I recently wanted to send an email to a friend with a picture actually in the email and not sent as an attachment in Gmail. I tried all sorts of copy and past techniques to try and do this, but was not successful. With a little bit of research I found that to insert a picture into email when using Gmail, you need to enable a the “Inserting Images” feature.

I will take you through the steps required to enable the function that allows you to insert a picture into your emails:

1. Settings

Go to your settings menu by clicking on the settings tab as highlighted by the red arrow.

2. Settings Menu

You should then come through to a screen which looks like this. Click on the Labs tab as highlighted by the red arrow.

3. Labs Menu

The Labs Menu will look like this. It contains many options and you will need to scroll down towards the end to find the option for inserting images.

4. Insert Images Option

As you can see by the above picture, the insert images option is disabled. Click on enable to activate this functionality in your Gmail account.

5. Save Changes

It is important that you then scroll to the end of the Labs Menu and click on save changes as highlighted by the red arrow. If you don’t do this, your settings will not change.

6. Insert Images Icon

If you click on compose and start to write and email, you should now see a new icon as highlighted by the red arrow. Click on this to insert an image directly into your email.

7. Insert Images Into Email

Once you have clicked on the insert image icon, the above box should appear on your screen. You then click on the option to upload an image from your computer or if you know the images URL you simply enter that.

You can now add images directly to all future emails that you send from your set up Gmail account.

Technorati Tags: gmail, Set Up Email Address, tips

When you set up email address with Gmail, you effectively have your email in the “cloud”. Being able to access your email anywhere, anytime is fantastic, but what if the cloud disappeared???

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

Google Docs is a great way for multiple people to access the one document from different locations. A very practical application that we use Google Docs for is managing the family budget.

For tips on how to set up the budget and how to track expenditure, please check out my post on Planning With Kids - Family Budget For The New Year.

Once you have a family budget in excel spreadsheet form to work with, you can then upload the spreadsheet to Google Docs like we have. This allows both myself and my husband to track our daily/weekly expenditure and monitor how we are tracking to budget.

At any time (providing we are both updating regularly!!!!) we can track our financial position for the week and a cumulative total for the year. There is no excuse for not updating the family budget spreadsheet as it can be accessed anywhere that there is internet access.

Once you have set up email address with Gmail, you can then follow these simple steps to upload your family budget spreadsheet to Google Docs:

Step 1

From your Gmail account, click on “Documents” as highlighted in the above screen shot by the red arrow.

Step 2

If this is the first time you have uploaded a document to Google Docs, your screen should look like the above. Click on “Upload” as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 3

Click on “Browse” to select a file to upload. You have a choice in the third box to name the spreadsheet in Google Docs, something different to what you have named it on your computer. I tend to ignore this option and keep the name the same.

Step 4

Once you have selected your file, click on “Upload File” as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 5

Your spreadsheet will now have been successfully uploaded to Google Docs. In this case the spreadsheet has four individual worksheets. The blue arrow highlights the sheet that is currently open. The red arrows highlight the names of the other worksheets in the file.

You now need to share the documents with the relevant person to give them access to the spreadsheet online. Click on the “Share” button as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 6

The above box should pop up and you should click on “Invite People” as highlighted by the red arrow.

Step 7

Once the “Share with others” box has opened, you can invite people by typing in their email address, as shown by the red arrow. The people you invite do not have to have a Gmail account, only an active email address. Google Docs will bring up matches from your contacts, as highlighted by the green arrow.

You can then type a message to the invitees in the box highlighted by the blue arrow. Once you have finished, click on send (black arrow) and the invitation is on the way!

Step 8

Click on “save and close” as highlighted by the red arrow and you now have multiple users who can access and edit this spreadsheet. Google Docs allows you to upload documents, powerpoint presentations, spreadsheets and PDFs.

Google Docs is an effective way to make real time updates to a document without requiring version control etc.

Technorati Tags: Family Budget, Google Docs