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Gmail Rocks
Eliminate the 'Folder Dance' (the drag to folder duties) because Gmail search works...
Eliminating the 'folder dance' saves a lot of people over an hour a week of email organizing.
Sadly we don't need Neo - The email organizer anymore.

Microsoft search does not work quickly and can find very little.
...No wonder they continue to pursue Yahoo.

The pst file (the Outlook data file used to store email and contact info) is one of the worst things ever pushed onto small business and PC users by a software program. The pst file is unmanageable and your worst nightmare.

The small business clients we have converted from Outlook to Gmail are ecstatic about the freedom they gain from eliminating the folder dance and not facing a Microsoft Server with Exchange expense.

As always, a few things can be annoying. People that send emails without descriptive subject lines or without subject lines make it harder if you need to find something.

Multiple signatures would be nice to have. <hint, hint>
Tons of Gmail Storage is great. 7 GB and increasing. One of our Gmail accounts has over 5000 emails stored and uses 6% of allowed space.

Reduced SPAM is huge if you have an online presence...

PC Mag : An Unofficial User's Guide to Gmail.

An Unofficial User's Guide to Gmail
ARTICLE DATE: 04.29.09

By Eric Griffith

Five years in beta mode hasn't prevented Google's Web-based Gmail from flourishing. In fact, it's one of the few e-mail products continuing to innovate in any way these days. Desktop clients like Outlook and Thunderbird haven't changed much in years; Hotmail gets a new name every few months, but that's about it. Gmail, via experiments from the Gmail Labs team, is constantly adding new features.

Plus, Gmail is simple to use. At least on the surface.

However, much of Gmail's power goes untapped. So we've put together this guide to highlight the features you may have missed—ones that separate Gmail from the pack.

Understanding Gmail

Gmail's interface is simple to master, even for those with no e-mail experience whatsoever. However, if you're used to old-school e-mail programs like Outlook, a couple of things might throw you off.

One is labels. Whereas Outlook, Thunderbird, and even webmail from Yahoo still use a folder-tree interface, where you drag messages from the inbox to the folder to categorize and archive, Gmail eschews that and uses labels instead. They're essentially tags, like those used by most blogs, and a message can have as many labels as you wish to assign. If you archive a message, you can find it by clicking on the label assigned to it (or by doing a straight search). Outlook 2007 offers color-coded categories that are similar to Gmail labels, but it still relies primarily on the folder tree.

Are Gmail's labels the better solution? They can be frustrating if you're used to dragging and dropping messages. If Gmail is your only e-mail, however, mastering the "label first, archive later" method is simple enough. And to be honest, you don't ever need to archive messages in Gmail, where searches are as fast and accurate as you'd expect of Google.

Another aspect that may be hard to get, at least at first, is conversations. Gmail groups messages with the same subject line, so replies are matched to the original message. It's similar to the threaded conversations found in most online discussion boards. Click Expand All on the right (above the ads) to view an entire conversation from start to finish. You can even forward a whole conversation as one big message.

You can mimic the conversations view in Outlook (right click the field headings and select "Conversations" as a new option for organization) and Thunderbird (click the word-balloon icon in the upper left-hand corner of the message list).

Access Gmail Anywhere

Gmail is designed to be viewed in a Web browser. However, it's not limited to the browser. Any e-mail client software can access Gmail. The easiest method: Forward every Gmail message to another address that's already set up with Outlook or Thunderbird (or even to another webmail service like Hotmail or Yahoo). More typical is to use POP3, the protocol most e-mail accounts are based on. You can enable this in Gmail's settings—you can even opt to send every existing e-mail you have stored in Gmail to the client software, not just new messages, to do a full backup. Gmail provides complete configuration instructions for POP clients.

Better yet is Gmail's IMAP support. With IMAP, any changes to Gmail messages in your e-mail client software are reflected in Gmail on the Web. Delete a message—it's gone from the account. Drag a message to a folder and it will be archived and labeled with that folder name. With POP3, you'd need to delete or label it on your client and then again at Gmail.

