The amount of storage space on the server for your e-mail is an important consideration when choosing among Web-based e-mail programs. Certainly you will want an e-mail service provider that gives you plenty of storage space or you will need to begin erasing old e-mails and lose important historical information. Because Google’s idea is to increase your ability to maintain historical information rather than removing old e-mail, it was important to offer more storage space. Here is a comparison of the top Web-based e-mail programs:

You can see from this list that a Gmail account gives you the ability to save e-mail for a very long time. Storage space is considered a technical advantage and therefore these amounts are always changing, each one trying to outdo the other. So, watch for higher storage capacities in the future.

Because Web-based programs rely on the features of Web browsers to make them work, it is important to select an e-mail program that works with the browser you use. For a long time, the main browser of choice was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Other browsers have gained importance as they have developed additional features. Many people are switching to Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux installations, and some to Opera on the Macintosh.

When selecting a Web-based e-mail program, you don’t want to sacrifice your choice in browsers to make the switch. This means that selecting the Web-based e-mail program that operates with your browser is important. Table 19.1 gives you the browser compatibility comparisons among the various Web-based e-mail programs.

Like many Google services, Gmail is available in 36 languages; 38 if you count American and the United Kingdom’s English, simplified and traditional Chinese as different languages. Other languages available include Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese. Gmail not only allows you to view the Gmail interface in these other languages, it also has spell-check capability in at least 30 languages.

The two Web-based e-mail programs that have forwarding and POP features are Gmail and Yahoo Mail. The ability to forward messages means that you can receive e-mail in your Web-based mail program and choose to automatically forward the messages to another e-mail account, perhaps a corporate account that you want to keep private.

The POP feature allows you to check and manage Gmail using a different e-mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook. POP (Post Office Protocol) servers are e-mail servers your software contacts to retrieve e-mail.

People have become accustomed to the ability to format their e-mail messages using rich text, the kind of text formatting found in word processing software. Gmail offers this type of formatting in Web-based e-mail. You can now use features such as font changes, color text, indenting, bullet and number lists, and more.

Never send a boring e-mail message again. E-mail written in rich text is sent as HTML, readable by most modern e-mail programs and Web-based e-mail programs.

Gmail is a Web-based program, so it is not necessary to install any new software on your computer. If you can access the World Wide Web using one of the more popular Web browsers, you already have everything it takes. No other software setup is required. You need one of the following Web browsers installed on your computer to get started.

If you do not already have one or more of these programs installed on your computer please refer to the Resources Section of this book for more information about where to download one of these programs.

There are presently two ways to sign up for a Gmail account. You either need an invitation to sign up for Gmail from someone that currently has a Gmail account or sign up by having Google send an invitation to your cell phone as a text message. When someone sends you an invitation, click the invitation link in the e-mail you receive. When messages come as text messages on your cell phone, you are provided an Invitation Code, which you enter on the Gmail signup page (https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup2).

When you click the I’m ready - show me my account link displayed in Figure 19.1, the next page appears, which lets you know that you can now chat using Google Talk while using Gmail. On this page, notice an important selection for setting up the Google Talk feature within Gmail. Select between saving your chat history and not saving your chat history. If you are concerned about others discovering the content of your chats it’s recommended that you select the Don’t save chat history option. By default, the Save chat history option is selected. If keeping a record of your chats is important choose the Save chat history option. Remember, your chat history is indexed by the Google Desktop program when you have that installed. This easily gives you access to your chat through keyword searches from the Google Desktop software.

Figure 19.1. After you sign up, Gmail welcomes you with a special one-time-only welcome page.

Speaking of easy, an easy way of accessing your Gmail account is to add Gmail to the Google Toolbar in your Web browser (see Figure 19.2).

Figure 19.2. Add Gmail to the Google Toolbar.

When you select your chat history save option, click Sweet! Go to my inbox >>. Your Gmail inbox appears, probably containing a couple of welcome e-mail messages from the folks at Google.

