Computer Blew

The complete novice’s guide to Gmail

I’ve been a Gmail user since early on.  So early on, in fact, that I sometimes forget that some people are just starting out with the service.  Portland State, where friends and family earn a living, recently took the plunge and converted to Gmail over the summer.  While this was a welcome change for most of the students (myself included) many others who worked at the school didn’t see what the big deal was, or worse, found it weird and confusing.  But it’s not so bad!  In fact, you may actually grow to like it, once you discover all of its cool features.  My company, for instance, switched over to using Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google goodies about 2 years ago and although there was a big adjustment period, almost all of our staff are now Gmailing like pros.

If you’re confused, here’s the three basic features (out of many) that will have you loving the switch.

Getting around

First, a bit of housekeeping.

It may look a bit different, but Gmail’s basic features are just like the email you’re used to.  There’s an inbox for your messages on the main part of the site, and a left-side column with links to things like “Trash,” “Sent Mail,” “Drafts,” and a few other advanced features we’ll get into in a minute.

By default, clicking on an email is like clicking a link on a website.  The email content now takes up the entire body of the Gmail page, replacing your inbox.  One of the first things you’ll notice is called a thread.  Gmail automatically sorts all emails, replies and forwards into a conversation thread.  These are still individual emails, but they’ve just been organized in a way that makes it harder to miss important replies and easier to keep track of a back-and-forth conversation.

If it helps, think of the way you used to pass notes back and forth in class.  Gmail is like a high-tech, geeky version of  the classic “Do you like me? Yes, no, maybe.” message passing. 

At the top of your email message is a list of rectangular buttons to help you navigate.  They are, from left to right, Back to Inbox (which does what it says), Archive (more on that in a minute), Mark as Spam, Delete (which deletes all messages in the thread), Move To and Labels (for organizing), and More, which includes several options, the only one of which you’ll likely use is “Mark as Unread.”

To reply to a message in a thread, scroll to the bottom of the message and click the big white box that says Reply or Forward.  This opens up a new Reply or Forward window where you can begin typing your message, just like you’re used to doing in Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, or any other email service.

If you want to compose a message that isn’t a reply, just click the “Compose” button on the top left of your screen.  It’ll open up this window and let you start typing away.

Got it? Good. Now, on to the fun stuff!

Search

This is Google Mail, so naturally, it’s entirely based on search.  In fact, it might be Gmail’s single best feature.  Just put your cursor in the search field at the top of the Gmail page next to the Gmail logo and start typing. 

For example, if you’re trying to find an email on an old project from Bob, but you can’t remember what the name of it was or when exactly it was, just search for “bob project” (without the quote marks).  All of the emails that mention “Bob” and “project” will come up. 

While you can use specific search filters, they’re not necessary.  Searching “from:Bob” or “from:bob@gmail.com” will give you just the emails that are from Bob, for instance.  But you really don’t need to do this unless you’re looking for something specific.  Basically, all you need to know about Gmail search is that it’s just like Googling something on the web.

Archive, don’t delete

Most of us coming from Outlook, or another way of using email, are trained to vigilantly delete all old email, and can swap stories of our computers chugging to a standstill from having too many messages.  Gmail doesn’t have this problem.

Without going into the technical details, Google regularly downloads an entire copy of the internet to its servers as part of its search service.  That’s a lot of data.  A nice side effect of this herculean effort is that they have storage space coming out their ears, so a few emails don’t really make that much of a difference.  Regular vanilla Gmail users get about 7.5 Gigabytes of storage.  If you use Gmail for work, they start you out with about 25 GB, or the equivalent of a teenager’s iTunes library of insufferable music and bad decisions.

If you’re sure you will never, ever in a million years need an email, go ahead and delete it.  This is useful for spam, annoying offers or chain letters and other things you don’t want but keep cluttering your inbox.

If there’s even the slightest possibility you might need something on this email later though, consider Archiving it (using the previously mentioned button).  Archiving an email removes it from your inbox so it won’t bother you anymore, but saves it in another place.  This lets you search for it using your newfound search skills.  If you delete mail, you won’t be able to search for it later.  It’s just gone.

Labels

Labels are another awesome Gmail feature that a lot of new users struggle with.  In fact, the most common complaint I usually hear from people who just switched is “What are these things and where are my folders?”  But labels are much more useful than folders, and the best way to think of them is to not think of them as folders at all.

Basically, labels work the same way tags work for Facebook photos.  On Facebook, you might have a photo that has 3 people in it, we’ll call them Bob, Tom and Susie.  If you were going to put that photo in a folder, you would have to choose whether to put it in a Bob folder, a Tom folder or a Susie folder.  You can only choose one.  But Facebook lets you tag all three people, in one photo, so searching or organizing photos becomes much simpler.  It’s a way of accounting for all those people in a photo.

Gmail’s labels work pretty much the same way.  Suppose I have two labels set up: One is titled “mom,” and it’s what I use to tag all the emails from my mom.  Another is called “dogs,” and it’s how I organize all my emails about dogs (of which, there are a surprising number).  I have an email from the Humane Society, which I assign the “dog” label.  When I click on the dog label or search for it, this email will show up.  I also get two emails from my mom.  One of these is about a hiking trip my family is planning, which will get labeled “mom.”  Another is about a new dog my parents are planning to get.  Instead of having to choose whether to assign this email the “mom” or the “dog” label, I can assign it both.  This means it will be searchable and visible under both labels, even though there’s still just the one copy of the message.

Make sense?

You can give a message a label by checking the box on the left side of an email, then clicking the label icon at the top of the page (next to “Mark as Read” and “Delete”).  From there you can either select from a list of available labels, or create a new one.  Any labels you make will always be visible on the left column of the page where you “Inbox,” “Sent” and “Trash” are.

Wrap up

Congrats!  You’re well on your way to being a Gmail power user – an accomplishment sure to impress the unimpressable and astound the unastoundable.  But these three features just scratch the surface of what you can do!  You can automate tasks so that messages arrive in your inbox pre-labeled and sorted.  You can create documents or calendar events from messages.  You can even just chat with other online Gmail users. 

It’s worth playing around with.  Don’t worry about getting stuck or breaking anything (it’s pretty break proof).  And if you do need help, just flag down the first bearded, bespeckled guy you see.  The odds are in your favor.