E-Mail Blunders You Don't Want To Make

I think I have done all of these at one point or another.

Borrowing material from the fine folks at Rackspace, who have put together 3 minutes worth of humorous and frighteningly familiar e-mail blunders.

My personal favorites (or pet peeves, as the case may be)

• Don't E-Mail Angry

And

• Don't Reply All

Any other favorites in there? Or better yet, any great stories of e-mail nightmares?

Using GMail in Multiple Windows

One of my initial significant beefs with GMail was the premise that everything happened within one web browser window on my computer.  When I flipped through messages or lists of messages, every single one of those transactions appeared in a single browser window, a serious departure from Lotus Notes (which puts everything on tabs) or Outlook (which uses separate windows).

Call me petty, but this was always a problem if I had things to cut/copy-and-paste between messages.  I could still copy-and-paste, but only if I drove my single window back and forth between GMail spots, and it reminded me of my non-ability to parallel park--back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until I finally settled into some semblance of order.

Then I figured out how to have GMail run in multiple windows, and I loved it.  I could have two windows open to copy e-mail addresses, phone numbers or text between GMail messages.

There are 2 routes to use GMail in multiple windows:

First, you can click the In New Window icon.  This icon does not announce itself very loudly, so look for it near the top right of your message.  Clicking this icon takes whatever message you are reading and opens it within its own new window.  This icon also appears when composing new messages, so if you are mid-way through composing a message and suddenly realize you want it in its own window, click the In New Window icon and instantly you will have another GMail window with your outbound message, with an underlying window available to you for GMail navigation.

Second (and you already know this if you read previous Encyclopedia of Matt entries), you can use the Shift key with the keyboard shortcuts to open a new window.

• Shift + C to Compose a new message in a new window.
• Shift + R to Reply in a new window.
• Shift + A to Reply To All in a new window.
• Shift + F to Forward in a new window.

I fear I have made this entire concept more difficult than it really is.  So just try it.  Trust me that you cannot actually break anything.  You will not accidentally erase your entire GMail contents.  And you might just like it.

Keyboard Shortcuts in GMail: Part 2

The more I learn about GMail, the more I find it is a fairly ingenious email application, but there are several hidden gems in GMail that are not exactly undocumented, but are rather unknown to most.  Foremore among them are keyboard shortcuts, which allow you to use your keyboard to register actions rather than mousing to a button each time.


I covered Part 1 of keyboard shortcuts, including the help, Compose and Archive shortcuts.  Below are three more keyboard shortcuts that form the family of actions we most often take on pieces of e-mail:


R - Reply to a message.  Again, there is no hint or menu that tips you off that simply pressing the R key will start a reply.  Just try it while reading a message.  Press R and presto!  You have a reply started without your hands ever leaving the keyboard.


A - Reply to all.  This one is just like the Reply command above, except of course your response goes to everyone in the original message rather than just the sender.  Of course, this explains a mystery from Part 1 of keyboard shortcuts where the A key was not used for Archiving.  The developers at Google likely figured Reply to all was a more often used command than Archive, and this reserved the letter A for Reply to all.  (Remember A for Reply to all; E for Archive.)


F - Forward a message.  Again, fairly straightforward.  Press F and GMail automatically starts a Forward message so you can pass along your inbound message to someone else.

Now here is one more major trick that I really like, and it helps you bust out of GMail's limitation of sticking to one window: Add the Shift key to any of the above commands and your reply or forward will open in a new window, leaving your original message neatly in its own window.  Play around with this feature and you will really look and feel like a pro.  Having multiple GMail windows open lets you cut/copy and paste between messages much more easily.


In the screenshot to the right, I wanted to reply to my friend Rodney, and I used the Shift + R keyboard shortcut.  Instead of starting my reply in the same window, addition of the Shift key opened a new window with my reply, and made it easy to cut and paste information into my Reply.


It's a pretty sweet trick, will make you look like a GMail black belt, and may just make your life easier too.