Blogs on Gmail and Google Accounts

This article is intended to assist Gmail users who have previously set up or allowed (a) Forwarding, (b) "Send mail" alias and (c) Mail delegation setup with another email address that they now want to cancel but are unable to.  There are two common approaches to cancelling such setups. From the account where the set-up occurs. From the account that allows the set-up. For the screenshots, I have used two Gmail addresses, one s*****@gmail.com and the other t*****@gmail.com.  Note: This article does not contain steps to set up Email Auto-Forwarding, "Send Mail as" Aliases, or Mail Delegation. It only highlights how to cancel such setups from both accounts. Case 1: t*****@gmail.com auto-forwards its emails to s*****@gmail.com How things are set up: When auto-forwarding is set up, Gmail sends a forwarding confirmation email to the destination address, in this case,  s*****@gmail.com.  After the confirmation link is clicked, the destination address is shown as the Forwa...

We receive many threads in the Gmail Help Community regarding the daily sending limits of personal Gmail accounts ending with @gmail.com. Users typically complain about (a) messages beyond a certain number (often around 100) bouncing back or (b) being unable to increase the daily sending number even when it is comfortably under the limit of 500 recipients mentioned in the related Help Centre article here -  Limits for sending & getting mail . Gmail does not provide additional details; mostly to prevent any abuse of their systems and hence, it becomes difficult for the genuine users to figure out what to look for and how to resolve this situation and prevent its recurrence. In most cases, the affected account is allowed to send messages within 1 to 24 hours. In this article, we are going to look into the other details that are related to this issue and can impact the daily sending limit on a particular personal Gmail address. There are a few things to keep in mind concerning the...

If you are, like me, a fan of the Gmail Basic HTML view, then you must have noticed the following splash screen trying to access Gmail through its Basic HTML UI in recent days. When I saw it for the first time, my heart sank. As someone who started using Gmail a month after its launch, the Gmail Basic HTML view was the first Gmail UI I was introduced to and it was love at first sight. I loved the cleanliness of the layout, the placement and the functionality of the search box, quick access to the Contacts and the various links at the top and the bottom of the inbox screen among other things. With time, other features were added to the view, until in 2011, the Gmail team decided to overhaul the default Gmail UI to a more polished UI, which was called the Gmail standard web view to differentiate it from the Gmail Basic HTML view. Since the majority of the users back then used browsers to access Gmail, the change in the UI caused a big discussion in the Gmail help forum and resulted in th...

Often we see threads in the Gmail Help Community where we are asked to explain the difference between the Category labels and the Inbox category tabs in Gmail. We begin the discussion by visually highlighting what we mean by the Inbox category tabs and the Category labels and where they are located. Now, we are going to take a look at the differences, with examples. So, let's begin. Commonly, if we click on one of the Category labels, say Promotions, we see a list of messages that Gmail internally categorizes as such, based on various signals such as how they are marked up, what they contain, the domain they are sent from, etc.  As shown in the screenshot above, it also generates a search query for our better understanding - category:promotions  and it is important to remember this little detail. Similarly, when we click on the Promotions tab in Gmail inbox, it also shows a list of messages, in fact, the same set of messages in this case. So, where's the difference? To de...

The Gmail Activity Information (formerly known as the Gmail Last Account Activity) window presents the easiest way to check for unauthorized account access or suspicious activities within Gmail. One can access that window by clicking on the Details link below the Last account activity link at the bottom-right of the Gmail Inbox page in the Gmail standard web UI. Note: In certain inbox layouts, such as Unread First with the Preview pane enabled and a conversation selected, you may not see the Details link. In that case, simply reload the page to see that option in the preview pane. The window includes the last ten entries when your Gmail was accessed using web browsers, POP/IMAP email clients, Gmail or third-party mobile apps, any other Google apps, etc. and lists the IP address that accessed your email, the associated location, as well as the time and date. As shown, some of the entries will have a “Show details” link next to them to display additional information when clicked upon. A...

I happened to find a thread in the Gmail forum that read, "When I get an email, can that person get an auto reply stating my new email address?".  The easy answer to that is, "Of course!". All it requires are creating a canned response - called Templates in Gmail these days, and a filter.  In this blog, we shall look at the details of those. The first step is to create the Template (the canned response). The details related to Templates are already mentioned in  https://blogs-on-gmail.blogspot.com/2019/05/canned-responses.html , So here, I shall simply go through the process of creating a Template that suits our purpose. We write the response and then follow the process to save it as a Template. Once our response is written, we can focus on creating the filter. To begin, we click on this Show search options icon. We have just one criterion for this filter, to match all emails where our email address is entered as a recipient.  Note: Historically it was specified th...

There are many among us who still prefer to access their emails through an email client. They mention obvious advantages such as one user interface for all email accounts, offline access, local storage etc.  So, in this blog, we shall look at the sequence of steps to add a Gmail address to an email client - Mozilla Thunderbird using IMAP. However, before starting the process, we shall check two very important details: under Gmail settings Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, we need to check if IMAP is set as enabled in the IMAP access section. under the Google Accounts My Account page security tab, we need to check the status for 2-step verification for the account. Note: Having 2-step verification is not a requirement for this process. But, I am a huge advocate of having it enabled on the account for enhanced security. With these two details checked, we can now proceed to open Thunderbird and add this Google account there.  In the Thunderbird home screen, we locate the Email button ...