

When writing an email have you ever hit the send button and regretted it? I know I have. Well there is a solution, the undo link. When this is enabled you have 10 seconds to change your mind after pressing send. You click the undo link and the email is retrieved unsent, and you can make the appropriate changes and give a huge sigh of relief!

To enable this go to the cog icon, choose Settings then choose Labs then find Undo Send and select Enable

3) Canned Responses.

When writing emails to clients or replying to customer enquiries there are occasions when you might find yourself typing the same thing over and over again. With canned responses you can save commonly typed text so that you can insert it into an email with just a couple of clicks.

To enable this go to the cog icon, choose Settings then choose Labs then find Canned Responses and select Enable

You can use canned responses when you are writing a new email or replying to one. At the bottom right hand corner in the tool bar next to the trash can is a down arrow, click that and you should see the Canned responses option. If you then select that you will get Insert, Save and Delete options with which you can insert, create and delete your canned responsed to your hearts content.

Where you find the canned response tool on Gmail

3) Date link in emails

I thought this was a Labs feature too, but it appears to be standard. When you get an email with a date in the body text, Gmail automatically makes it a link. If you then click that link you can get the option to add an entry to your Google calendar with the subject title of the email as the entry. Genius.

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Mike Nuttall

Author: Mike Nuttall

Mike has been web designing, programming and building web applications in Leeds for many years. He founded Onsitenow in 2009 and has been helping clients turn business ideas into on-line reality ever since. Mike can be followed on Twitter and has a profile on Google+.