To read a message, all you have to do is click the message title in the inbox. This displays the full text of the message on a new page, as shown in Figure 14.2.

Figure 14.2. Reading an email message in Gmail.

If you want to display this message in a new window, click the New Window link. To print the message, click the Print All link. To return to the inbox, click the Back to Inbox link.

One of the unique things about Gmail is that all related email messages are grouped in what Google calls conversations. A conversation might be an initial message and all its replies (and replies to replies). A conversation might also be all the daily emails from a single source with a common subject, such as messages you receive from subscribed-to mailing lists.

A conversation is noted in the inbox list by a number in parentheses after the sender name(s). If a conversation has replies from more than one person, more than one name is listed.

To view a conversation, simply click the message title; as you can see in Figure 14.3, only the most recent message is displayed in full. To view the text of any individual message in a conversation, click that message’s subject. To expand all the messages in a conversation, click the Expand All link. All the messages in the conversation are stacked on top of each other, with the text of the newest message fully displayed.

Figure 14.3. Viewing a conversation.

Whether you’re reading a single message or a conversation, it’s easy enough to send a reply. All you have to do is follow these steps:

Sometimes you might want to forward a message to a third party, instead of simply replying to the original sender. You do this by following these steps:

Creating a message from scratch isn’t a whole lot harder than replying to an existing message. All you have to do is follow these steps:

One of the key features of Gmail is its capability to store large amounts of data. You can use this feature to email files to yourself for backup purposes; of course, you can also email files to other users, as you like.

To attach a file to a Gmail message, follow these steps:

The file you selected appears under the Subject box on the new message page. To attach another file to this same message, click the Attach Another File link; otherwise, continue composing and sending your message as normal.

What do you do if someone sends you a file attached to an email message? First, make sure that you’re expecting the attachment, and that it’s not a virus tagging along for the ride. If you’re confident that it’s a legitimate attachment from someone you know and trust, you can opt to either view the attachment (ideal for photos) or save the attachment to your hard drive.

When you receive a message with an attachment, you see a paper clip icon next to the message subject/snippet. To view or save an attachment, follow these steps:

There are two ways to delete messages in Gmail:

Either of these approaches moves the selected message to the Trash bin. Messages stay in the Trash bin for 30 days; after that, they’re permanently deleted.

For most users, Gmail’s basic search feature quickly and easily finds the messages you’re looking for. All you have to do is follow these steps:

Gmail returns a search results page, like the one shown in Figure 14.7. This page lists messages in which the queried keywords appear anywhere in the message—in the subject line, in the message text, or in the sender or recipient lists. Click a message to read it.

Figure 14.7. Viewing the results of a Gmail search.

The more messages in your inbox, the more you need to fine-tune your mail searches. Fortunately, Gmail makes this easy with a simple checkbox interface. When you click the Show Search Options link (beside the search box), the top of the Gmail page expands, as shown in Figure 14.8. From here, you can search according to the parameters listed in Table 14.1.

Figure 14.8. Fine-tuning your search with Gmail Search Options.

Table 14.1 Gmail Search Options

Just enter your keywords into the box(es) next to the criteria you want, and then click the Search Mail button.

If you prefer to do your searching from the search box only, Gmail offers a slew of advanced search operators you can employ. These operators work just like the regular search operators we discussed in Chapter 6, “Getting the Most Out of Google Search,” except that they’re specialized for the task of email searching.

Table 14.2 details the available Gmail search operators.

Table 14.2 Gmail Advanced Search Operators

Obviously, you can combine any or all of these operators. For example, to search within a certain date range, combine the after: and before: operators, like this: after:2008/06/15 before:2008/09/01. To search for unread messages from a certain person, enter this query: from:gary is:unread. And so on.

If you find a message that you think is more important than other messages, you can “star” that messages. In effect, Gmail “starring” is the same as the “flagging” feature you find in competing email services and programs.

To star a message, just click the empty star next to the message in your inbox. After it is clicked, the star appears in solid colors (a nice shade of gold with a blue border).

The advantage of starring messages is that Gmail lets you display only starred messages, if you like. Just click the Starred link to the left of the message window, and just the starred messages are listed.

Another way to organize your Gmail messages is to assign each message a label, which is akin to attaching metadata to a photo or music file. In Google, this system is supposed to be equivalent to (and superior to) folders, although I’m not so sure. Still, as I said before, every little bit helps.

You can assign one or more labels to every message in your inbox. After they are labeled, you can recall all messages that share a given label—which is kind of like opening a folder.

To assign a label to a message, follow these steps:

To apply another label to the same message(s), just repeat this procedure. After the messages are labeled, the label appears before the message’s subject line.

