11 Power Tips for Gmail

Update: Here’s one more bonus tip. Use the ‘m’ key to mute a conversation. Suppose you’re on a mailing list and you don’t care about what’s being discussed. The ‘m’ key will mute/murder that entire thread so that you never see that email or any follow-ups. The only way you’ll see the conversation again is if someone adds you to the “To:” or “Cc:” line of an email in the conversation. Read more if you’re interested.

Wow, I can’t believe how many people commented on my late-Friday night post about desired features for Gmail. If you want to suggest something for Gmail, that thread is the better place to do it. But looking through the comments, I saw a few requests that can already be done today. Considering that real Gmail users didn’t know about these options, I’m going to call them power tips.

Stylized Gmail logo

  1. Wayne Schulz said “I want to be able to paste images into the email.” Wayne, it’s not quite the same as pasting images into emails, but one thing that makes image attachments easier is the dragdropupload Firefox extension. You know how you can click “Attach a file” and then you’ll see the familiar “enter a file location or Browse..” form appear? With dragdropupload, you can drag any file (e.g. from your Desktop) and drop it in that text box. It’s a fantastic extension that makes it much faster to include attachments or upload files, and I use it all the time.
  2. Jason Bartholme asked about “A sort that would allow for my unread messages to be at the top.” Jason, trying doing a search for label:unread label:inbox . That should show only unread messages that are currently in your inbox. By the way, did you like how I shared a search with you? That was a tip from the Gmail blog. There are other cool labels you can use as well.
  3. Julian says

    I would like to have a feature for inserting prepared text blocks, so I dont have to write some things over and over again.

    Julian, if you use Firefox, check out the Signature firefox extension to insert text macros. That might work for you.

  4. Daniel asked

    Crazy feature: I’d like to be able to have an easy way to migrate my entire Google account to a different gmail address, because I can’t find a step-by-step guide or anything to help me switch emails without losing various things.

    According to this post you can enable POP on your old account (look under Settings, then “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”), then import the emails (also using POP) into the new account. I think you could use Gmail’s Mail Fetcher utility to do this. To configure Mail Fetcher on the newer account, click on Gmail’s Settings link, then “Accounts” and then “Add another mail account.” Google Operating System (an unofficial blog that discusses Google often) has a couple relevant posts with a walkthough of using Gmail’s Mail Fetcher and a write-up on how to back up your Google account.

  5. Sankarananad asked a related question:

    I would love to integrate my google apps account with my default gmail account. Although right now google allows to associate email address there is no way to integrate or link two google accounts (say one @gmail.com and another yourdomain.com powered by google apps).

    Right now the only solution is to forward mails from one box to another! If google makes integration possible we can use a single inbox to check mails from all those email address

    I’m not as familiar with the interaction of regular Gmail versus Gmail on Google Apps. This post described a scary-looking way that might work. If there’s a better way, maybe someone will stop by and let me know?

  6. Search Engines Web asked:

    The ability to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF without going to another page and using another software

    S.E.W, this post from Lifehacker mentions that Gmail can offer HTML view or Google Doc options for Word and Excel.

  7. Easton Ellsworth mentioned

    I’d love to be able to resize the email composition box on the default page – so instead of having to click the icon to open the whole draft in a new resizable window, I’d be able to click and drag to make the draft box bigger (especially vertically).

    Easton, check out the Resizeable text area extension for Firefox. It lets you click on the border of any form textarea and drag the border so the textarea expands. I haven’t checked how it works on the latest version of Gmail though.

  8. 1001 noisy cameras said “I think the ability to open emails in new windows would be great – it would help those users who are always multi-tasking.” If you’re looking at an email look at the top-right of the page and click on “New window” to open that email in a separate email.
  9. Diego asked

    I don’t know if this would be possible, but how about, when clicking on the compose link (or reply etc) if I hold some key as I click on Compose, it opens the new email in its own window? Same thing could go for Replies etc.

    Diego, instead of using ‘c’ to compose a new email, type ‘C’ and you’ll open a new window to compose your email. It looks like using ‘R’ instead of ‘r’ to reply will open a new email for replies too.