Most e-mail programs allow you to export your contacts in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format. Some programs offer several different export formats; but when exporting so that you can import into Gmail you will want to select the CSV format. Save the exported CSV file to a place on your hard drive where you know where to find it during the import process. It is common for some e-mail programs to select the export folder for you, and then it takes forever to find the export file. Therefore, knowing where the export file is saved is an important step.

Once you have an exported file in CSV format you can begin the importing process into Gmail. Follow these steps:

When the process is complete the Import Contacts window reports how many contacts were imported into Gmail. When you are satisfied that the import is successful, click the Close link and the Import Contacts windows disappears. In the Contacts page, click the All Contacts tab to verify that your import is successful. You may notice that some of the information doesn’t map correctly between contact programs, and some information may be wrong or missing. You may have to correct this manually by editing the contact in Gmail.

Once you import your contacts into Gmail you will want to let people know about your new e-mail address. The way to do this is to open your Contacts list and select everyone you want to notify. Here’s how:

Gmail is a great way to manage all of your email. Use the Gmail interface with more than one e-mail address. To add a new e-mail address to Gmail, just follow these steps

Gmail will want to send a verification e-mail to be sure you are not trying to masquerade by using someone else’s e-mail address (spoofing). When you receive the e-mail, type the Verification Code.

Click the Create Contact link at the top of the form to create a new contact. Fill in the name of the contact, the primary e-mail address, and any notes you want to keep about this person. You can also specify a photo for this person or choose to view a photo of his or her choosing. When you specify a photo, you need to locate it on your hard drive and upload it to the Google server. If the photo is too large, a cropping window appears above the photo. You can choose to crop this image by moving the cropping window to the area of the photo you want to display or by choosing to discard this photo and selecting another, smaller image.

To include additional contact information, such as the person’s address and telephone number, click the add more contact info link when adding a new contact. This link appears below the person’s optional display photo. Clicking this link expands the contact information.

You can create your own contact format by choosing the information you want to add in each field. Select a label from the drop-down list. The field labels include:

To add additional fields, click the add another field link. A new field is inserted into your contact form. Select a label for the new field by choosing one from the drop-down list.

The default sections are Personal and Work. You can choose to rename these sections simply by overwriting the current section names, or you can add new sections by clicking the add section link at the bottom of the contact form. The default name for the new section is Other. You can choose to keep that section title or change it by overwriting it (highlighting the word and typing over it). You can add additional fields to each new section you add.

Remove sections by simply clicking the remove section link in the corresponding section.

The Contact form has three tabs, Frequently Mailed, All Contacts and Groups. The Frequently mailed tab contains a list of the people you have mailed regularly. The list contains the name of the person, their email address and a selection allowing you to manage whether each contact appears in your Quick Contacts list in the left pane of the Gmail window. The selections include: Always, Auto, Never and Block.

Import contacts into the Contact management by clicking the Import link in the upper-right portion of the Contact management tab. You can also export your contacts stored in Gmail for use in other contact management programs. Simply click the Export link and choose between Gmail CSV and Outlook CSV file formats, then click Export Contacts.

The All Contacts tab is similar to the list of contacts in the Frequently Mailed tab except that it contains a list of anyone you have either sent email to, or received email from using Gmail. It is a good idea to clean this out once in a while as it may contain contacts from people you meant to email only a single time. To create a new contact in this list, click the Create Contact link at the top of the page. Organize your contacts into groups by selecting the contacts you want to organize and selecting a group from the drop down list at the top of the page.

You can enter additional information for each contact, such as their phone number and address. To enter this information, follow these steps:

Manage your groups by clicking the Groups tab. There you will see a list of your groups by group name. The details column of the list tells you how many people are in each group, and lists the names of the people in the group. Create new groups by clicking the Create Group link.

Your Inbox is automatically populated with your incoming e-mail as it is received by Google’s Gmail. To read your e-mail, click the Inbox link in the menu on the left of the page. Next to the Inbox link is a number in parentheses that indicates the number of unread messages in your Inbox. This number does not appear when all messages have been read (see Figure 19.3). You can select different views. Click the Gmail view at the bottom of the Gmail page to switch among:

Figure 19.3. Your Inbox lists both your read and unread messages.

