The original blog entry on ways to find your way around Google's email service and to perform the basic email tasks can be found here - https://blogs-on-gmail.blogspot.com/2019/02/gmail101.html . This is a supplemental blog entry because recently, Google decided to expand Chat access to consumer users, thereby causing changes to the Gmail web and mobile apps UI. Here, we shall highlight the changes made in the Gmail standard view web UI and also answer some of the frequently asked questions related to this topic. A bit of history to begin with. This used to be the Gmail web UI prior to its redesign in 2019: After the redesign in 2019, Gmail used to look like as shown below. Two very prominent sections in the left panel - Gmail labels (#1) on top and Hangouts (#2) below it. Thereafter, sometime in 2020, Meet was introduced in Gmail and the UI was changed again. Here, we find a third section in the left panel, for Meet (#1). Additionally, a new Support icon “?” was added (#2)...
I'm a Diamond Product Expert for Gmail and Google Accounts and this blog includes articles in English, Bengali and at times Hindi on new Gmail and Google Accounts feature launches or changes, Workarounds or explanations on issues affecting the users in the Gmail and Accounts Help Communities and documenting instructions I do not find in the Help Center articles.