Gmail Tips & Tricks

What is Email Delegation?

The Email Delegation allows you to grant access of your Gmail account to another account. This helps you to have assistance to read mail or reply them from your own persons. The granting account will have only the read and respond permission. So it is totally secured regarding your account ownership.

How to enable Email Delegation?

To grant access of your account to another email account, log-in to your Gmail  account and click on Settings. Under the Accounts tab you can find a new entry like “Grant access to your account”. Click on Add another account link.

This will take you through the setup wizard, where you have to put the granting email address and click on the Next button.

In the next step, confirm to send email to grant access by clicking on the button Send email to grant access. This will send an email to the target account for confirmation.

Open the mail and click on the confirmation link to accept the accessing privilege.

Once the confirmation is complete, it will take about 30 minutes to integrate the service in your account.

Log-in to the granting account and you can find a small down arrow which can be used to toggle between the email accounts. Each account will open in a new tab or window.

So, you can view each account simultaneously. Logging out from any one account ensures the logging out from all the accounts.

Email Delegation is also available for Google apps. I found this feature very useful and activated in my Gmail accounts. Let us know if you have still enabled this facility in your Gmail accounts.

Enabling the Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

To enable the keyboard shortcut feature in Gmail, sign-in to your Gmail account, click on the “Lab” sign

and enable the lab feature “Custom keyboard shortcut” from the list and save the changes by clicking the appropriate button.

This will add an additional entry “Keyboard shortcuts” which is off by default under the “General” tab in your Setting page. Make it on by choosing the right button.

Save the changes. You are done! You can now access the Gmail from your Keyboard.

For instance, if you want to compose a mail, just press Shift + C from the keyboard being at your Gmail account in the browser. It will open the composing interface in pop-up window. There are many keyboard shortcuts available for Gmail. Here is the list.

Composing Mail: To compose a mail press C. It will redirect you to the Gmail mail composer panel. If you want to compose a mail staying at where you are currently are, press Shift + C. It will open a new pop-up window with the composing panel.

Message management:

Go to Inbox: g then c
Open starred conversations: g then s
Go to Drafts: g then d
Go to sent messages: g then t
Go to all mails: g then a

Contact management:

Go to Contacts: g then c
Select all the contacts: * then a
Deselect all the contacts: * then n
Delete contact: #

Contact navigation:

Go to next contact: k
Go to previous contact: j
Select or deselect an individual contact: x
Open a contact: O or <Enter>
Return to contact list: u

Applications:

Search:  “/” will take you to the Gmail search box and the cursor will blink there.
To focus chat contact search press q.
The ? will open the help window in Gmail.

Some Actions:

Escape from the input field: Esc
More actions menu: .
Move from the current group: e
Undo the recently completed action: z
Change group membership: l
More actions menu: .

Learn more about the Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts.

Though, the above shortcuts are assigned by default, you can change then and configure the shortcuts as your wish. To do so,

Go to the Setting page by clicking on the link “Setting” at the right top corner of your Gmail account and then click on “Keyboard Shortcuts”.

This will open the “Current keyboard shortcut mapping” window.

You can change the key assignments for the shortcuts there. How do you access your Gmail account – by mouse or by the Gmail keyboard shortcuts?

I prefer Google while discussing about mail service. Both Gmail and Google apps are now most used mail services for their advanced and user friendly interface. One great facility that Gmail and Google apps provides is that you can reply to a mail automatically though you are not online.

 

Again, suppose you are far from your computer and presently you can’t access internet. So if your friends or blog readers send you any mail you can’t reply them instantly. Here the automatic procedure makes your goal. You can save a message for them. So that whenever they send you a mail, they will get your message as an acknowledgment.

How to set your mail box for automatic reply

Gmail vacation responder

Gmail vacation responder allows you to send an automatic reply. After signing into your Gmail or Google apps account,  click on the setting link at top most corner. Under the “General” tab look for “Vacation responder”. Activate it and write down the subject and the message body that should be received if somebody send you a mail. By default the duration of sending mails automatically is 7 days in Google account. But you can extend the duration by clicking on the “Ends” and defining the ending date. You can choose a long date if you wish.