Select a view by clicking the corresponding link. As the number of e-mail messages begins to grow, you may want a way to select groups of messages in your Inbox. There are special Select links at the top and bottom of the Inbox that, when clicked, place or remove checkmarks next to the e-mail messages that have been marked in a certain manner, either automatically by Gmail or purposefully by you. These Inbox selection links are:

Selecting groups of messages using these tools allows you to easily archive groups of messages or perform other actions on groups of messages.

When your e-mail arrives into your Gmail account, it is normally sent to your Inbox (see Figure 19.3). You may have filters that check e-mail sent to your Inbox that marks it as unsolicited (spam) and is sent to the Spam folder, or deletes the mail and send it to the Trash folder. Also, a copy of each e-mail that you compose and send is saved in the Sent Mail folder.

To read an individual e-mail message, click anywhere along the message display bar and the message appears. You may even see a “Loading . . .” message appear as the message is read onto your display. When the message appears on the screen, the subject appears in bold letters above the message. Inside the box that contains the message you see the address of the message sender and the date the message was sent. Gmail even calculates how long it has been since the message was sent.

Clicking the More options link displays detailed e-mail header information and a list of actions that you can take. These actions include:

You can read your message and then choose to return to the Inbox by clicking the Inbox link at the top-left corner of the message or choose to respond to the e-mail immediately by replying or forwarding the message. When you click in the text box at the bottom of the e-mail message it expands to show all the e-mail reply functions. The From field is filled in with your e-mail address but you can choose to change that by clicking the change link next to the address displayed. The To field is automatically populated with the e-mail address of the original sender. You can choose to add additional e-mail addresses to this list or add a carbon copy (Cc), blind carbon copy (Bcc), edit the Subject line, or Attach a file by clicking the links beneath the address box. You can also choose to add event information that is automagically entered into Google Calendar by clicking the Add event info link.

When replying or forwarding the message, the original message appears within the message box with a line entered by Gmail to note that, “On some date Sender <sender e-mail> wrote:.” Optionally include a note along with the message by typing at the top of the message box above the quoted message. When you finish, click Send or discard the message by clicking Discard.

At the bottom of each e-mail message displayed in Gmail, and also displayed above and below the list of messages in the Inbox, are a number of actions you can take for each message. The first is a link to return to the Inbox without taking any actions. The second option, Archive, is shown in bold because this is what Google hopes you will do with your e-mail rather than erase it. Archiving the e-mail keeps it stored on the Google e-mail servers where it is accessible to be searched through Google Desktop. Clicking Archive quickly stores the message in the archive and returns you to the Inbox, where the message no longer appears.

Clicking Report Spam sends a message to Google, which uses this information to help filter and block future incoming spam.

The third option is to delete the message. Clicking Delete removes the message and places it in the Trash folder. You can access the Trash folder by clicking the Trash link in the menu to the left side of the page.

Clicking the More actions... drop-down list displays additional actions that you can take. Select a checkbox on the left of the message, or click on the message to open it before selecting an action from the list. The actions you can select are:

Labels are a different way to organize your e-mail. Many e-mail programs allow you to organize e-mail into folders. Gmail is different. You can’t add new folders as you can in other programs. Instead, Gmail allows you to add labels. You can easily limit the messages you are viewing in your Inbox to only messages with a certain label. This is a more intuitive way to manage e-mail rather than moving it between folders. It also allows you to view e-mail in the order it was received or as part of a thread.

Gmail has several different ways to organize your e-mail. The last section explained how you can use labels to organize your messages. Gmail uses another system automatically known as threading. Threads are groups of e-mail messages that have gone back and forth using the same subject. This is a great way to organize discussions based on topics. The messages appear in chronological order but are grouped with the subject of the messages in bold above the group.

At the very top of the menu on the left, just below the Gmail logo, is a bold Compose Mail link. Clicking this link launches the editor for creating a new e-mail message (see Figure 19.4).