  10. jonathon asked “Is it me or does the pop3 server sometimes stop working when downloading email from gmail?” I’ve been using getmail to back up my Gmail, and I’ve noticed that Google will only let you download a few hundred emails in one batch. If you fetch again, you’ll often catch up. So usually it’s just a matter of being patient.

I heard a lot of great suggestions that I wouldn’t even have thought of. For example, I liked the idea of a “bounce” option for unwanted emails to make it look as if your email address didn’t exist. Oh, and since so many people asked for cool features, let me add one more feature I want: let me set a different vacation message for co-workers compared to people outside Google. Maybe in Google Apps for Gmail, if you are managing example.com, let people on example.com set a different vacation message for people on example.com vs. other domains?

By the way, what was the funniest suggestion I saw? Jeff Hall won with “A USB breathalyzer kit for a friend who forgets how embarrassing her e-mails are when she gets drunk. The e-mails could be delayed until she provides a negative sample.” 🙂

And here’s your bonus tip. If you’re a Gmail power user, three links to check out are the Gmail tag on Lifehacker, the official Gmail blog, and Google Operating System. Lifehacker does so many posts per day that limiting to the Gmail tag will narrow down the posts you see. The Gmail blog is the best place to get official Gmail news first. And Google OS seems to have Gmail-related posts pretty often.

110 Responses to 11 Power Tips for Gmail (Leave a comment)

  1. Thanks we have lapped it up !

    Tech For Novices

  2. For Diego’s new window opening issue, he can just hold shift while clicking on Compose Mail. Make sure to allow popups for Gmail!

  3. I just told Jo (the wife) about the firefox extension that you mention above. It appears that it allows you to post multiple text blocks into an e-mail. She is excited that this might free her up from her one and only clipboard. I will go and study up on this now.

    From now on I have committed myself to re-reading my postings, and trying to adhere to better standards of grammar. If SEW can step up to the plate, then so can I!

    I leave you with:
    http://www.dellanave.com/blog/2008/01/27/my-take-on-why-grammar-matters/
    Just in case any of you missed it.

    dk

  4. That firefox extension is the bomb.

  5. A more efficient way of accomplishing nr. 2 would be : “is:unread in:inbox”. Sure everything is a label, but is and in are actually quicker to type and more logical in a sense.

    I would personally like a shortcut to that one among the left hand navigational items as it is a search i perform very often. Ideally one should be able to set it as the default view when opening gmail too.

  6. Matt, I appreciate that this if off topic – but I thought you might find it entertaining.

    http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/29/please-link-businessesweek

    from [http://www.businessweek.com/copyrt.htm]
    ————–
    In addition, User may not:

    1. use BW.com for any purpose that is prohibited by any law or regulation, or to facilitate the violation of any law or regulation;

    2. use or attempt to use any “deep-link,” “scraper,” “robot,” “bot,” “spider,” “data mining,” “computer code” or any other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, process or methodology or manual process having similar processes or functionality, to access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of BW.com, any data or content found on or accessed through BW.com, or any other BW.com information without prior express written consent of BW;

    —————–

    Thought that you had better know 😉

    kind regards,
    Joel

  7. Matt,

    I have written a step-by-step guide for transferring mails from a gmail account to another gmail account or to another Google App account at http://sudarmuthu.com/blog/2008/01/22/migrating-from-gmail-to-google-apps.html

    Hope this is of help to Daniel.

  8. People may have mentioned this in the other thread, but is there a special reason(s) that Gmail hasn’t already implemented an read/open confirmation feature? Technically it shouldn’t be that difficult, so maybe it is because of privacy concerns? Then an option to disable it should satisfy everyone. Just wondering.

  9. It is great that you can get so many extensions for FireFox to help “extend” GMail, but it would be great if they were built in. But then, which ones SHOULD they build in, considering I’d only use about 2 out of the above 10 GM Extensions.

