If you have made your way to this blog looking for ideas on how to set up an email address, I am a big fan and advocate of Gmail. Check out this entertaining video from the team at Gmail and find out why it is the best email system around and it is free.

Technorati Tags: gmail, Set Up Email Address

1. Gmail Tasks Location

Tasks works in with your email beautifully. If action a task in an email needs to be added to you task list, you can easily add that email to your task list. Open the email, then click on Tasks. The Tasks tab can be found on the left hand side underneath your labels, as highlighted by the red arrow below.

2. Add Email To Task List

To add the email to your task list, click on more actions as highlighted by the arrow. Choose “Add to Tasks”.

3. Task List

The email will now be added to your task list and the task list will automatically appear on screen in the bottom right hand corner. Click on the arrow at the end of the email title to open up the task.

4. Task List Details

This box allows you to add notes and dates to your task that you have added from email. When you have added the details that you want, scroll down to the end of the box and click on “Back to list”.

5. Tasks Added To Your Calendar

If you have added a date like I have in this example, then the task will not only appear in your task list, but also your Calendar. Click on Calendar as highlighted by the arrow.
ask

6. Tasks On Your Calendar

If you look at my Calendar below, you can see that my task has now been added to Tue 19th. You don’t have to add dates to your tasks, but I find this an effective way to keep track of tasks that have due date.

7. Mulitple Lists

You can run more than one Task LIst. For example I run a task list for the blog and also a personal task list.

Gmail Tasks is a great way to manage your to do lists!

Technorati Tags: Set Up Email Address

I will show you the easiest way to do this!

Step 1 – Select Emails To Filter

From the main screen of your gmail account, open the email that you would like to filter.

Step 2 – Choose Filter Message Option

As highlighted by the red arrow, choose the Filter Messages Like This option from the drop down menu.

Step 3 – Creating Filter

The base details of your email chosen will be filled in for you. If you wish to make the filter any more specific, fill in the details and then click Next Step.

Step 4 – Choose Filter Options

To have emails archived straight to their labels you need to tick the three boxes highlighted by the arrows:

• Skip Inbox
• Apply and choose label
• Apply to conversations below (other emails like this that are currently in your inbox)

Once these have been checked, then click on Create Filter.

Step 5 – Filter Created

You should then see a message like the one highlighted by the arrow above, to advise that your filter has been successfully created. All emails that fit this description will then go directly to their label and will not clog up your inbox!

Technorati Tags: filters, gmail, Set Up Email Address

It does appear to be an issue that cannot be changed within Gmail. In summary it appears to be an issue with the way Microsoft Outlook displays the “from” field.

And at the time of writing that was the correct answer. Things have changed however. Yesterday Google announced that they could solve this problem for some users.

The issue stems with Google ensuring that they comply with mail delivery protocols and showing exactly where the email has come from. That is, that the email was sent from your Gmail account not directly from the server of your actual email address.

“Instead of using Gmail’s servers to send the message, we’ll use the servers where your other email address lives. Since Gmail isn’t the originating domain, we don’t have to include “Sender” info in the header. No more “on behalf of.” From Gmail Blog

That’s great you say, but what do I do to my gmail account to fix it. Follow the steps below, but do note that this may not work in 100% of cases:

“for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn’t support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges.” Source: Gmail Blog

Unfortunately my email provider does restrict access to specific IP ranges, so it hasn’t solved this issue for me, but thought I would share it with you, in case in could help you!

Step 1 – Settings Menu

Click on the settings menu as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 2 – Accounts Menu

Click on the accounts menu as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 3 – Edit Info

You should now have a list of all the accounts that Gmail fetches emails from. Click edit info on the account that you would like to remove the “on behalf of” from, as highlighted by the red arrow. It will then take you to the screen below. Simply click on next step.

Step 4 – Send mail through your SMTP server

Click the radio button to send through your email providers SMTP servers and save changes.

Now when you send email from this account, it will not be labeled as being sent on behalf of!

Technorati Tags: gmail, Set Up Email Address

And now it looks like:

So where have the rest of your labels gone? Near the red arrow is an option saying xx more. By clicking on this you will be able to access the rest of your labels. But what if you want to have more labels easily accessible in the left side bar? Simple, follow these instructions and you can change what labels appear in your Gmail account.

1. Settings Menu

From the main page of your set up gmail account, click on the settings tab, as highlighted by the red arrow.

2. Label’s Menu

From the Settings Option, click on the Label’s Menu as highlighted by the red arrow.

3. Organising Labels

As illustrated above, you will now see all your labels listed in this tab. Next to each label is the word show and hide.

4. Hidden Labels

As highlighted by the red arrow, you can see that the label for football has “hide” in bold. This means that it is hidden. If you wish to have this label appear directly in your left hand side bar, click on “show” and it will appear.

5. Show Labels

Simply go through you list of labels and click “show”on the ones you want to be seen and then hide any you don’t need to see, bu clicking on “hide”.

Technorati Tags: gmail, labels, Set Up Email Address

I am not at all thinking that this will happen with Gmail, but I do keep lots of precious information in Gmail. I would hate to lose this information, so to take the right precautions, I really need to be backing up my Gmail.

