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Monday, 31 January 2011

Gmail: how to view all unread Inbox email easily

Here's how to see all your unread emails in at once in Gmail. I cover 2 alternative ways.
The first builds on Gmail's Priority Inbox feature.

How to set up Gmail to show priority emails and unread emails

This assumes you've already turned on the Priority Inbox feature.

In Gmail, go to Settings.
Click the Priority Inbox tab (1).
In the Priority Inbox sections bit, item no. 3 probably reads "Empty" (2, above). Click on "Add section" (or the down arrow against that) for item no. 3, select Unread (3), then click Save Changes (bottom left) (4).
Now it should look like this, with Unread ticked:
From now on, when you go to your Priority Inbox in Gmail you'll see your email in sections or panels on the right, headed (going down) Important and Unread, Starred, Unread and Everything Else.
The line with the Unread heading has a "View all" link on the right so you can click that to see all your (in my case very many) Unread emails, all at once:

To me this is much more useful than the standard "Everything else" that you get in this section with the standard Priority Inbox.

You can play around with this and display all the contents (up to the fixed max number of items for that pane) of a particular "folder" ie label in one of your panels too, eg the most recent 10 emails for label X. It's the "More options" bit of the Options.

How to see all unread emails in Gmail using Multiple Inboxes

Don't want to use the Priority Inbox? You can still set up a section in your normal Gmail Inbox that shows all unread emails.

In Gmail, go to Settings, and click the Labs tab:
Now find the bit that say Multiple Inboxes, and click "Enable" so there's a blue dot next to "Enable":
Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes".
Now go back to Settings, and there'll be a tab for Multiple Inboxes. Click that.
And you'll see something like this:

You can do what you like with that, more details below - but don't forget to Save changes when you're done. Basically, all this allows you to view your emails in a bunch of extra panes, whose contents are determined by Gmail searches. You can have up to 5 panes, numbered (internally by Gmail) 0 to 4.

The default when you first set up Multiple Inboxes is to show your starred email then draft emails, above your normal Inbox, as in the pic above. But you can change that.

Unlike the Priority Inbox, in the "Maximum page size" section of the Multiple Inboxes settings you can choose exactly how many emails you want to show per pane (with Priority Inbox the choice is limited to one of 5, 25 or 50 only) - eg 12, if you wish. Multiple Inboxes doesn't let you set the number of emails individually so that it's different for each separate pane, but maybe that'll come one day.

"Extra panels positioning", as it says, lets you position your set of extra panels where you wish - above your normal Inbox is the standard, or you can have them below or to the right of the Inbox. The extra panes display in the order 0 to 4, as you'd expect.

What can you do with those panes? "Panel title" lets you give each a heading of your choice eg "Unread email", as you'd expect.

To display all unread email in your Inbox (and only unread incoming email), below your normal Inbox, do this (make the Panel title whatever you wish), then Save changes:

ie, in Pane 0 enter -
   is:unread in:inbox

and select "Below the inbox".

(In your Inbox, the "View all" link at the right edge of each pane's title will show you all unread incoming email, as with the Priority Inbox method above.)

To emulate the Priority Inbox but, in my view, make it much more useful, first turn on the Priority Inbox feature, and then do this in the "Search query" boxes of your Multiple Inboxes settings:
In Pane 0 enter -
   is:unread in:inbox is:important
In Pane 1 enter -
   is:starred -in:inbox
In Pane 2 enter -
   is:unread in:inbox

What this does is to put "important" email first (for what's treated "important" and how to influence that, see my post on the Priority Inbox).

Then starred email comes next, which is all starred email except for starred email that you've archived, hence the "-in:inbox". If however you want to see even archived starred email in that panel, just enter plain "is:starred" instead, without the in:inbox stuff.

Finally, the next pane shows all the unread email in your Inbox, without the clutter of all the read email in your Inbox. This is better than the usual Priority Inbox "Everything else" which shows in this pane, which isn't helpful at all, in my view.

Or, you can try this if you want all your starred (unarchived) emails on top, then your unread emails, then your "normal" inbox:
Pane 0 -
is:starred -in:inbox
Pane 1 -
is:unread in:inbox
Extra panels - Above the inbox.

Remember, you can make the panel titles anything you like. And you can experiment with other searches.

If in future you decide you don't want all this, to get rid of it again just go back to the Labs tab, click Disable against Multiple Inboxes and Save changes.