    Anyway, since people are link-dropping here, I have 2 for you:

    1 – The GMail Power Users group:
    http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-power-users

    Occasionally there are some good tips in there. And at the very least, you’ll learn about a few GreaseMonkey Extensions you’d never heard about

    2 – http://www.geniosity.co.za/musings/google/gmail-unread-mail-shortcut/
    For people using FireFox, it’s a way to get to your Unread Mail in literally 4 keyboard actions. No extensions needed.

  10. Thanks for the tips Matt, the dragdropupload picture extension is pretty cool 🙂

    Regarding 6. the opening of Word and Excel attachement, there is also inside Gmail a quick view for Powerpoint presentation loaded inside a flash… very efficient

  11. re 5.
    you can use this gadget for transfering emails from/to Gmail & Google Apps

    http://www.google.cz/ig/directory?hl=en&url=gadgets.limitnone.com/gXFER/gXFER-Gadget.xml

  12. One of the feature I like most is “Attachment Reminder” this seems unique feature in free email services.

  13. > 1001 noisy cameras said “I think the ability to open emails
    > in new windows would be great – it would help those users
    > who are always multi-tasking.”

    You can also Shift+Click a link. Yeah, I was surprised too recently to find this work on the JavaScript-non-accessible-all-glitz(TM) version 😉

    > Jason, trying doing a search for label:unread label:inbox

    There should be a simpler choice for users, I want this feature all the time.

    On the other hand, there’s also the danger of overcomplicating the Gmail interface just to please every feature request. It’s unfortunately slowly starting to happen; for instance, the Gmail chat box (which I never use, and which at least can now be completely hidden), or the select boxes for the colored labels which hover-blink whenever I select a label (and which I never use) etc.

    By the way, there’s a bug in Gmail’s HTML version, which ruins line lengths when you save an email draft and then add some text and then send it. For what it’s worth (I was recently on a slow connection and the basic HTML version was the only thing that worked fast).

  14. Thanks Matt for your total information, some user talk about “folder” option, I also say please create a option to create many folders as we can create in other email like hotmail or so on. So that we can store different email in different folder.

    Deb

  15. One of my best and simplest uses of gmail has been for backups. There are various ways of doing this automatically but I just found that I wanted to backup odd files after making various changes and the way I did it was to setup a folder in my gmail box called backups, together with a filter that looks for the word backup in the subject and transfers any that have it into that folder. Then just need to send an email from my outlook mail with the attachments and add the word backup to the subject.

    Not sophisticated or clever, but it makes a big difference to my peace of mind for work in progress.

  16. You did not read SearchEnginesWEb’s request correctly. This is displeasing.

    SearchEnginesWEB wants Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF to be opened inside Gmail

    The lifehacker article came out AFTER the original post and she is implying that the feature was just added

    Search◊ Engines Web Said,

    January 26, 2008 @ 12:27 am

    ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

    There are other features that would be desirable:

    . 😀 In the case of uploading Images – perhaps a simple online editor INSIDE gmail to compress and take out red eye and color correct

    . 😀 The ability to save email as PDF attachments – via a simple PDF creator Inside gMail

    . 😀 The ability to Scan and open Zip files that are safe and secure

    . 😀 Perhaps the ability to intergrate with various Social Site ID’s – so one could upload to social sites DIRECTLY from Gmail.

    . 😀 Also a mashup with Yahoo, Hotmail etc – so that each of those emails can be previewed inside Gmail. Most gMail users have those accounts also

    . 😀 ALTERNATIVE free domains besides gMail should be available so that the email would be customizable for that person’s use or image.

    . 😀 The ability to call a phone number and have the Gmail read – perhaps this feature could be integrated with one’s own phone.

    SearchEnginesWEB has over 100 other very brilliant, innovative suggestions for many other Google products – but will credit be given?