Each of your labels also appears in the Labels box, at the bottom left of the inbox window, as shown in Figure 14.9. To view all messages with the same label, just click the label name in the Labels box; Gmail displays all the messages labeled as such. (You can also use the label: operator in the search box to search for messages with a specific label.)

Figure 14.9. The Labels box.

If you’re a busy little emailer, chances are your inbox will get very large very quickly. This is particularly so with Gmail, because you can’t offload messages from the inbox into folders.

When your inbox becomes too cluttered with messages, Gmail lets you archive older messages. When you archive a message, it moves out of the inbox into a larger store called All Mail. Because all your Gmail searches search the All Mail messages, one strategy is to archive all messages after you’ve read them, thus freeing the inbox for only your most recent messages.

To archive one or more messages, follow these steps:

That’s it; the messages you marked are removed from the inbox, but they remain accessible from the All Mail link or whenever you perform a Gmail search.

Google applies a variety of internal spam filters to identify spam as it enters the Gmail system, and thus block it from appearing in users’ inboxes. In most cases, you never see the spam; Google blocks it before it ever gets to you.

Sometimes spam makes it past Google’s main filter but then is caught on the receiving end. When this happens, the spam message appears in the Spam section of your inbox. You can view purported spam messages by clicking the Spam link.

If Google happens to route a legitimate message to your Spam list (it happens sometimes), just check the message and click the Not Spam button. This moves the message out of the Spam list and back into your general inbox.

If you inadvertently receive a spam message in your Gmail inbox, you can help train Google’s spam filters by reporting it. You do this by checking the message in your inbox and then clicking the Report Spam button. This action both removes the spam message from your inbox and sends information about the message back to Google.

Gmail also takes steps to protect you from email-borne computer viruses. These viruses typically come as file attachments, even more typically as EXE files attached to email messages.

To that end, Gmail automatically blocks the sending and receiving of all EXE files. It’s a fairly draconian approach; there’s no way around the system to send a legitimate EXE file, so don’t bother trying.

Google also scans all the attached files you send and receive via Gmail, no matter what the file extension. If a virus is found in an attachment, Gmail tries to clean the file (remove the virus); if the virus can’t be removed, you can’t download or send the file.

It’s easy to add a new person to your Gmail contact list. Just follow these steps:

If you already have a lot of contacts entered in another email program or service, such as Microsoft Outlook or Hotmail (and you probably do), you can import those contacts into your Gmail Contacts list. All you have to do is export your contacts from the other program or service into a CSV-format file and then import that file into Gmail.

For example, if you’re using Microsoft Outlook as your primary email program, you start by selecting File, Import and Export (within Outlook). Then you use Outlook’s Import and Export Wizard to export your contacts into a comma-separated values (CSV) file.

After the CSV file is created, you follow these steps to import the contacts into Gmail:

Your contacts should now appear in Gmail’s Contacts list.

When you click the Contacts link on Gmail’s inbox page, you display the Contacts list. This list has three tabs:

Click a tab to view the contacts within that tab.

If you have a ton of contacts in your Contacts list, you may need to search for the ones you want to use. To search for a particular contact, go to the Contacts list, enter the name of that contact into the search box, and then press the Enter key. You can search by a person’s first name, last name, or both; you can also search by domain or email address.

Most email programs let you create mailing lists that contain multiple email addresses, which makes it easier to send bulk mailings to groups of people. Gmail also offers a mailing list-like feature, which it calls contact groups. When you want to send a message to all members of a group, you have to select only the group name—not every contact individually.

To create a contact group, follow these steps:

The whole point of creating contacts and contact groups is to make it easier to send email messages—without having to remember all those email addresses every time. It’s easy to do.

All you have to do is enter the name of a contact group into the To: field when you compose a new message in the normal fashion. When you enter the group name, it’s automatically replaced by the email addresses of all the individual contacts in that group.

You can use Gmail to fetch messages from any POP email account. This lets you access your POP email when you’re on the road—or just use the single Gmail interface for all your email management.

To set up Gmail to work with a POP email account, follow these steps:

As soon as this account is set up, Gmail checks it on a regular basis, and new messages appear in your Gmail inbox.

Just as you can check POP email from within Gmail, you can check Gmail from within your POP email program—any program, including Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Eudora, or Mozilla Thunderbird.

To do this, you have to enable POP email for your Gmail account. Follow these steps:

From now on, you should be able to retrieve your Gmail messages from your existing POP email program.

You can also forward your Gmail messages to another of your email accounts. This is different from reading your messages in another program, in that copies of your messages are sent to your other email address. You then retrieve these copies of your Gmail messages whenever you check the mail in your other account.

To set up Gmail forwarding, follow these steps:

The options discussed in this section and the preceding one are great for when you’re on vacation. You can forward your Gmail to whichever account you read when you’re away from home, or simply use your other email program to read your Gmail messages at your leisure.