Bill Detwiler: Long-time Outlook users are often annoyed byGmail features that long-time Gmail uses love. If you fall into the formergroup, you're in luck.
I'm Bill Detwiler, and during this episode of TR Dojo, I'llshow you two ways to make Gmail's web interface act like Outlook.
Whether you willingly moved from Outlook to Gmail or you'vebeen forced to move as part of your employer's use of Google Apps, thetransition can be a little jarring.
Features that many Gmail users love, such as conversationview, often annoy the pants off people accustomed to Outlook's default methodof arranging messages by date and time. Luckily, with a few clicks of themouse, you can tweak Gmail's web interface to work like Outlook.
Now, during this video I'll show you two ways to do this.First, I'll explain how to turn off Gmail's default conversation view. Second,I'll show you how to create filters and labels, which help you sort mailsimilar to the way you did with Outlook rules.
Now, to every hardcore Gmail fan who's throwing up theirhands and wondering why anyone would want to change the system's defaultpreferences, let me remind you that -- what works for you may not work foreveryone. The conversation view may help you group related messages, but it maycause others to overlook the most recently delivered emails.
Likewise, to all the the long-time Outlook users who weredragged kicking and screaming into Gmail -- give features, like conversationview, a chance before turning it off. You may find that they actually makemanaging your email a little easier.
Ultimately, you'll want to choose the configuration thatworks the best for you. And if that includes disabling conversation view,here's how you do it.
Click the Options icon (which is shaped like a gear) in theupper right corner of the Gmail Web interface and then click the Mail Settingslink. From the Mail Settings page, scroll down to the Conversation View sectionand click the "Conversation view off" option. Then, scroll down tothe bottom of the page and click the the Save Changes button. That's all thereis to it. When you return to your Inbox, you should see each message as aseparate item.
If you received a lot of email throughout the day, like Ido, this next tip can be a real time saver. In Outlook, I used a combination offolders and rules to sort incoming and outgoing messages. This let me quicklydetermine who incoming mail was from and made it easy to find old messages sentto and received from specific individuals.
You can achieve the same result in Gmail using filters(which act like rules) and labels (which act like folders).
The easiest way to set up a new filter is open a messagethat you want to filter. Then click the More actions button and select theFilter messages like these link. This should open the Create a Filter page. Atthe top, there's a section were you can specify criteria on which to filtermessages, such as the sender's email address, the recipient's email address orname, text in the subject line, or even text within the message body. There'seven an attachment checkbox. You can use these criteria separately or together.
Below the criteria section is the Test Search section. Thisarea shows you which messages will be filtered with the criteria you entered.As you change the criteria, click the Test Search button to see how the changeeffects the filter. Once you're satisfied with the results, click Next Step.
On the next page, you can Choose an action for Gmail to takeon each filtered message. There are a variety of actions, but for the purposeof this demonstration, we're only interested in two of them -- Skip the Inboxand Apply the label. Select both of them.
Now we need to create the label that Gmail will apply to thefilters messages. So, click the Choose label drop-down menu. If you've alreadycreated any labels, they will appear in the menu. If not, or if you want tocreate a new label for this filter, click New label. Enter a name for the newlabel, and click create.
Gmail will create the label and return you to the ChooseAction page. You can now click the Create Filter button to apply your filter tonew incoming messages. If you want to apply the filter to existing messages,make sure you check the "Also apply filter to" option.
Once your filter and label are in place, you'll see thelabel along the left column of Gmail's main window under the default emailgroups. As messages come in, they will now appear an unread item within eachlabel category.
f you want to filter outgoing mail, follow the same steps -but select a messages from your sent folder to begin the process.
Well that does it for this edition of TR Dojo. For more tipson managing, supporting, and using Gmail or any other Google product used inbusiness environments, check out TechRepublic's Google in the Enterprise blog.I'll link to it from the TR Dojo blog.
And as always, for more teachings on YOUR path to becomingan IT Ninja, visit trdojo.techrepublic.com, sign-up for our newsletter, orfollow me on Twitter.
Thanks for visiting the TR Dojo.