  17. Omar Yesid Mariño

    I had no idea about the Firefox extensions… I had wasted much time by trying to paste images… 🙂

  18. Matt,
    Thanks for the great tips. I dinn’t know a lot of them.. 🙂

    Search Engines Web,
    Don’t ask for more… 😀

  19. Thanks, Matt!

  20. Writeup on quasi-integrating of Google Accounts and Google Apps accounts:
    http://www.zoliblog.com/2008/01/20/google-apps-and-account-chaos-almost-fixed/

  21. Why doesn’t email messages publish to RSS (securely, of course)? That way, I could read all my mail along with everything else, in Google Reader. Interested in your thoughts on this.

    Rich

  22. My wish is to open 2 different gmail accounts at the same time in one browser.

    Currently, I have one gmail account open in IE and the other gmail account open in Firefox.

  23. Hey Matt, I missed the last post..

    here’s mine: On the gmail notifier.. I can go to a specific email. From there, i can reply, go back to the inbox, etc.. but I don’t have the delete or the spam buttons.

    Often, I’ll get 1 new email and use the gmail notifier to go view it, then i can’t delete it or mark it as spam without re-loading my inbox. Give me some shortcuts!

  24. Great post! Thank you! 🙂

    Does anybody know how to securely use gmail’s chat feature? (via https), to stop people snooping on the chat.

    Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

  25. Hart: Possibly because it is a useless, unenforceable feature. I never allow my software to send receipts. If your email has something that is time sensitive then ask the person to respond in a timely manner in the body of the email. Otherwise, you are just snooping on the person’s reading habits, and they shouldn’t let you. Also, opening an email is not the same thing as reading it.

  26. Philipp Lenssen: if you need a search all of the time then just create a bookmark to it. In this case, you can just create a bookmark named “unread gmail” and set the location to http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/label:unread+label:inbox

  27. Chas Owens said “if you need a search all of the time then just create a bookmark to it. In this case, you can just create a bookmark named “unread gmail””

    If you’re running Firefox, you can set the keyword for the bookmark to something like “gmailu” and then you simply have to type “gmailu” into the URL field to go right to your unread mail.

  28. Great post! very helpful!

    Here’s my little problem:
    Whenever I receive an email that I want to forward to many contacts it’s never easy to gather them all. How about a contact list that I can choose from when I’m forwarding (or composing).

    Thanks!

  29. How do you sort your inbox by the sender? I would like to do this to easily add labels to common emails, like eBay, Paypal, etc then archive them away. I usually let my inbox get way out of control before i decide to label and archive and sorting by the sender would help out a lot. TIA

  30. Thanks Matt! That search worked and I was able sort the unread messages to the top.

    A nifty feature request would be the ability to add/edit searches like that one, as buttons on the right beneath on incorporated with the “Compose Mail, Inbox… etc.”. To the best of my knowledge you can not save search queries in the filter criteria.

  31. Chas. Owens, you beat me to the “bookmark a common search” idea.

    Sudar and Milan Kryl and Zoli Erdos, thanks for the migration tips.

  32. Tomer: click contacts on the left hand side, click the button with a plus and two people (tooltip says new group), name the group, and add the email addresses you want grouped. Now when you type the group name in the to: line a dropdown will show up “group name” (group). When you select it, it expands into the grouped addresses.

  33. In September, 2006 I made 6 suggestions to the Gmail team.

    These are not minor flaws, but inhibitors to adoption. You’d think that 16 months later we wouldn’t still have 5 outstanding, but alas we do.

    In addition, new bugs were introduced in Fall’s release, including the fact that Gmail is now a memory hog. 🙁

    I’d make the list again, but since nobody on the Gmail team seems to listen to customers I’ll pass for the moment.

  34. One other request for feature or firefox extension. When I click an email link, how do I get it too open a new email message in gmail rather than outlook.

  35. Jeff: Gmail Manager has an option to do just that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1320

  36. Does anyone know if there is a way to sort “filters” in Gmail? I have a ton of filters, and when I need to edit one, I have to look all the way through, I can’t find a way to sort them alphabetically, for example.

  37. David Dalka, bear in mind that the Gmail team was also working on a major architecture upgrade. Those things can consume a lot of resources. But I know that they still listen and appreciate feedback, even if they can’t implement every suggestion.