Monday, 15 November 2010

Gmail: "Loading", can't reply or compose email, chat not working in Firefox? - possible solution

Is your Gmail stuck or hanging on "Loading…" in Firefox? Gmail chat not working either? The issue of Gmail freezing in Firefox seems fairly easy to find the solution to online, but given its huge annoyance factor here's step by step answers to help non-technical users to fix the problem.

The Firefox browser and Gmail don't always work well together. I've had previous experiences of Gmail being unusable for a while on Firefox after an upgrade to either, until the other caught up.

This particular problem seemed to persist however. (I used Internet Explorer or other browsers for Gmail, in the meantime.)

If you started getting this problem after upgrading Firefox recently (probably to version 3.6.12), one possible tip to solve the issue is this (it certainly worked for me!):

In Firefox, go to the address bar and type "about:config" without the quote marks and hit Enter.
You'll get the warning below, just click "I'll be careful.."
Now you'll get a window that looks something like this:
In the Filter box, type (again without the quotes) "dom.storage" and you'll see something like this; note the dom.storage enabled line which I've outlined in red:
Now doubleclick on the "dom.storage.enabled" line, outlined in red above, so that under the "Value" column it now reads "true", like so:
You can now close out of that tab, and try Gmail again.

If it still doesn't work I'm afraid the problem is something else and you'll have to try more troubleshooting. But it might well work - it has for lots of people.

Clearly Google are now using DOM storage for Gmail in Firefox - and you have no choice but to enable it if you want your Gmail to work properly. A stage on the way to full HTML 5, I suspect.

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Gmail filters – still can’t control order, shouldn’t be out of beta

Although Google’s Gmail (Google Mail in UK & Germany) is finally out of beta, I don’t think it should be because one major issue still isn’t fixed: controlling the order of filters (more on Gmail labels and filters, and Gmail labels, filters and aliases.)

To me, “out of beta” means “good enough”.

In the case of something like Gmail, especially for enterprise use as part of Google Apps, it’s not “good enough” unless it’s at least as good as Microsoft’s Outlook email / calendar etc software.

And, in the case of filters, I must point out that Gmail filters still just aren’t as good as Outlook rules.

I know people who’ve set up quite sophisticated filters (rules) in Outlook to file their received emails into folders automatically, mark them, filter out unwanted e-mails etc. Power users, you might call them. But Gmail has to cater for the power users too – busy people rely on things like this to help them organise their work.

Yet, you can’t set up filters properly in Gmail – in particular, you can’t easily control the order in which filters are applied.

Let’s take a concrete common example.

My list of filters includes these:

Matches: (from:xerxes@example.com OR from:Xerxes) OR ("Xerxes Yapper " OR "Xerxes Yapper writes")
Do this: Skip Inbox

Matches: subject:(MailingListName)
Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "MailingListName"

The first filter tries to pick out emails from Xerxes Yapper, whose email address is xerxes@example.com, and also emails which reply to, or include replies to, Xerxes Yapper (e.g. whose contents include “Xerxes Yapper writes”).

It then asks Gmail to not show me those emails, but instead to skip the Inbox (I could also ask Gmail to Delete those emails, but until I get it all working properly I’m not going to).

The second filter tries to pick out all emails for a particular mailing list with name MailingListName, and file them by skipping Inbox and applying the label to them.

Now the point is to filter out any emails sent to that mailing list which are from or reply to Xerxes Yapper, then label and file the rest appropriately. Because I don’t want to see any emails to do with Yapper.

Problem is, the folder (label) for that mailing list still has emails from Xerxes Yapper in it.

The test searches on the filters work fine, so I’m sure that Gmail is, behind the scenes, applying the second filter first (so that all emails on that list, including those from Yapper, get filed in the folder), then trying to apply the first filter - but as the emails have already been filed, nothing happens there.

Received wisdom is that Gmail filters are applied in the order in which they appear on your filters page. Well I’ve spent too much time continually deleting and recreating both filters (or editing them) in order to try to get the order of application right – get rid of Yapper emails first, then file the rest. But it just won’t do it. They are displayed in the “right” order on my Gmail settings page, but they’re still not applied in the right order.

Why won’t Google let us drag filters up and down in order to control precisely the order in which they’re applied?

That’s my biggest beef with Gmail right now. It’s driving me mad and I’m at my wit’s end.