Figure 19.4. Create a highly formatted or plain text e-mail message.

Write your e-mail message

Type the message text of your e-mail in the large box. You have the choice of writing your message as plain text or formatting your message so that it appears displayed using HTML in your recipient’s e-mail program. Your formatting options are (see Figure 19.5):

• Text style: Apply a text style by clicking the style symbol.

• Font: Select a font from the drop-down list.

• Text size: Choose Small, Normal, Large, or Huge from the drop-down list.

• Text color: Select a text color by clicking the color in the palette displayed as a pop-up.

• Highlight: Choose to highlight text by changing its background color. The default is yellow, but you can select other colors.

• Link: Create a hyperlink out of a valid URL.

• Lists: Create lists.

  • Numbered List: Format information in a list preceded by sequential numbers.

  • Bullet List: Format list information so that it is preceded with a bullet symbol.

• Indent: Move paragraphs of text to various levels of indenting by using either the left or right indent icons.

• Quoted text: The double-quote symbol does not add quotes. Rather, it precedes text with a grey vertical line to show that this is text you are quoting. This is how text appears in forwarded messages or message replies where the original text is included.

• Justification: Change text justification.

  • Left justification aligns text to the left of the message. This is the default.

  • Center justification aligns text to the center of the message, leaving jagged left and right margins.

  • Right justification aligns text to the right side of the message leaving a jagged left margin

• Remove text formatting: Click the italics T with a small red x and formatting is removed.

Figure 19.5. Use these toolbar options for formatting your email message.

These formatting features are similar to those found in most popular word processing programs. Messages formatted using these formatting features are sent in HTML. This is the way that most e-mail programs can interpret text formatting and display the message as you formatted it.

Gmail allows you to send messages without special formatting. Send your message in plain text by clicking the << Plain text link next to the formatting icons. Clicking this link removes all the formatting icons and replaces them with a Rich formatting >> link. Clicking the Rich formatting >> link redisplays the formatting icons.

This chapter mentions several times that one of the Gmail features is the ability to archive messages, and that it is the philosophy of Google to keep e-mail for as long as possible so you have a searchable record. That doesn’t mean you have to keep thousands of messages in your Inbox, which can be unwieldy. It’s best to move messages you don’t access regularly into the archive.

To archive messages stored in your Inbox, select the checkbox next to the e-mail message and click Archive either above or below the list of messages. If you later need to access a message that has been archived you can find it in the All Mail folder. This folder allows you to view all messages—those that currently appear in your Inbox and any archived messages. To archive groups of messages or multiple messages, select the checkbox next to as many messages as you want, or use the Select settings found below the Archive button. This allows you to choose messages with certain labels, messages that have or have not been read, messages that are starred, or all messages. This makes archiving large numbers of messages much more efficient.

To easily move around in the Gmail environment, you might want to learn a few shortcut keys for actions you take regularly. For example, typing the letter “n” takes you to the next message. Typing the letter “c” tells Gmail to compose a new message. Some of the shortcuts, called combo keys, are activated by first pressing one key, then another. See Table 19.2 for a complete list of all the keyboard shortcuts.

To use the keyboard shortcuts, you need to click the Settings link located at the top of the page. When the Settings page launches, make sure you are looking at the General tab. If not, click the General tab and locate the Keyboard Shortcuts section. Select the Keyboard shortcuts on radio button. This allows you to use the shortcut features.

You can filter messages based on several different types of information. For example, you can filter your messages so that only e-mail from a specific person is forwarded to you. This gives you complete control over what messages are viewed through Gmail and which are retrievable through a different e-mail client program such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

While viewing the Pop and Forwarding settings you see the Create a Filter link. Clicking this link launches the Create a Filter page. In this page, you can determine which e-mail messages are selected by Gmail for forwarding.

Gmail can be accessed using an e-mail (client) program like Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. You can configure both Gmail to allow POP retrieval and configure your e-mail client program to retrieve messages from Gmail. Follow these steps:

Once your e-mail client is set up by adding a new POP e-mail account, you can begin receiving your Gmail right in your own e-mail client.

