Blogs on Gmail and Google Accounts

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 under the

There are quite a few threads posted in the Gmail Help Community seeking guidance on ways to email Google Contacts groups or as Google calls them, Contact Labels. So, in this blog, we take a look at the various ways we can do that, namely: Via the Google Contacts web UI. Via the Google Contacts Android app. Via the Gmail Compose autocomplete UI. Via the Gmail Compose Contact picker option. Section 1: Via the Google Contacts web UI. The Google Contacts web UI refers to the https://contacts.google.com/ page for that specific Google account.  In there:  Select the Contact group or label you wish to email from the left panel (shown as 1) Select a single contact from the list by clicking on the check box to its left. Check on the down arrow next to the Select box above (shown as 2), and select All. This should select all Contacts. Click on the Send email (envelope, shown as 3) icon. This will bring up the Gmail Compose window with all the contacts entered as To recipients. Put in

We daily receive emails from known and unknown sources. So, it is essential that we understand the risks involved in handling emails in terms of identifying them and thereafter knowing how to best deal with the threats posed by the malicious ones. The Gmail spam and abuse detection algorithm use multiple signals such as Google's internal algorithm, blacklists, and crowdsourcing among other unknown factors Google doesn't make public to identify incoming messages and help the users on this front.  However, the spammers are extremely smart, and they can find ways to escape the algorithm through innovative ways. This is why, even with an effective spam and abuse detection system in place, one needs to be aware of some essential details so as to remain vigilant while handling emails, should there be a false-negative one. Everyone knows about Spam, Spoofed, and Phishing emails (among others) and they are the common types of unsolicited emails we receive in our addresses. Determining

Of late, many users have reported receiving the "We are sorry, but you do not have access to Gmail. Please contact your Organization Administrator for access." message while attempting to add Gmail to their non-Gmail Google accounts which are also not Google Workspace accounts.  Normally, users would need to follow the steps mentioned in the "Adding Gmail" help article:  https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/72198?hl=en , but the current complaint is that, after being signed into their non-Gmail account and clicking on the 9-dot Google apps launcher icon and then, the Gmail icon, they receive the following message. Apparently, something is not working as intended and after looking at the URL, we can spot a redirection to the https://admin.google.com/a/cpanel/... URL.  The cPanel feature and why it is essential to activate for Gmail in Google Workspace domains is explained in this help article:  https://support.google.com/a/answer/54717?hl=en . As seen, the chec

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) and