You might not ever need to visit Gmail directly if you use iGoogle as your home page. Naturally there are Gmail widgets available; in fact, there are several, including one that does full-screen access (though why you wouldn't make the extra click to simply visit Gmail itself I'm not sure). Try them all; they're free. Users of Yahoo Widgets will also find a Gmail reader with summaries of incoming messages.

Offline Access

Google's Gears browser extension allows a number of Web-only services—not just those from Google—to be accessed off-line, so you can access Gmail in your browser even when you can't get an Internet connection. Gears stores messages on your hard drive and lets you compose mail for sending when the connection is restored. If you install Gears on multiple computers, no problem: Any changes in Gmail on one computer eventually sync with the main account, and then sync again to the other computers.

Gears works in Firefox 1.5 or IE6 and later. Once you've turned on the feature under the Labs tab in Settings, you'll see an Offline link at the top of Gmail; click it and a dialog box asks you to make sure you're not on a public computer. If Gears is installed, click Next, agree that you trust the Gmail Web site, and click Allow. (If Gears isn't installed, this box will install it for you. The link won't appear if the browser doesn't support Gears.)

Gears can take a while to finish off-line installation—it must download all your messages and attachments. If you've got a lot, it could take a long, long while. Make sure you've got enough room on your hard drive (up to the 7GB of online storage, see "Storage Space"). You don't have to store all your Gmail messages locally, of course, which is handy if you're short on space. Set a date range and limit it to only the most recent files. Junked messages and spam are not available off-line.

For those who have an on-again, off-again Internet connection, Offline Gmail provides a Flaky Connection Mode. All data synchronization takes place in the background, whenever possible, while you do your work on local copies of mail messages; it's not completely off-line, but it's pretty close. Use this mode when first syncing Gmail to your hard drive, so you can continue working.

Track your current off-line status using the icon at the top of the Gmail page. A green circle with a check mark means you're online; green with a spiral means you're online and syncing; gray means off-line; and the blue spiral indicates Flaky Connection Mode. Click the icon to deactivate Offline Gmail anytime. You'll find more settings under the new Offline tab under Settings.

Themes for the New Year

Is changing the look of Gmail's Web interface going to change how you use it? Not really. But personalization is always hot. You can choose between straightforward color changes or more advanced themes that feature artwork or photography. The choices are limited, especially when you compare them with what's available on iGoogle, and there is no option to have the theme change for you automatically each day. But anything is better than looking like everyone else's Gmail. Gmail themes are fully supported by only a handful of Web browsers: Internet Explorer 7.0+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0+, and Google Chrome. Other browsers won't show a Themes tab under Settings.

It is important to set your location in themes, as some of them change slightly based on where you are and the time of day.

Filter Your Inbox Searches

Of course, Gmail's search ability is pretty great (consider the parent company). If you decide not to label messages, finding what you need is still easy. But why limit yourself to one way to find things?

When you do a search in Gmail, don't stick to text. Use operators to narrow things down. They include from:, to:, subject:, label:, list: (for mailing lists), filename: (for specific attachments), and quotation marks to find specific phrases. Gmail Help has a list of useful operators.

All the terms you search on are grouped by default with the AND Boolean operator; if you need to find only one of your terms, put an OR in between them. Putting terms in curly brackets like this: {from:eric subject:hashtags} will also mimic the OR operation. Then you can pair that set with required terms in the search. Likewise, search terms encased in parentheses are forced to use AND. So you can execute complicated searches of your inbox, like this:

(to: (Dan Jeremy Lance) subject: {hashtags twitter})

That would find all messages to Dan, Lance, and Jeremy that have either "hashtags" or "twitter" in the subject line.

Filters modify messages as they arrive (just as Rules do in Outlook). The primary change is applying labels based on criteria that you set. You can also filter items so they're marked as read, archived (meaning they move out of your inbox), deleted, or forwarded to other addresses based on who the message is from, the subject line, or any words included or absent from the message body. Use the parentheses (or AND) or curly brackets (or OR) in your filter criteria as well.

Other Boolean operators you can use: a minus sign (-) in front of something you don't want to show up in a search/filter (such as -from:Jeremy to avoid all e-mails from that guy, or -from:*@pcmag.com to avoid all PCMag.com e-mails). Put multiple domain names styled like that in curly brackets and they're all ignored.

