GMail - The Turducken of email and the pro's know it.

GMail is just an email program. They have been around since the mid 70's. Yes, it was in the mid 70's, but you probably recall it coming into its own around the late 80's or early 90's.. But I digress, GMail is another email program. I can send email, I can receive email and I can sort my email. Am I right?

Argh! If I hear one more person tell me that GMail is 'Just an email application' I will scream. I'm a professional Google person. I make my living deploying Google Apps for Business, and showing people how incredibly cool GMail is over every other email application on the planet. So, let me share with you, what I and my clients know, that you may not.

FOLDERS ARE A MYTH:There is no such thing as folders in GMail. If you look on the left side you can see what many people would refer to as Folders, but they are in fact labels.In other email applications, you can take an email and 'move' it to a folder, and that is where the email resides. In GMail however, ALL emails exist in one place. In lieu of folders, GMail has labels. If an email is labeled as 'Inbox' then, it shows up in your inbox. If it islabeledas 'From Mom', then it shows up in 'From Mom' when you click on the label on the left. If it is labeled with 'Inbox' AND 'From Mom', then it shows up in both locations. In fact, a single email can 'appear' in as many locations as you want. So what is the big deal over this. One thing that is very unique and cool about this is that it breaks you free from the traditional ways of sorting your email. In the past, your system may have been to sort email by who the messages are 'From', or by department, or the importance of the person sending it. In GMail, you can do all three of those examples, with the same email by adding all of the tags that you want to associate that email with. Shoot, you can even leave it in the inbox as well if you like. So let's take a real world example: I just recieved an email from the president of a company that I'm working with, it is important, deals with Google and he is based out of San Diego, CA. I could sort this any number of ways. But, I have a label called "Google", I have one called "San Diego", I have one called "VIP", I have one called "From The President of Company X" and I have one called "Follow-up". I will add all of those labels to that email. When I am in San Diego, I pull up the San Diego label and see if there is business I need to tend to there. When sending out thank you cards to VIP's, I will pull up the "VIP" label to see who qualifies. When I start my week and setup my task list of things I need to do for the week, I bring up "Follow-Up" and make my list from there. See? One email, being used in many different ways, all available in all of the various sorting methods.

SEARCHING: It would be hard to imagine a better search engine than Google. That is what made Google famous in the first place, remember? GMail uses the Google search engine when you go to find that long ago deleted email. BUT, there are secret commands that you can use in that little search window above to take your search to the next level. Check this out! Let's say I wanted to find an email from Jane Doe what was sent sometime last fall that had a subject something like "Thanksgiving Turducken". I know it had an attachment and I'm sure I archived it (archive topic coming up next) it and I'm sure she CC'd my friend John Doe in the message. Where would you start? Most people would search for Turducken probably and start scrolling through the results. I mean, we all get so many emails with the word Turducken in it right? All joking aside, here is what I would type in the search field above: --> subject:"Turducken" From:Jane CC:John has:attachement before:2012/01/01 after:2011/09/01 in:anywhere <-- Blam, I would get the exact message I was looking for. Well, I would get all of the messages that matches those criteria, but you get my point.

ARCHIVE VS. DELETE:In the eyes of GMail, these are two totally different things. I won't go into a long diatribe about it, but here is the answer: Archive strips all of the labels off. Delete tells Google to make it go away in 30 days. There you have it. Remember the label discussion above? What if there are no labels then? There are two ways to locate the email after you archive it. 1) Click on the 'All Mail' link in your label list, or 2) Search for it. If you remember my example about searching above, then you know why when I said "I archived" it, that it may have been an issue. I can't find it unless I search for it. I can't go into a label somewhere and locate it. So, just search for it. It makes your life much easier. When you delete a message though, that is giving Google the free reign to make itpermanentlygo away, but it waits 30 days before doing so; Just in case you change your mind later. Speaking of which, can I pose a question? Obviously there are times when deleting is truly and honestly making sense, like getting an ad email from your local Proctologist for a spring cleaning special.... But, with 25 Gigs of email space.... Do you really need to delete anything? Hmmm.. Worth considering...

LABS: Only GMail has Labs. And only Labs allows you to add features to your GMail from third parties, that are just SO COOL! Ok, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, so let's start from the top. Labs, is a unique concept in GMail that (in short) let's you alter GMail in ways that you may prefer over the standard look and functions. Here's an example: I personally like GMail (visually) the way it comes out of the box. But some people like that Microsoft'ish Preview Pane that they have in Outlook. Access Labs, and enable the Preview Pane. That's it. Oh wait, I think I forgot to mention how you access the Labs. Click on that little Cog or Sprocket in the top right corner, click settings, select the Labs heading. Find what you want, enable or disable, scroll to the bottom and click save. GMail will have to reload itself to use the new features. Ok, back to what I was saying; There are LOTS of Labs that you can use. Play with them and find the one that you like and enable it. If you find you don't like it, disable it. You can change them as many times as you want. My favorite Lab of all time: Signature Tweaks. Why would this not be the default setting? I just don't know.

OOA:Also known as the Out of Office Assistant. Not much tweaking you can do on your part, and this is one thing that Gmail does pretty much like the others. If you turn it on, it will reply on your behalf to anyone that sends you an email. One small exception is that GMail will remember the LAST time it sent one and it will do it every three times that someone sends you an email. Normally OOA systems do it once, and then it stops. BUT, what some people do is use it as a marketing tool. May be a smart thing depending on your company. It can in fact be on, even if your in the office and active on your email. A pretty stupid, but relevant example may be turning it on during the holidays and have it reply back to each person that emails you that says, "Hey, in case I never mentioned it before... Happy Holidays!". Or something like that. I can't see a practical use for it, but some people use it in that fashion.

And finally, in case you didn't catch it in the previous few paragraphs.... TWENTY FIVE GIGS OF EMAIL SPACE! Oh, that is so sweet. never again will I get some email saying, "Please delete some email. You have too much. Your wasting space, and we want it back. If you don't remove some emails right now, we will prohibit you from sending anymore. Besides, you know you won't be looking for these darn Turduckenrecipesin the future!" Oh yeah? Turducken on my friends. Turducken on!..