If like me, you set up a email address with gmail after already having another established email address, you will already have a mail client that you use. For example Apple Mail 3.0, Outlook, Thunderbird 2.0 or Windows Mail.

To start the process of backing up Gmail, you will need to configure another email client (as listed above) to receive your Gmail account. Then just follow these steps:

1. Adjusting Settings

Once in your Gmail account go to settings at the top right hand corner, as illustrated by the red arrow.

2. Forwarding and POP/IMAP

Click on to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab as highlighted by the red arrow.

3. Enable POP

Click on the option to enable POP for all mail. This will even include even mail that’s already been downloaded online in your Gmail account.

4. Save Changes

Make sure that you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on save changes.

5. Go To Email Client

All you need to do then is open the mail client that you have configured for Gmail, and check for new messages. It may take some time for your messages from Gmail to be downloaded if you have not done this in a while. But be patient and you will soon have all your emails down from the cloud and a back up copy if you wish!

Technorati Tags: back up, gmail

The below example uses my favourite shortcut “Move to”.

Step 1. Checking Message Box

You need to check the box of which email message you wish to use the “Move To” shortcut on. There are two ways to do this:

• Use the mouse and click the box as highlighted by the red arrow; or
• If the message is highlighted by the black small arrow in Gmail (which I have highlighted with a large blue arrow), you can simply use the Gmail Keyboard Shortcut ‘x’.

Step 2. Enacting the Gmail Keyboard Shortcut

The Gmail Keyboard Shortcut for “Move to” is ‘V’. Once the relevant message has been checked, simply hit the ‘V’ key on your keyboard.

Step 3. Gmail Message Moved

The red arrow highlights the confirmation, which tells you that the message has been moved to the appropriate Label.

Essential Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts:

• ‘C‘ – Allows you to compose a new message.
• ‘X‘ – Checks the message that is highlighted in Gmail.
• ‘V‘ – Moves your message to the chosen Label.
• ‘/‘ – Moves the cursor to the search box on Gmail.
• ‘R‘ – Replies to message to the sender.
• ‘A‘ – Replies message to all recipients.
• ‘F‘ – Forwards a message.
• ‘#‘ – Deletes a message.

Technorati Tags: gmail, keyboard shortcuts

But Gmail’s popularity has been on the rise along with its storage allocation which is now over 7000MB. But its storage is only one of the benefits that is attracting users to Gmail. For the key benefits of Gmail check out my earlier post on the 4 Benefits of Gmail.

In addition to these benefits, SmartCompany notes that:

The popularity is being attributed to Gmail’s fondness for free features, including several gigabytes of free storage, chat and video messaging services, and access to applications such as Google Docs in their email services.

Google’s free email service Gmail is growing in popularity and may soon overtake Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail by the end of the year. Between December 2007 and December 2008, Gmail’s unique monthly visitors in the United States grew 43% from 20.8 million to 29.6 million, according to ComScore. Hotmail lost 5% of unique monthly visitors during the same period, falling from 45.7 million to 43.5 million.

From personal experience, I have been incredibly happy with my switch to Gmail. The key advnatages for me are the online access, massive storage allocation and having many applications linked together, for example my Google Reader, Google Docs, Feedburner Account etc.

Have you tried setting up an email address with Gmail yet?

Technorati Tags: gmail, Set Up Email Address

To use keyboard shortcuts in Gmail you need to make sure that you have them enabled. To check the status of your keyboard shortcuts, you can follow these simple steps.

Step 1

From the inbox page of your Gmail account, click on Settings as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 2

On the settings page, you will find radio button options for keyboard shortcuts, as highlighted by the red arrow. Click on keyboard shortcuts on if it is not already selected.

Step 3

Scroll to the bottom of the Settings page and click on the save button, as highlighted by the red arrow.

Keyboard shortcuts will now be available for use in your Gmail account.

Technorati Tags: gmail, keyboard shortcuts, Set Up Email Address

Gmail gives you an amazing amount of storage space. The above image shows that I am only using 2% of my allocated storage space. That 2% is actually 182MB which I have stored under 40 different Labels. My total available storage space on Gmail is currently 7297MB. This really does mean that I can keep as many emails as I please, however to do this efficiently I need to use Labels.

Step 1

To apply a Label to an email, you need to first make sure that you have checked the appropriate email, as highlighted by the green arrow. Once this has been done then, click on the Label button. You will then see a drop down menu. As I have already set up labels, you will see that I have a number of labels to choose from. To create your first or a new label, simply click on New Label as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 2

Enter the new label name and click on okay.

Step 3

You will find that Gmail has attached the label you have created or selected, as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 3

To then move the labeled email out of your inbox, you need to again check the relevant email and then click on archive as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 4

Once you have clicked on archive, Gmail will then remove the email from the inbox and locate it the Labels box found on the lower left hand side of your Gmail screen. This is what part of my Label box looks like above. So when I want to go back to an email, I can head straight to the appropriate label and find it quickly.

Technorati Tags: gmail, Set Up Email Address