A search in Gmail includes the archives, so there's no reason not to use filters and labels to keep that inbox extra clean.

Dots and Plus Signs in the Address

When Gmail receives messages, it ignores extra periods inserted in the first part of the address. That means youraddress@gmail.com is the same as your.address@gmail.com and even y.o.u.r.address@gmail.com and your......address@gmail.com.

What's more, you can append words to the Gmail address, like so: youraddress+comics@gmail.com or youraddress+news@gmail.com. Combine dots and pluses all you want: Messages sent to your.addr.ess+superstar@gmail.com will get there nonetheless.

Why are these infinitely customizable aliases useful? They make it easier to filter messages as they arrive. Give one kind of address to friends, another to coworkers. Append +spam when you sign up for a service you fear might pass your name along, then filter out any messages sent to that address.

Better yet, sign up and append the name of the service you're using (like youraddress+pcmag@gmail.com)—you can tell when it gets passed along. That makes it easy to remember when you have to sign in using your address as a username.

Of course, not all services will let you put a plus sign in your e-mail address, so this technique may not work for you.

One more alias you can use: the domain names of gmail.com and googlemail.com are interchangeable. youraddress@googlemail.com is the same to Gmail as all the above examples. The same alias rules above apply, therefore.

Getting Attached

Some services have a pretty strict cutoff on the size of file attachments. Gmail is generous, allowing files in aggregate up to 20 megabytes. (For anything bigger than that, use something besides e-mail; try Drop.io).

Because Gmail is Web-based, attachments must be fully uploaded to the Gmail site before you can send them. If an attachment is big, attach it before you start writing your message. Otherwise you might find yourself waiting to send your message while that file uploads. To search for messages with attachments, both those received and sent, use the operator has:attachment. Add the filename: operator to look for specific filenames (naturally). It also looks at the content of text attachments.

Want to send someone an executable file, like those ending with.exe? You can't. Same for files with the extensions .bat, .com, .dll, and .ocx. Gmail won't allow it, because of concerns about spreading malware. In fact, Gmail automatically checks every attachment for viruses as standard operating procedure—and you can't deactivate that scan. You can't hide the executable in a compressed file either; Gmail looks inside them.

There is a workaround for sending an executable, however: Change the name of the file and tell the person on the receiving end to change it back. Annoyingly, Gmail uploads the whole file before it warns you that it won't send your executables. To save time, change their names first.

Storage Space

As of this writing, Gmail users get 7,318MB (or 7.14GB) of space to store messages, plus attachments. You can watch the number of gigabytes allotted to you grow on the bottom of the Gmail Web page. Visit the Basic Storage usage page and you'll see that Google claims to provide even more: 7.69GB, plus 1GB for Picasa Web Albums storage.

That's a whole lotta space.

Yet you can upgrade to get more (10GB for $20, 40GB for $75, up to 400GB for $500, each price per year). Casual users are probably nowhere close to filling the more than 7GB they've got. So why not put it to use?

Google has yet to launch the mythical Google Drive (aka Google My Stuff) for online storage, but you can work around that if you have Firefox as your main browser. Install the Gspace add-on to get instant access to the extra space in your Gmail account via an FTP-esque interface in the browser. It works on Firefox for Windows, Mac, and Linux; Gspace also can access multiple Gmail accounts (it doesn't combine the storage of multiple accounts).

Create a filter in Gmail to archive anything you upload via Gspace; otherwise those files appear in the inbox and clutter things up. Filter for the line subject:d$, as those characters appear in the file names of everything you upload via Gspace. Tell the filter to "Skip the inbox" so the files get archived when uploaded. Gspace is now owned by Wi-Fi provider FON Labs, which uses it to power FONBackup, a Windows-only Java utility for accessing Gmail storage without the browser. It synchronizes only one local folder per Gmail account, however.

Note that when Google makes changes to Gmail, products like Gspace are occasionally crippled and made useless. This shouldn't be your only solution for important file backups.

Notification

Gmail power users keep the service open on a browser tab 24/7 and always know when a new message comes in. However, casual users might like the occasional hint of when to log in for something new. For that there are notifiers.