If anyone knows what to do, or if it’s going wrong because I’m doing something wrong, please tell me! (Yes, normally I try to be helpful and give solutions, but for a change I’m posting about a problem where I just can’t find a solution. I’m about to leave the mailing list in question, in desperation. Someone help!)

Thursday, 6 March 2008

Gmail: . dots + aliases & spam, been there done that…

Google's Gmail Blog have finally posted about the use of dots in Gmail addresses and appending a + symbol with other stuff for filtering and combating spam and evil marketing emails.

Been there, done that. I already posted (with my usual detailed but hopefully practical take, of course) on those productivity / trivia tips and tricks - as far back as 2005!

use of . dot or dots in Gmail addresses
use of + and Gmail aliases for filtering and organising your email, and fighting spam (basically using a Gmail + address as a disposable email address or DEA).

(Gmail is known as GoogleMail in the UK & Germany.)

Sunday, 11 November 2007

New Gmail Greasemonkey API - & Blogger, please??

Tucked away in an update to a recent official Gmailblog blog post about future behind the scenes changes to Google's Gmail was some good news for Greasemonkey fans.

Greasemonkey is a free extension for the free and wonderful Firefox browser, which lets people write userscripts to do all sorts of clever things to webpages like change the way they look and work, improve your browser security etc - see this post for instance for a Technorati tagging script for Blogger /Blogspot.com, and instructions generally on how to install Greasemonkey and install user scripts too.

Lots of scripts have been written for Google services, even Book Search.The Gmail team appreciated that when they tinker with the underlying code for a web service for which Greasemonkey user scripts have been written, that can mess up existing Greasemonkey scripts. (Previously new releases of Google Reader had broken Greasemonkey scripts too, and there are many Greasemonkey scripts for Reader including with Google Gears).

So to help us all they've released an experimental Gmail / Greasemonkey API which should make Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail easier to write and more resistant to being broken when Gmail code is changed. (The forthcoming changes will apparently involve a new Javascript implementation for Gmail.) Greasemonkey has been used for Google Reader and Gears too

Yay, I say! That should make Greasemonkey gurus like Kirk and Jasper happy.

However, Greasemonkey scripts have been known to stopped working not just when Gmail code changes are implemented, but also when other web services have been changed. Or indeed when Firefox has been updated, or Greasemonkey itself has been updated. You get the drift...

As this blog is on Blogger, personally my biggest use of Greasemonkey scripts is in order to get Blogger, particular its post editor, to work the way I want it to, making up for several shortcomings or gaps I feel exist in the current interface (e.g. prettying up the font). I'd go so far as to say my Blogger Greasemonkey scripts are absolutely indispensable to this blog.

Unfortunately, something must also have changed behind the scenes in Blogger's code these last few weeks, because the Keep Current Date/Time script (essential if you save drafts on Blogger for later publishing), which Aditya had updated for New Blogger, no longer automatically ticks the "Keep current date/time! box when you're editing a saved draft. Also, my script to enlarge the Blogger template editor doesn't work anymore either, boohoo.

So here's hoping that the Blogger team will similarly roll out a Blogger / Greasemonkey API soon too for those interested in the Blogger API, which saw a new Javascript client library recently.

Monday, 17 September 2007

Gmail: funny ad - but no adult filtering?

(No you're not seeing double! This is deliberate. I'll explain in a future post.) You know how Google inserts Adsense ads in your Gmail sidebar, depending on the content of your emails? Well I got this most peculiar ad just now in my mail, did a doubletake and, yes, my eyes weren't deceiving me:

Pole dancing, yep. Obviously very in keeping with the other mostly technology-oriented ads, isn't it. That's a subject of huge interest to me, of course (hah, I'd do me back in! Not to mention other parts of me. Supple I am not).

Hmmm, but maybe it's a new tech term I haven't heard of yet? Mashups first, poledancing next (or should that be vice versa)? Kinda go together don't they...

It's quite funny, in a way. But more seriously, if I were a "digital mom" I'd be a bit concerned about ads like this popping up in my daughter's email. Does Google's SafeSearch filtering, which you can turn on in your preferences for general Google searches to block adult-oriented or porn material and other "explicit sexual content" as Google put it, work in Gmail too? And even if it did, how would you prevent your kid from turning it back on??!

Google have been blogging about various lesser-known features of Gmail and labels and filters, but adult content filtering is probably something Google needs to think about if they haven't already, as Gmail grows in popularity.

Sunday, 16 September 2007

Gmail: funny ad - but no adult filtering?