  38. Dave (original)

    Matt, I appreciate what you are doing, but don’t you think this will result only in features readers of you Blog want and not necessarily gmail users on the whole?

    Wouldn’t it be better for the gmail team to open a suggestion feature request within gmail itself?

  39. Matt, thanks for the feedback re opening a new email or reply in a new window. Appreciate it.

  40. Re #3, there’s also a Lifehacker Code program called Texter that performs Signatures’ function in all programs:

    http://lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php

    And Deb: Labels can be used as folders, as I demonstrated in a post on my blog:

    http://voyagerfan5761.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-use-gmail-labels-properly.html

    More link-dropping, I know… 😉

  41. Dave (original)

    Chas, yes but the link needs to be made prominent in gmail so ALL gmail users know it exists.

  42. Maybe I totally have missed it in Gmail, but how they heck do you make it display the next message after you delete one.

  43. Sasikumar R Nair

    I would like to be able to embed videos from Youtube and Google into the email. In my opininon, this would be a great feature considering the explosion we are seeing today for the video medium of communication.

  44. The whole preselected blocks of text thing is called a signature, and doesn’t require an extension.

  45. I wrote a post a while back detailing how to integrate Google Apps into Firefox a bit better (with the Google Toolbar) as well as how to have it auto import your old Gmail account. More info, as well as a new toolbar button specifically for Google Apps, can be found here:
    http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2007/07/07/fully-integrating-google-apps-for-your-domain/

  46. Additional: That “scary looking way” in tip #6 is not necessary. Just setup for original GMail account for POP access (and to delete emails retrieved this way), and then set your Google Apps email account to pull those messages over from the GMail account. It works. I use it.

  47. It would be great to sync contacts between Outlook and Gmail via IMAP, create amalgamations of contacts across a business, and sync events between Outlook and Gmail.

  48. Most of my spam is in Japanese or some other foreign language not on our 26 character alphabet. I’d like a way to have anything not in our alphabet automatically deleted rather than just put in the spam folder.

  49. Some great suggestions made by people. I hope most of those get implemented soon (instead of needing an extension for each thing).

    Perhaps also a way to see a preview of an archive (zip or rar), and also download it all or selected files from it?

  50. PowerGmail Users tell me how to do this:
    I logged into my gmail account after many month and there was over 2000 pages (yes pages) of Google Alerts that I have signed up for just accumulated there. I cant site there and delete 2000 pages? each page lets me Check All but thats only for the visible page.

    I just need a way to clear and delete all 2000 pages at once.
    thanks
    DC

  51. Regarding #3 in the blog post, I recommend using a program like Phrase Express which does system-wide text expansion, and not just in Firefox.

  52. None of these newb tips should be considered power user but instead considered kindergarten knowlege…. thanks for stating the obvious..

  53. I would like to send a BCC to a different mail address of mine each time I write an email. Until now, I haven’t found a feature that handles this problem automatically, i.e. by inserting an option like “Permanent BCC address:” into the preferences…

    Any suggestions?

    Please see
    http://www.saphod.net/2007/04/26/no-permanent-bcc-in-googlemail/

    Thanks.

  54. There are better tools for migrating email and gmail into different accounts than gXfer and a lot of the links that people have suggested.

    Google now offer IMAP on Gmail Accounts and Google Apps for Domains… Even if it doesn’t explicitly show the option under Settings for your Apps account, you can still enable IMAP.

    I recently used a simple combination of Outlook (for all my old archived mail) and several Google IMAP accounts to migrate 10 years+ of email into relevant email boxes (I have one for personal, one for my blog, one for my web studio, one for ebay).

    All in all it took a couple of hours to sort the entire lot out…

    Forget all the complicated guides, just google imap for gmail and rock on!

  55. I’ve been looking for a quick way to move gmail messages over to a new account, thank you.

    Thought you might enjoy this one as well, a simple filter to automatically mark spam messages as read:
    http://quixotic-engineer.blogspot.com/2007/11/gmail-mark-spam-messages-as-read.html

  56. The easiest way I’ve found to include images inline is via Google Docs.. just write the email from there and send from Docs or copy+paste the text and images into gmail.