Gmail Notifier. The official app from Google for alerting you to new messages, it runs in Windows 2000 and XP and on Mac OS. You'll be shocked to read that it's in beta.

Notifier2. This Windows app informs about e-mail from multiple services, including Gmail, Hotmail, RocketMail, and Yahoo and also previews messages.

KCheckGmail. Linux users with the KDE interface can be notified of new messages with little message snippets, via the KCheckGmail tool.

Gmail Notifier for Firefox. Put a Gmail icon in the Firefox status bar to tell you what's arrived.

Widgets. Search the Apple, Google, and Yahoo Apple gizmo/gadget/widget pages for an abundance of notifiers to place on the desktop. Vista users feeling left out can try Gmail Counter for the Vista Sidebar.

You've Got Gmail for Trillian. As the name implies, users of the multi-protocol instant message client Trillian can use this to see what's new.

Anyone using the Google Talk client software for instant messaging—even with Windows Vista—will also get notification of new Gmail via the Gtalk tray icon.

Using Multiple Accounts in One

There's nothing stopping you from having multiple Gmail accounts. Gmail's free, after all. Having more than one is handy if you run out of storage space or simply want multiple personas that keep work and home messages separate. It's possible to link those accounts, albeit indirectly. In fact, you can link them with non-Gmail e-mail accounts too, so Gmail becomes the primary hub of your communications.

In the Settings of the main Gmail account, go to the Accounts tab. Choose whether you want all replies sent to go from the account each message? was sent to (to keep things separate) or from the main Gmail account. The latter choice will go a long way toward consolidating your accounts to a single Gmail, if that's what you prefer. When you click the "Add a mail account you own" link, a simple dialog box pops up asking for the e-mail address. You will receive a verification message at that address with a link you must click before you can send messages from your Gmail account as that address. (Google doesn't want you spoofing accounts you don't control.)

Now you can send messages from Gmail as if you are sending from that second e-mail account. But how do you receive messages sent to it in Gmail?

If the second account is also Gmail, it's simple: Go to the second account's Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and forward everything it receives to your primary Gmail. Archive or delete the messages in the secondary account, that's your call. Back in the primary account, create a filter to label messages from the second account as you see fit, so you can tell at a glance where they came from.

If the secondary address is from a provider that supports POP3 e-mail, Gmail can also import the messages using Mail Fetcher. You will find the feature under the Accounts tab in Gmail's Settings. That can be an effective way to use Gmail as your work e-mail—even if the powers that be won't give up that aging Exchange server.

If you own the domain name for your secondary e-mail address, your Web host probably has a control panel that can forward incoming e-mail to your Gmail. It's not always worth the cost, however; for example, to forward message from Yahoo Mail, you need to upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus for $19.99 a year. Ouch. To access multiple Gmail accounts that remain separate, a Firefox extension called Gmail Manager—which doubles as a notifier—lets you switch back and forth between them, without constantly reentering your username and password.

Keep the idea of a second Gmail account in mind if you near your allotted space limit. At the very least, a second account might be a good place to filter all messages with oversize attachments you can't bear to delete.

Take a Shortcut

Gmail is rife with keyboard shortcut options, so you seldom have to touch the mouse while e-mailing. You can turn the shortcuts on or off in the Settings, under the General tab. In the inbox, hit the J key to move the indicator arrow down (to older items), or the K key to move it up (newer items). If you hit Enter, the message with the arrow opens.

Then use J or K to cycle through open messages. Get familiar with these other shortcuts:

The C key brings up a new compose-message form; Shift-C puts that in a new window. (Turn off pop-up blockers for this to work.)

The / (forward slash) key puts your cursor in the search box without your having to click the mouse.

The S key will put a star on a message, or an entire conversation thread. Or take one off if it's already starred.

The Y key will instantly archive any message, hiding it from the main inbox. It remains searchable, even if the message hasn't been labeled.

Hit the ! (exclamation point) key to mark a message as spam and remove it from the inbox.

The # (pound) key will instantly delete any message or conversation thread you're reading. You can also select multiple messages in the inbox or other folders and dump them all directly to the trash.

The R key simply replies to the sender; A will Reply All; and F will forward. Add Shift to any of those to bring up the box in a new window.