You know how Google inserts Adsense ads in your Gmail sidebar, depending on the content of your emails? Well I got this most peculiar ad just now in my mail, did a doubletake and, yes, my eyes weren't deceiving me:

Friday, 7 September 2007

Gmail: transfer all emails to new Gmail account - howto guide

Have you switched Gmail addresses? If for whatever reason you open or start using a different new Gmail or GoogleMail account (which anyone can now sign up for by mobile phone or online), you can transfer or move all emails from your old Gmail account to your new account, so that you can access all your old account's emails from within your new Gmail or Google Mail account. That includes mail sent from your old account as well as all email you've received at your previous Gmail address. What's more, you can fix it so that when you reply to a transferred email which someone had previously sent to your former Gmail address, their "reply" address will automatically be your new Gmail address. All this should help make the switch from your old Gmail address to your new Gmail address smoother and easier.

Here's a tutorial "how to", at a basic introductory level, with step by step instructions. This method will effect a "copy" rather than a "move", strictly speaking, as the old emails should still be there in your old account; it basically automatically forwards all your email from one account to the other - but if you're effectively switching email accounts it can make life much easier if you don't have to login to your old account in order to read and reply to your old emails. And of course you can always delete your old email address if you really want to but remember it's irreversible!

So. To "move" or transfer emails across between different Gmail accounts, there are two main steps:

A. Set up the old or "source" Gmail account appropriately (enable POP for all mail), and
B. Set up the new or "destination" Gmail account to fetch all mail from the old account, using Gmail's useful Mail Fetch facility, which allows you to fetch mail from another Gmail account (or indeed non-Gmail POP-enabled email accounts) using POP3.

The keen eyed will have spotted that this also works to transfer your Gmail emails to a non-Gmail account or email address, e.g. to Outlook etc for backup (as long as the software can fetch mail by POP or Post Office Protocol), but obviously step B will be different in that case, and I won't go into that any further here. Good ol' Google have allowed POP both ways for some time.

A. Enable POP on the old account - for ALL mail

Log in to your old Gmail account and enable POP (Settings, Forwarding and POP) - make sure you select "Enable POP for all mail" or "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)" i.e. the first option in the POP section, then make sure you click Save Changes.
Check it to be sure - go back to Settings, Forwarding and POP, and in the POP Download section it should now read:

1. Status:POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since [this will be the date you first signed up for the old account]

(don't worry that nothing is selected underneath that, the main thing is to check the start date is right)
If it doesn't give the right date, click against "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)" or "Enable POP for all mail", then click Save Changes again.
For the line that says "2. When messages are accessed with POP" I'd leave it at "keep Gmail/Google Mail's copy in the Inbox" but it doesn't hugely matter for this.
Logout.

B. Set up the new account to fetch all mail from the old account using Mail Fetcher

Sign in to your new Gmail account.
Set up MailFetcher to fetch email from your old account (Settings, Accounts, in the "Get email from other accounts" section click "Add another mail account").
Enter the full email address of the old account, including the @gmail.com or @googlemail.com at the end, then click Next Step.
Google will fill in various bits for you including Username for the old Gmail address, POP Server and Port, and will tick "Always use a secure connection."
Enter your old Google Mail account's password in the Password box.
"Leave a copy of retrieved message..." - doesn't matter whether you tick this or not.
"Always use a secure connection (SSL)..." - leave this ticked. Do NOT untick it or the transfer of emails may not work.
"Label incoming messages" - I strongly recommend that you tick this to use Gmail's labels feature to differentiate your transferred emails from your new account's emails, for more details see below. (The labeling feature is great - you can read more generally about using Gmail labels, Gmail labels and filters, and Gmail labels, filters and aliases.)

You don't actually have to choose a New Label, you could just tick "Label incoming messages" and accept the label name they suggest by default, which will be your old email address ("oldemail@gmail.com", yes a label name can have an @ symbol in it). As long as you know what the label name for your transferred emails is, that's what matters.
Or else if you prefer you could click the dropdown box and choose New Label.
You'll get a popup. If you don't, click as necessary to allow the popup, then try New Label again, if you're using Internet Explorer 7 or something else that blocks Javascript prompt popup windows.
Enter whatever name you'd like to all emails from your old account with, e.g. "Old Account Email" or "Old Emails" etc, and then OK. That way, when you view your mail in your new account, you'll be able to distinguish easily what's been copied fro0m your old account, and what's been sent direct to the new account. Otherwise, they'll all be mixed in together in your Inbox etc.