  57. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/9-power-tips-for-gmail/#comment-121707

    Nancy,

    The Firefox extension “IE Tab” allows you to open sites with IE embedded within a FF tab. I use it all the time. I think it even allows you to run Windows Update without firing up IE.

    good luck

  58. If an e-mail is considered spam, Do not let it to others.

  59. Considering tip #1: on a Mac you can drag items to Open-dialogs without plugins. I use it all the time (whenever I’m obliged to use Open-dialogs, anyway) but not too many seem to know about this.

  60. >> Wayne Schulz said “I want to be able to paste images into the email.”
    >> Wayne, it’s not quite the same as pasting images into emails,

    You can already paste images into Gmail. You just have to make sure you’ve selected some text or other surrounding area (presuming you’re copying from a web page). If it’s HTML that includes an image, Gmail will take it. If it’s only an image, it won’t.

  61. Matt, Howcome the title of this post is 11 “Power Tips for Gmail”, yet there are only 10 tips, and the url is ../9-power-tips-for-gmail?

    Having a laugh or a bit of an off day?

    @Claudius: Just add the “s” into the URL and it will secure the connection I believe (through a different connection/server or something) I assume this will also make at least one end of the chat secure.

  62. Great Post Matt. Keep it up.

  63. I cannot seem to get the Better Gmail Firefox Extension READER part to work. My greasemonkey script works, but no luck with the Firefox Extension. Any thoughts?

  64. haha, nice catch Miles.

  65. How about a feature that allows me to apply labels quickly. Or when i click the drop down box to apply labels that the drop down box expands to the whole screen.

  66. I was really frustrated recently because I wanted to export all of the email addresses of the folks I have corresponded with. Gmail only keeps track of the ones that you actually send email to. I created a script that uses IMAP to download all the headers and harvest the to, from, cc, bcc addresses and then create a unique list that can be imported into sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, etc.

    Sorry for the spammy nature of this, but I find it really useful. Check it out at http://vallery.net/gmail/

  67. Ability to check external emails (name@domain) from the main page. A button/link on homepage/inbox that checks all/individual external mail.

    Or well, just fetch external mails while updating the gmail inbox? That would be even better.

  68. I completely disagree with suggestion #2, about using search with various labels such as unread. The reason is that it is not easily discoverable from the ui. If it’s not discoverable, I do not consider it a good feature. What about sorting by attachment size, or other criteria?

  69. Hey matt
    Thanks for the post … i noticed a lot of these “tips” are using firefox. This is great at home but not at work.

    My favourite though a bit techy is @2 the share a search links.

  70. Regarding number 5 – “Uh, I don’t really know how to do this, but here’s someone who might, maybe” isn’t exactly what I would call a “power tip”. =P

  71. Thanks for the great tips. Another excellent tool that helps me work quickly in Gmail is the newly introduced keyboard shortcuts overlay. If you have keyboard shortcuts enabled (which I highly recommend), you can now simply type a question mark anywhere in Gmail and a translucent overlay will immediately pop up with a listing of all of the keyboard shortcuts. This is a very handy way to have easy and quick access to a list of all the shortcuts!

  72. Am I the only one that thinks its completely rediculous that gmail doesnt integrate your calendar events into the left bar next to your labels and chats? If it had some type of timer that would be cool too, since I’m in my email 24/7 it would he nice to see 2 hours until xxx event.

  73. Today google-apps is powerful. One thing I miss though is what I have today for my domain. Ability to associate a complete domain with a user.

    Example, I have domain.net in google-apps, which I have users under. And I can create user1.domain.net and make a nickname for user1 to have user1@user1.domain.net. I would like *@user1.domain.net to be forwarded to user1.

    Very nice to prevent spam, when you sign up for a newsletter or something you just enter newsletter@user1.domain.net and if I get spam to that address I can just unsubscribe to the newsletter and block the address.