Shift-I will mark a message as read; Shift-U will mark it unread.

The Z key will undo a previous action, if that's allowed.

If your cursor is in a text input field—meaning, if you type, the text appears on-screen in a box as in the subject or body of the message, or even the search box—hit Esc to get out of it. Then you're free to continue using the short cuts above.

If you need to find more shortcuts—and there are dozens, the ones I've mentioned are merely the basics—hit the ? (question mark, aka Shift-/) key. An overlay of shortcuts will appear, no matter what page of Gmail you're on. Finally, a new Gmail Labs extra lets you remap shortcuts. For example, if you don't like C for compose, you can assign a different character for it.

Extras in the Interface

Gmail's main page is straightforward enough, but you can layer in the extras and gewgaws until the page has all the info and services needed to get you through the day. Web Clips puts informational links at the top of the page. Pick what to display in the Gmail Settings, Web Clips tab, by choosing from popular news sources that Google has pre-picked. If you have a specific source you like, paste its RSS feed into the "search by topic or URL" form. Once the Web Clips are on display, click the arrows on the far right to scroll through the top headlines, then click the headline to go to the article.

Google Talk IM chat is obviously well tied to Gmail. Notice the screen with your Gtalk buddy list on the left, under the labels list. You can also add video chat over Gtalk so it appears in Gmail, sign in to your AIM account and use that over Gmail, and stick a Google Calendar box and a Google Docs box in the side area. The latter two come courtesy of Gmail Labs; first turn it on in Settings, then click the green beaker icon at the top to choose which Labs features to use.

Tasks is another new feature from Gmail Labs. Once it's activated, you won't get a window for it alongside Gtalk and Calendar, but click the Tasks link and you'll get a pop-up listing your to-dos.

In fact, any gadget you can put on an iGoogle home page can be slapped into Gmail now, using the Gmail Labs "add a gadget by URL" tool. Copy and paste these URLs to add the following social-network gadgets:

TwitterGadget
www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml

Digg
digg.com/goog/ig.xml

Del.icio.us
www.labpixies.com/campaigns/delicious/delicious.xml

Facebook
www.brianngo.net/ig/facebook.xml

FriendFeed
friendfeed.com/embed/googlegadget/spec

Remember The Milk
www.rememberthemilk.com/services/modules/gmail/rtm.xml

There's some important information at the bottom of the Gmail screen. It's called "Last account activity," and it tells you approximately when your Gmail was last accessed and what IP address the computer was using. Click the Details link to get a table of recent activity; you may see a number of recent—even current—sessions taking place. That happens if you've got multiple devices with multiple methods of access, such as online, through a mail reader like Thunderbird, and with an iPhone. If you use Gmail in only one place, this is a great way to track if your account has been hacked or used without your knowledge. (Always sign out after using Gmail, especially at work or on public computers.)

Safety Features

Everyone makes mistakes in e-mail. Some are worse than others—not attaching something you promised might not be as bad as sending an angry diatribe to your boss (which is worse depends on the attachment…and the boss). Gmail Labs has ways of addressing these and other issues, at least in part.

Click the green beaker icon at the top of Gmail to visit the latest Labs options and look for these items:

Sender Time Zone. Adds an icon next to names in your contacts so you can tell at a glance if they're likely to get your message right away or not, based on their supposed location. You'll see the icon next to their name in messages, green if they're near you, red if they're not.

Mail Goggles. This is an advanced preventative against sending mail late at night. Turn it on, go to the General settings, select days and a time range (say, 10PM to 4AM) when you are likely to be somewhat inebriated, and Goggles (not Googles) will force you to answer simple math questions that may prevent you from drunken e-mailing. You can even adjust the difficulty of the math problems.

Undo Send. Every e-mail program or site needs this feature. The feature gives you 5 or 10 extra seconds after you click send to undo the dispatch. You'll see "Your message has been sent. Undo" at the top of the browser screen after you send a message, but beware: That "Undo" link disappears fast.

Forgotten Attachment Detector. Don't forget to send that spreadsheet you promised! This Labs extra looks for words in your message (like "attached") and suggests that you double-check what you're sending if the message doesn't really have anything attached.