In order to use Gmail chat you must have either Microsoft IE 6.0 or greater or Firefox 1.0 or greater installed on your computer. If you need to install or upgrade these programs visit www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx. for new versions of Internet Explorer or www.mozilla.com. for new versions of Firefox.

To set your Gmail chat settings, click the Settings link in the upper-right corner of the page to open the Settings page. Once the Settings page loads, click the Chat tab. In this form, you can configure the way your Gmail chat program operates.

You can determine whether of not your chat transcripts are saved into you Gmail account by setting the Chat History to either:

In considering whether to save your chat history you must balance security with convenience. For security reasons, consider that your private chat conversations with others will be saved, and if you are using Google Desktop to index your e-mail, your chat transcripts will also be indexed and available for desktop searches. This is exactly the same reason why you might consider saving your transcripts so that you have them available for future reference.

Set the number of contacts that appear in Quick Contacts by setting the Quick Contacts Size and choosing a value (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 40) from the drop-down list. In addition to the size, you can also set whether your Quick Contacts appear above or below the Labels box on the left side of the page. Set this value in the Quick Contacts Location field.

Set the Auto-Add Suggested Contacts to determine how contacts are added to your list of chat contacts. You have two choices:

Once again, security concerns should be your guide in choosing how people are added to your chat contacts. If you are concerned about security—and you should be—consider selecting the second option.

You can be notified of incoming chat messages with a sound by configuring the Sounds setting. To turn on the ability to be notified by sound you must have Macromedia Flash installed.

Configure your chat profile by placing the mouse over your ID in the Quick Contacts box. Adding your name allows others to see more than your Google ID. You can choose to use your real name or a name of your choosing.

Type your primary e-mail address. Your Gmail address is displayed by default. Choose to add a note about yourself by typing it in the Notes text box.

Upload a photo of yourself that appears in your chat or use the photo that your chat partners select. You can also choose to view someone’s chosen photo or select one you’d rather view. You can choose to add more contact information by clicking the add more contact info link. The contact information you add here works exactly the same way as adding e-mail contacts as explained earlier.

To change the status that is displayed, click once on your ID in the Quick Contacts box and select a status from the list that appears. You can select one of the following status messages:

Change your status as often as you like.

Before you can chat with someone, that person must be in the list of people you can chat with, and, of course, must have Gmail installed. Adding others to your list and inviting them to chat with you is simple.

In the Quick Contacts box on the left click the Add contact link. In the text box that appears, type the Gmail address of the person with whom you want to chat. Gmail processes the invitation and sends it on to the person you’ve invited to chat with you. Once that person accepts your invitation, a small bubble appears next to the person’s Gmail ID that appears in your contact list. The bubble is green when the other person is online and able to chat with you, and gray when offline.

When you want to chat with someone who is in your list and is available, place your mouse cursor over the ID in the list and a pop-up window appears next to the entry in the list (see Figure 19.6).

Figure 19.6. Placing your mouse over a contact in your list expands a contact window.

Click Chat in the contact pop-up window to begin chatting. A small chat window appears within the Gmail page where you can begin sending and receiving messages. The text of your message appears above the text entry box marked with the name of the person who sent the text. Yours is marked as “me”.

In the bottom of the window, you see a Pop-out link. Clicking that link opens a new window containing only your chat, as shown in Figure 19.7. You can always choose to restore the chat back into the Gmail window by clicking the Pop-in link.

Figure 19.7. The chat can appear in its own window or as part of the Gmail page.

If you configure Gmail to save your chats, the full transcript appears in the Gmail Chats folder. Detailed information about the chat, including the exact time each message was sent or received appears in the chat transcript. If you are concerned that the person on the other end of the chat is saving your chat transcript and you want all or portions of it to remain private and unsaved, you can go off the record. Click the Options link at the bottom of the chat window and select the go off the record option. If you start a new conversation with the same person, this setting is not saved, so you need to go off the record each time you chat with someone and don’t want the chat transcript saved. Chat transcripts, up to the time you decide to go off the record, are saved.