  74. Daniel: Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately due to Safari’s popup blocker, I can’t use the shift-click trick. The blocker is not as flexible as say Firefox, where you can choose to allow popups for certain sites. So typing shift-C is the way for me. Given I prefer keyboard shortcuts, that’ll do just fine.

  75. Great tips, Matt! I’m sure I’ll find at least some of them useful.

  76. OK Matt

    Right now…

    1. Spacing on the screen does not matching spacing in the sent email (this bug was introduced in the most recent version and quite frankly, I don’t understand how it could have been released in this way as it creates a highly unporfessional reader experience which implies the sender doesn’t care about spacing (which is no true). My lawyer is drafting up the undue stress letter to you right now! 😉

    2) Signatures – when hitting reply your signature belongs on top of the post! So that people can click on your blog, RSS or call you…

    3) The memory footprint of the lastest gmail is a resource hog, some serious pruning and optimization is much needed. 🙂

    I have more, but those are the highest priority at the moment.

    This is the orginal June, 2006 post.
    http://www.daviddalka.com/createvalue/2006/06/26/online-e-mail-service-reliability-need-improvement/

  77. Hello Matt,

    Thank for your such nice information but would like to suggest as other user that folder option should be there as we all addicted with folder options. If can suggest and it happen it’s just great as now I am using other mails like yahoo just for there folder feature as I can’t manage many emails in gmail yes we can store more but it’s not manageable.

  78. How about a FireFox plugin that eliminates the need to restart FireFox every time you want to try a new addon? Got one of the above installed but I’ll be darned if I’m closing my tabs right now – too much to do!

  79. Matt,

    I don’t know how many people need this but, i often feel a need of a feature which allows forwarding multiple mails selected by checkboxes, all along.

    how about searching and filtering mails then hitting “select all” and then forward to some person or people ?

    🙂

  80. I agree with David Dalka regarding the signatures. That would be a nice option to implement.

  81. How to forward several emails at once to other people? (the option like this was in outlook, we could attach other mails in attachment there)

  82. How come that the links in GMail for adding another E-mail account isn’t working in Firefox and IE 7.0? I can’t edit my current accounts either in these versions.

  83. should rename this to gmail tips for firefox users

  84. with new gmail in firefox, when I paste image from web, then I want to put link using that image (select image, choose link, key-in link). after that I send it. Ppl that receive my email will see link outside of that image. this different with last version of gmail. it look like a bug tu me.

  85. I have the same question as Miles, where’s tip #11?

    Also, re:#1- I copy and paste pictures into my gmail all the time. What’s the problem?

  86. I’d like to see the ability to select all emails in your spam folder (which is already easy) and then block any future incoming messages (which isn’t possible yet). It seems like such an easy thing for them to implement, and it’s obviously something people need, but it’s not there. Why, oh why, google?

  87. I’d love an option that when attaching a document I could view a list of my Google Docs, much in the same way I can change folders on my harddrive. Having to go back and forth between Google Docs and Gmail is a pain.

  88. I’ve always pasted images using Firefox in Window in gmail emails as follows: right click the image and choose “View Image:” the image comes up in a different tab and I press Ctrl-a; then I press Ctrl-c; then I paste the image into the mail I’m composing and away it goes in the body of the email.

  89. How about some way of sending fax?

  90. Here’s a wish…

    To be able to filter chats based on the number of lines that Gmail lists in the subject line of the chat. For example…

    Chat with John Smith (15 lines)

    How does one filter based on the (15 lines) part? Why would I want to do this? To get rid of all the small little 1, 2, or 3 line chats that are just there waiting to be deleted… but I’d hate to do it manually when there has to be a way to do this…

    Very curious…
    Sessoms

  91. sorry matt but i am going to keep on at you until you address this openly.

    there is a problem with google and blank webpages are ending up on page one.

    http://www.cyprusholidayrent.com

    this is one example. if you are happy deleting my posts every morning, so be it , i am happy posting them as i dont have any business because i am outranked by sites like the one listed. just some kind of acknowledgement is needed. it seems these sites that buy links etc are ranking very very well.
    years of effort on our part to conform to google’s rules are now gone to waste

    mike

  92. Mike, the best place for that is with google, this is Matt’s blog, you should go to google directly. Also, I think that you are doing you quest more harm than good, there’s a time and a place son and this ain’t it!