External Extras

There are ways to tweak Gmail that rely on external forces, primarily in browsers that support extensions (read: Firefox).

A mainstay of Firefox use is Greasemonkey, which can accept a multitude of external scripts that impact select Web sites, both how they look and how they function. Of course, there's no lack of scripts for Gmail. An overwhelming number, really.

That's why the good folks at one of our favorite blogs, Lifehacker, created the Better Gmail 2 extension. It compiles several of the best Gmail-related Greasemonkey scripts into one add-on. You control what's activated with check boxes arranged under tabs for different categories. Among the scripts: options to hide the invites box, hide the spam count, and hide the chat window; the ability to put replies in the bottom of a post rather than the top; icons that identify what kind of attachments you have; a filter creation button; and a notifier in the form of an unread message count in the Gmail favicon (the little Favorites icon in the Firefox tab).

Gmail Mobility

Being Web-based, Gmail is simple to access on handhelds. In fact, earlier this month Google revamped the mobile interface found at m.google.com/mail (but you can use plain old gmail.com too). It runs much better than before, on the iPhone and Android-based phones in particular. It integrates Gmail access with tabs for Calendar, Docs, and other Google services, much like those you see in the browser on your computer. The Gmail view in particular does a nice job of bringing the "conversations" interface to the phone. Labels are easy to see and colored approximately the same as on a regular browser.

Gmail on an iPhone isn't limited to the view in the Safari browser. The iPhone Mobile Mail app can access Gmail over IMAP, so all changes made on the phone are reflected online. Go into iPhone Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendar. Click Add Account and you'll see Gmail listed as an option. You can add multiple accounts, in fact. That said, the Gmail mobile Web interface equals or outperforms iPhone Mobile Mail in most respects. It supports Gears, so you can still use it even if your iPhone isn't online; the Mobile Mail app can do that too but doesn't display conversation threads and has limited search and archiving functions. The iPhone app has one specific benefit, however: It indicates on the start screen how many messages are waiting.

A nice trick with Gmail on iPhone is that it lets you easily read documents attached to messages, even DOC and PDF files. Click the attachment in a message you're reading on an iPhone, and the DOC file will be converted to HTML or the PDF will display. This works through Gmail in either Safari or the iPhone mail application. A full list of phones that support Google services can be found at Google Mobile.

Desktop Access

Don't like your Web browser? I'd admonish you that the Web is the future of your computing life, but I'll save myself the trouble since there are several applications that give you full access to Gmail as if it were installed on your hard disk.

GMDesk does more than access Gmail, it also puts Google Calendar, Docs, Reader, Picasa Web Albums, and Maps on your desktop. Essentially, it's like running a browser devoted to just those six services. It requires the Adobe AIR runtime environment and also works with Google Apps (see below). GMDesk, however, doesn't support off-line Gmail with Gears.

GeeMail is also an Adobe AIR app, it's newer, and it has off-line e-mail composition, though not using Gears. Off-line access is part of the application, which doesn't mimic the interface of Gmail in the browser. It provides a minimalistic look and feel. In fact, it looks the way Gmail did when it launched five years ago.

Affixa is a new, free application that has replaced gAttach, a utility that integrated Gmail into the Windows OS. The similar yAttach did the same for Yahoo Mail. Now Affixa does it for both. Applications that try to send e-mails, such as Microsoft Word, and that don't usually work with webmail can send through Affixa with ease. If you pay 2 pounds sterling (about $3 U.S.) for the subscription version, you can support multiple Gmail accounts and get several more features.

iContact isn't very polished, but it doesn't have to be to do its thing: Give you desktop access to the Gmail Contacts list. Edits made in the application are reflected online, and vice versa.

You don't need anything too fancy to put Gmail on a desktop if you use a site-specific browser (SSB). Every SSB runs in its own process in Windows, so if your main browser crashes, the SSB won't. Google's own Chrome browser can create an SSB for any site you choose. Read about using them for Gmail (and other sites) in our story "How to Run Web Apps from Your Desktop".

