Gmail: Beyond the Basics

I clicked at the bottom of your message 'Send this message to a friend'. I get to a GMail email field but there is nothing there except the one line - 'This may be interesting...'

Also I find that 'Send to' (a webpage) shows GMail but gets a to blank GMail email field. There is nothing to send. What's wrong? Please advise.

EDITOR'S NOTE: What browser and OS are you using? Do you have Javascript turned on?

5GB and counting storage capacity, less or no ads, search tool, .... all these are amazing but the one thing i really like about Gmail is that when i receive say eight emails from a friend Jane, they all appear as one, that way i wont have Jane in my inbox eight times on eight lines like yahoo does. I have both yahoo and Gmail but I'm not about to let go any coz google has its share of problems usually when signing in.

I have to admit that gmail is the best I've seen for screening out spam without canning my good mail. My only complaint about gmail is that I haven't been able to find a "Return Receipt" feature. Otherwise it's great!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I think Return Receipt is a vestige of the past. Not very many emails clients honor it anymore. And since it happens on the receiving end, it's never going to be very reliable.

The one thing I DON'T like about Gmail: After reading a message, and hitting the delete button, it would be nice if the next message were automatically displayed. Instead, Gmail deletes the message, and reverts back to the Inbox page page, where you have to then select the next message. Also, there is no Next Button on the email message display. It's always back to the Inbox view to start the process over for each mail message.

Select, Read, Delete, Inbox, Select, Read, Delete, Inbox, is not just inconvenient, it's annoying. So the "Back to the Inbox View" after every email message action, is why I'm not into Gmail 100%. If it wasn't for that flaw, I'd be a fan.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Larry, first of all, with Gmail you almost NEVER need to delete anything. Just archive messages you've already read. If you're reading a message, press ] to archive and move to the next message. Or press [ to archive and move to the previous message. If you really want to delete, you can quickly press # o (poundsign and the letter "o") to to get the behavior you were asking for. Oh, and you CAN move from message to message with j and k.

What Larry considers a flaw I consider a bonus. That may be a left-over from the early days of Hotmail when the next message was invariably spam, or worse (when just opening the message would subject you to untold horrors.)

And Bob, thank you for the editor's note to Larry's post. Where on (Google's) earth did you dig those up?

Does Gmail still have the problem I've heard about with Firefox? IIRC, people have said it takes too long to load messages and sometimes even freezes up. I run FF and that has been the reason to make the leap to Gmail.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've been using Gmail on Firefox for over two years, and never had that problem.

I was surprised that you don't mention the serious limitation of gmail's searches - it won't search for partial words! There have been quite a few notes written about this at gmail, but they haven't seen fit to fix it yet. For instance, if you search for "banana" in your mail but it only appears as "bananas," you won't find it. Likewise, if you're not sure the name was spelled "Eddelberg" or "Eddelburg" you won't find anything by searching for "Eddelb," and there are apparently no wild cards.

EDITOR'S NOTE: That's correct... I'd love to see wildcards or regular expressions for searching.

I love gmail. I couldn't work without it. The spam filters are exemplary, the new coloured labels are wonderful, the search facility means no more scrolling through the inbox and racking my brains to remember when that message came in...the filters are the best thing, though. I have set filters on all regular email newsletters which means they don't sit in the inbox; when I have time to read them I click on the labels in the LH column and work through them. Google Docs backs up all my important files and collaborating on them allows people miles away to work on them without emailing attachments back and forth and getting confused over which one is the most up to date.

Picasa is the easiest image manipulation software I have tried and Google Photos backs up all my important pix. Only downside is, if anything ever happens to their servers, I am going to be completely lost. Hope they've backed up! PS I use Firefox and have no problems at all. Love it as much as I love Google. Which is a LOT.