"Archive incoming messages (Skip the Inbox)" - it's up to you whether you want to tick this or not. If you tick it, all Inbox email from your old account won't be visible in your new account's inbox, but can be found via the All Mail folder link, or located by label, or by searching.
Click Add Account.
Google will next ask you whether you want to be able to send email as whatever your old account email address is. Normally, you'll tick No. You should only tick Yes, then Finish, if:

You want to be able to login to your NEW account, but also have the option of sending an email from the new account so that the From / Reply-to in your new email will appear to be from your OLD Gmail address - and when the recipient replies, their reply will also go to your OLD Gmail address initially, or
When you login to your NEW account, open an email that was transferred from your old account and hit Reply, you want the reply email to still appear to be from your OLD Gmail address, so that when the recipient replies again their reply will go to your OLD Gmail address initially.

Otherwise, tick No, then Finish. I'm assuming that if you want to copy the old account emails to the new account you've decided you don't want or need to use the old account email anymore, so it's more likely you'll want to tick No. Then, when you login to the new account but reply to an email transferred from the old account, the From will be your new Gmail address. Which is what you'd probably prefer to happen if you're switching everything over to your new Gmail account.

Now you'll see that in the "Get mail from other accounts section" of your new account, it will list the email address of your old account (and any other similar accounts you want to fetch email from). Under the email address of your old account, it will say something like "Checking mail..."

Just leave it and let it do its thing. It may take a while especially if you have lots of email in the old account, even up to an hour or more.

Now if you go back and look at the Labels section in your new account's left sidebar, you'll see there's a new label there in the list of labels, called "Old Account Email" or "oldgmailaddress@gmail.com" or whatever name you've decided to label your transferred emails with. I've outlined the example in red in the pic below.

Just click on the label name and you'll see all the emails transferred over from your old Gmail account.

What's more, if you look at your normal Inbox or Sent folder, you'll find the emails from the old account, mixed in with the emails from your new account according to date order and thread etc in the usual way (unless of course you'd ticked the Archive incoming messages option before fetching your old account's email). But again, because you've applied a label to those old emails, when you view your Inbox or Sent box etc you'll be able to tell the old account emails apart from the new account's emails because the subject line for the old emails will show your chosen label name in green. Again I've outlined the label in red below.

And don't worry, no one else will see your labels but you, even if you forward a labelled email to someone else or reply to a labelled email they won't see the label. Your labels are private to you and viewable only in your account. So if you want to label all emails from one person She Who Must Be Obeyed, and label emails from someone else Jerk, etc, you should be safe...

After the transfer - what can you do with the old email and old email address?

After you've done all that, in future:

As mentioned, you can click on your Old Account (or whatever) label to see all your old account's email.
You can view your old account's emails in the new account's Inbox list (or Sent box etc) as they'll be marked with your chosen label name.
You can read a transferred email on signin to your new Gmail account, and even reply to it - and the recipient's reply will automatically go to your new email address (unless you chose Yes to sending email from your old email address and verified it by logging in to the old account etc, in which case their reply will go to your old email address).
All email to your old account will be fetchable to your new account - Gmail will check your old account automatically for new emails from time to time; but if you're impatient you can force it to check for new mail after you login to your new Gmail account (and you can even view the history of when it checked for mail from the old account from your Accounts page)
You could if you wish alternatively set up automatic forwarding on your old account to automatically forward all email sent to your old account to your new Gmail account. This is not quite the same as POP.
You can always tweak the fetch settings from your Accounts tab if you want to, e.g. to move future fetched emails archive, or if you want to be able to send email from your old Google Mail address after all, etc.

Troubleshooting

Done all the steps above, but still can't see your email from your former email account in your new account after an hour or two? You could try these:

force your new account to check for new mail from the old account, again
try clicking the label for your old account's emails
go back into the old account and try "Enable POP for all mail" (even if already downloaded), as sometimes this doesn't take the first time, make sure you Save Changes, then login to your new account, force it to check for new mail, and click your label for the old mail again.

NOTE: transferring your old emails is not the same as transferring your contact / address book details from the old account to new Gmail account. To do that, log in to the old Gmail account, export your Gmail contacts from the old Gmail account to a Gmail CSV file saved to your computer, then login to your new Gmail account and import that CSV file.

This is for whatsonwatson, I hope it helps!