Importing Data

If you're well established with another e-mail provider, there are ways to get your data—both messages and contact lists—into Gmail. By default, Gmail's single built-in method for retrieving e-mail from another source is to use the Mail Fetcher (see "Using Multiple Accounts in One," above). Gmail uses it to suck in the messages waiting on your POP3 e-mail account.

That is going to work only with messages still on the e-mail server, though. That's great going forward, but what if you've got years' worth of messages that you want to import to Gmail as a permanent, searchable archive?

In a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird, set up IMAP access to Gmail. You'll see it as a separate inbox. Your Gmail labels will appear as regular old folders. Drag and drop messages from your POP3 inbox and folders into the Gmail folders. This retains all the original formatting and date stamps—even the attachments are moved over. The copying can take a while, but once it's done, you should have a complete archive of your messages in the online storage of Gmail—and still have access to it in the desktop software. Windows Live Hotmail, being a Microsoft product, is best accessed in an IMAP-like way using a Microsoft product such as Outlook. Download and run the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector to link your Hotmail (if it's updated to a Windows Live Hotmail account) to Outlook (2003 and 2007 versions only). The third-party IzyMail will also handle Hotmail to Gmail message conversion and forwarding. Once you've got access, copy the Hotmail messages to your Gmail.

I'd hoped when moving from Yahoo Mail to use Yahoo Zimbra Desktop. It's a free download providing desktop access to multiple types of e-mail accounts (including Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, and other POP3/IMAP accounts). It is, in fact, the only way to get IMAP access to Yahoo Mail—even paid Yahoo Mail Plus users get only POP3 access. However, while you can back up messages to a compressed TGZ file from any account, restoring them to a different account—such as Gmail—doesn't actually put the messages on the Gmail server. Zimbra provides backup locally only.

So for now, moving messages from Yahoo Mail to Gmail means moving all the messages to your Yahoo Mail inbox, paying for POP3 support, and using Mail Fetcher to grab them. The paid account also lets you forward other incoming messages to Gmail. (You might get around paying by using the open-source YPOPs to install a POP3 gateway to your Yahoo Mail.)

To import contacts, first save your current contacts into a CSV (comma-separated values) file. You can do this with Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail. Importing with Gmail is limited to 3,000 contacts at a time. Click the Contacts link on the left in Gmail and you'll find Import (and Export) links on the upper right-hand side of the screen. You may find yourself reformatting some fields; do that to the CSV file using Microsoft Excel first and it might be easier. Gmail will tell you if it left out some entries; it doesn't always like non-ASCII characters, for example. Alas, distribution lists/mailing groups don't get imported; you'll have to recreate them with Google Contacts.

If your contacts are on a handheld like the iPhone, you can typically sync it with Google Contacts; that's an option through iTunes sync with the iPhone, for example.

Exporting and Backup

Getting data out of Gmail is pretty straightforward. In the case of contacts, the only option is to export the entire list into a CSV file. You can also, as noted before, sync it with other services, such as with the Thunderbird contact list or onto your iPhone. The Zindus extension will do that.

Convenient as Gmail is at being accessible in so many ways and places, keep one thing in mind: With all your messages on Google servers you're at Google's mercy. The occasional outage is one thing, but what happens if it loses data? Your data? You want a backup. Just in case. Trust us.

The simplest way to do that is to run a program like Thunderbird or Outlook that downloads your Gmail via POP3. This won't impact what you have stored on the Gmail servers, but it also doesn't take into account filters, or changes or deletions you make to messages; in fact, using POP3, you have to filter and delete messages twice, once online and once in the e-mail client.

Sure, POP3's extra file manipulation is irritating, but it's more or less the best bet for backup. IMAP, which mirrors what you do in the client back onto the server when you sync (and vice versa when you're online), is not a backup method at all unless you drag and drop messages from your Gmail account to your other mailboxes in the client. That's fine one time, but not convenient enough to do regularly.

There's another option: Create a second Gmail account and make sure all messages sent and received in the first are forwarded there. It's not a perfect solution, of course—if Gmail is out altogether, it's useless—but might not be a bad idea nonetheless.

Gmail Labs believes in data freedom. One recent experiment is an option to import and export filters. Turn it on and you can go to Settings/Filters and create a single file that backs up your filters. You can then share the filters with other people, who may appreciate your skills at labeling and archiving incoming messages. I'm hopeful that Google will add a full message backup experiment soon.