Vacation responder is useful if your are out of town and want to tell your friend about that if he/she sends any mail. But if you want to reply to your blog visitors mail then Vacation responder may not sounds good. Because, Vacation responder automatically replies to the mails from the  same contact once in every 4 days. This is not a good way to send an acknowledgment to your  blog readers as they can contact number of times in a day or weak.

Gmail canned response:

If any body sends you mails in several time asking the same type of questions then answering each of them is not professional one. You can create a canned template in your Gmail or Google apps account and use that template in future when answering.

Create a canned template in Gmail

In your Gmail account click on the settings link and then the tab “Labs”. Find out the Gmail labs featured as “Choose canned response..”(5th from the top) and enable it by selecting the radio button. Save the lab settings.

Once you activated the canned response, click on compose mail. Here you can see a new drop down as “Canned response”. Expand the drop down box. At this moment the drop down is empty. But you can create a canned template by clicking on “New canned response”.

This will pop up a window where you have to put a name for your canned response template.

Make sure that you have put a relevant name for your canned response other wise you may not recognize it by name in future. You will have to select the response by reading the message body. In turn which will not solve your purpose. Avoid the naming like “Response 1″, “Reply 1″ etc.

Next type the message you would like to send to and click on the “Save Now” button.

Now your canned response template is ready to use. Whenever you get same type of messages, just select the template from the “Canned response” drop down when replying.

Make your reply automatic

If you want to reply automatically to all the mail that ask you same type of issues then you can. What you have to do is to create a filter in your Gmail account first. To do so, click on “Settings” > Filter tab > “Create a new filter”.

In the “Choose search criteria” option you can choose any of incoming mail id, sending mail id,containing any word or does not contain any word and subject. For instance I’m using the Subject field for search criteria. After choosing one for yourself click on “Next step”.

Check the box “Send canned response” and select your canned response template from the drop down box. Click on “Create Filter.

That’s all to reply automatically who mail you on same type of issues. Feel free to drop your opinion n the comment box.

How to enable Send SMS/Text Messages feature in Gmail

It is very simple to add the feature. You can do it from the Google Labs. Followings are the steps involving to enable the SMS or text message feature via Google Labs in your Gmail account.

1. Sign-in to your Gmail account.

2. Click on “Settings” from the right hand top corner of the windows.

3. Click on “Labs” tab.

4. Scroll down for the lab feature “gmark” and click on the enable button.

5. Save the changes from the end of the page.

You are done! Now you can send SMS from the chat gadget of Gmail.

But if you want things to be done more comfortably then you can enable another feature from the Lab list to add a gadget to your account. It allows you to send SMS to any body from a gadget at your Gmail account.

The name of that lab feature is “Send SMS”.

This works only if you have enabled the “gmark” lab feature.

So enable those awesome Google lab features and send SMS or text messages to your friends.

Note: Currently, sending SMS from Gmail account works in United States, Ghana, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Senegal, Zambia. Hope Google will enable it for all countries.

How Gmail Desktop notifications work

Google has currently made this facility available for the users who are using Google Chrome as their browser. So, if you are using Google chrome, you do not need to head up to the Gmail account window repeatedly to see if any new message has arrived or not. Whenever an email arrives to your in-box, you will be notified by a pop-up window with mailer address and the subject line.

This is also quite impressive when you chat with your friends. You would never miss your important chat conversations as they will appear in the pop-up window if your Gmail window is not currently in front of your eye.

Please note: The Desktop notifications service has not available for Google apps account.

How to enable desktop notifications for your account

Sign into your Gmail account and click on the “Settings” link from the top-right corner of the account window. If you’re using Google Chrome browser, you should find the option to enable the desktop notifications for your account under the “General” tab. Click on the link saying “Click here to enable Desktop notification for Gmail” to enable it.

At the top right corner of your browser, you should watch an “Allow” button; click on it.

You can just enable the option to get only the chat message notifications or both the chat and email message notifications. If you use the priority in-box for your email messages, you can also choose the option to get notified about your important email messages.

As Gmail desktop notifications is supported only with Google chrome. It does not work in other browsers like Firefox, Safari. You should see the option in other browsers as below.

Though Google has announced that they are trying to make this facility for all standard web platform [source], we have no other choice than Google chrome to enjoy the Desktop notifications in this time.