  93. Hi, uhm, just so you know. Pressing SHIFT+ the mail you want to open it will open i a new window.

    Just in case you haven’t heard.
    -Glenn

  94. i just found out that you can turn on the bleeding edge new features for your google apps gmail in the apps dashboard. Now I don’t feel like my domain apps is lagging behind my gmail.com account.

  95. Chas. Owens Said,

    Philipp Lenssen: if you need a search all of the time then just create a bookmark to it. In this case, you can just create a bookmark named “unread gmail” and set the location to http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/label:unread+label:inbox

    In my case, since I access Gmail in secrured mode, I had to add a “s” to the http, so: https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/label:unread+label:inbox

    The link (bookmark) does not work otherwise (at least in FF3).

  96. Matt, do you have any idea… how long Gmail will be in BETA

  97. can you tell me how i paste a picture into gmail using firefox? Its not working like in internet explorer, i just copy and paste it into the pic. with firefox, it only pastes a box that looks like the table the pic is in. Please help thanks

    Wayne

  98. Facing same problem like Wayne. But it is ok in the firefox if the pictures are received in gmail and just cut / copy the pics and paste it . 😀

  99. I’d like to be able to send email from my Gmail account via one of my 3rd party accounts (under Accounts > Send mail as:) without the recipient seeing, “[3rd party email address] on behalf of [my Gmail address]”.

  100. Interesting functions. The search to show only unread messages is what i will use. BTW, great job with the new themes.. I try a new one every week.

  101. I would like to add arrows on both sides of the action box, so that when you click on the arrow it performs the action (such as delete) and moves to the next email (cf. the fastmail.fm interface).

    They’ve done something like that with the “[” or “]” shortcut which archives and moves to the next email, but I would like more options there.

  102. There is a new answer to question1 about how to paste image into gmail. Checkout picturepaste.com. It’s a free utility that allows any system clipboard image to be embedded directly into Gmail (and Google docs etc). It’s not a Firefox extension and seems to work with all browsers.

  103. Here is a better solution for your first Power tip:

    How to paste screenshots using Gmail and how to use Gmail as the default email client.

    Recently Google resolved two major issues with Gmail. It is now possible to take a screenshot and paste it directly into an email message. It is also possible to use Gmail as standard email client that pops up when a user clicks on an email link on a webpage. Follow these steps:

    http://blog.wedran.com/2010/05/how-to-paste-screenshots-using-gmail.html

  104. Randy Baldridge

    Does anyone know a way to make your inbox always display unread emails at the top? Not by using a search just so that unread are always at the top ?

  105. My gmailbox is maxed out at 99% and it’s not allowing me to send or receive a-mails. I’m trying to delete as many as possible, but it takes such a long time to pick through them to find ones I can delete. Do you have any tips for easy ways to free up some space? Does it free up space when we archive mail? I can’t buy extra space because I’ve been out of work for a year.

    Please message me on facebook if you have any ideas.

    Thanks very much,
    Judy Pokras

  106. They are nice features Matt, and I love the way it works. Would like to have some more features like a zip files get opened or something like that if possible.

  107. Its about time I move all my emails over to gmail. Your post shows that it can pretty much do anything!

  108. soo i realize this post is from 2008 but i have a few wonderings.
    did that “bounce” feature ever become real?
    and is there a way to “unsend” emails? my school email account which is powered by FirstClass has that feature, but it only works as long as the recipient hasn’t read it yet. IDK if that would even be possible… but hey, it would save me a lot of time from when i send emails without attaching the document i needed to send.

  109. Actually I need to figure out how to copy paste a newsletter from pages to gmail… any thoughts? I use safari AND I even tried exporting it as a pdf… Didn’t work AND micro Doc… didn’t work…. Both would paste and then not appear once sent….

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