Until then, there is one effective solution, the aptly named Gmail Backup utility. It offers one-click backup of Gmail messages. Make sure you've turned on IMAP support. The messages it downloads are stored locally as EML files, which e-mail clients like Thunderbird can open to read as though they were regular messages. This is a good method for moving your Gmail account to client software...or even moving it to a Google Apps account (see the next section for more on this).

Google Apps for Your Domain

Many eschew using a webmail or ISP-provided mail system because the address you get isn't very personal—why go generic when you can have your own domain name? Google knows that and provides use of Gmail (plus Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gtalk, and Google Sites) with your domain name via the free, standard edition of the Google Apps package.

This does not mean that Google will host your domain. Instead, messages sent to your domain name funnel to your Google Apps account. (Google will help you buy a domain name in conjunction with GoDaddy, if you're starting from scratch; the cost is $10 per year for registration.)

After finishing all that setup, you'll find that Google Apps doesn't look much different from ordinary Gmail—there are still ads on message pages, and the size limit is the same (about 7GB per user). If you pay $50 a year for the business version, you can skip the ads and get 25GB of space per user—plus business extras like phone support. Once you've linked your domain and the Google Apps account—which will require some Web site server access on your part—you'll get access to a dashboard that you can use to dole out accounts to the 50 friends, family, or coworkers who want the same domain. Remember, if you do any of this, you're setting yourself up to be the IT manager for the whole group. And down that road you'll find... madness.

For Google Apps users only, Google created a utility called Email Uploader to assist those with Windows XP or Vista and existing Outlook e-mail software in moving message data from PST files directly to Google Apps. It's a shame the company doesn't offer this for regular Gmail users as well.

Gmail Tips, Tricks, and Experiments

Some random and useful things to take advantage of in Gmail:

Vacation Auto Responder. If you know you're going to be away from Gmail, use this tool (found in Settings under the General tab) to let people know the details when they drop you a note.

Mute Conversations. Conversation threads in Gmail are handy, but you don't want to be part of every conversation. When reading such a message hit the M key. This archives the conversation and all subsequent replies as they come in. You can still find them with a search, if you change your mind.

PDF, TIFF, and PPT Reading. You can read a number of document types on handhelds by accessing them through Gmail. The same is true with Gmail on the desktop when it comes to PDF files, TIFF images, and PowerPoint presentations. You don't need Adobe Reader or FoxIt Reader installed, nor that infamous Microsoft Office app. Access any message with one of those document types attached, then click the View link next to the file size. It will open the file in your Google Docs account.

E-mail to Document. This is very handy for a particularly large conversation in Gmail, but works with any message. In Gmail Labs (click the green beaker icon), enable "Create a Document." This adds a link to the collection at the right of your message named, surprisingly enough, "Create a Document." Click it and Google Docs loads the thread into your default word processing document.

Secure Gmail. If you're concerned about snoops and want the equivalent of PGP for Gmail, get the FireGPG extension for Firefox. It activates public-key cryptography for securing your messages in Gmail using Gnu Privacy Guard, an open-source implementation of the OpenPGP standard.

Suggested Recipients. The very latest in Gmail Labs excellence, this experiment suggests recipients you might want to include in the To: field, based on the content of the message and who you've e-mailed before.

Insert Images. It's possible to stick a picture into your messages in Gmail, not as an attachment, but so that others will see the image upon receipt (fellow Gmail users will still have to click "Display images below"—that's part of Gmail's security). Turn the service on in Gmail Labs, then look for the picture icon in the toolbar when composing a message in rich formatting mode.

Delete Spam Now. Visit the Spam folder occasionally. Gmail has what is probably the best spam blocker in the world, but occasionally it can be overzealous and categorize your friend or a newsletter you want as spam. If this has happened, mark the messages you want to save as "not spam" and then click the Delete Spam Now link to clear the rest.

Multiple Signatures. Gmail has built in only one signature for use on all messages you send. Several Firefox extensions will provide multiple signatures from which you can pick and choose, including Clippings and Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures.

Copyright (c) 2009Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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