I'm new to gmail and having trouble getting used to the earliest-first presentation of a series of replis. The display of inbound msgs isn't really a problem, but when I send replies I'm not 100% sure my latest message will be at the "top" of the email when read by conventional, latest-first email program. When I print them they're Google-style earliest-first, and when I forward them to another account they're sometimes received and displayed (incorrectly) as earliest-first. This seems to happen when I "re:all" to something I sent in the first place to add (yet more) detail.

Will gmail *always* send so non-gmail readers read the latest message at the top? I'm concerned people are a) not reading my replies because they see the oldest message and assume it's a sending error, and b) thinking I'm an idiot for the same reason....

EDITOR'S NOTE: When I press Reply in Gmail, the cursor is placed at the top, so my reply will show up as the first thing in the message, with the quoted text below. That seems like the correct behavior to me.

To E. Harrison, regarding keeping group emails private:

1. Click 'Compose'

2. Click 'Bcc:' on the new message

3. In the Bcc: field, type the name of your mailing list.

You'll see all the addresses in the list appear in the Bcc: field.

How do you remove the feature where any sent mail is sent as a receipt to your inbox? This is really annoying. Thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not sure what you mean... are you getting something in your inbox after sending a message? If so, that's not a feature I've ever seen in Gmail.

I can't find how to edit incoming mail so I can change the subject line.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think you can do that in Gmail. But you can forward a message to yourself and change the subject line.

I know what Tim is talking about and please help if someone knows how to fix it...every SINGLE time i send an email from my gmail i am then sent a "Return Receipt" from gmail in my inbox. The body of the Return Receipt email looks like this:

"This is a Return Receipt for the mail that you sent to billybob@where-ever.com.

Note: This Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient's computer. There is no guarantee that the recipient has read or understood the message contents."

it is SUPER annoying, i one with every single reply, forward, or new message i write in gmail and i have been searching desperately to try and turn it off.

PLEASE HELP. it's the only thing i don't like about gmail.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Gmail does not have a Return Receipt feature. Do you have another email service that's tied to Gmail in any way?

I use Gmail all the time. I stumbled across this hints page and tried using the keyboard shortcuts. It does not specify to use CTRL or ALT. I tried both individually and combined but could not get the shortcuts to work. what am I doing wrong.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You're pressing CTRL and ALT! The Gmail keyboard shortcuts don't use any modifiers. Just press "c" for example, to compose a new message.

I´m a fan of Gmail.
I only wish it could have nested labels.

I want to forward only certain length emails to my cell from my gmail account. Is there a way to use the filter to forward only short emails (i.e., no more than 160 characters...the allowable length of a text message)?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't think there's a way to do that. But if you send a longer message to your cell, won't it just chop at 160 characters?

Does gmail email account has the Return Receipt feature. I find this feature very important and necessary to have, as i would be able to know whether the recipient has opened it or has not done so yet.

There is now a Lab for nested labels.

I wonder how long it'll be before it'll be rolled into Gmail...a very necessary feature.

I am sure that every minute spent in Gmail is equivalent to an hour spent in any other email client.

Hello, I searched high and low, to no avail, for a way to delete private text from an email. I wanted to forward it, only for its attachment (photos)But it came from my daughter to whom it was also forwarded and had private text for her in it before she sent it to me and should not have been shared to others. I did highlight that text (initial message to her) and neither space bar or delete would get rid of it. I hope someone has an answer to this.

EDITOR'S NOTE: If the image is an attachment, maybe switching to "plain text" mode in Gmail would help.

Thank you Editor. I'm not sure what you meant by the "image being an attachment but what I have is an email that has "Skydrive" photos as Att. When I open it I get the usual text presentation with blank squares under it (probably waiting for image to be displayed)...Anyway I think you led me to the fix looking for converting to plain text -
All that time I was trying to delete from the original email that showed first when I clicked on Fwrd! And this time by accident I scrolled the little scroll bar down within the main screen and found my actual forward and was about to delete what I wanted out!
I guess this is one of those things once you know about it, it's so simple - But it would be better if the forward action would open a window of its own instead of within the original.
Well thank you just the same.