Moving to Gmail…
Email has come a long way since I first started using it about 12 years ago. At that time, I had to clean out my messages as they came in or else my inbox would fill up and I would stop receiving mail. Half the mail that I got was spam because I would sign up for silly promotions or put my email address in a bucket to get a free lunch. All my mail would go to my inbox and just stew there, never to be filed or looked at again. I didn’t particularly plan for the future because my university email address was gone the second I left school – any emails that went to that address were lost forever.
Email grows up
My preferred email provider is Google’s Gmail. Gmail started about 5 years ago and revolutionized email. They fixed the major problems hampering email that I mentioned above.
Gmail accounts can hold over 7 gigabytes (GB) worth of data. To put this in perspective, you could receive a high-quality photo everyday in your email for 6 years and still have plenty of space for other emails. If you only sent and received text-based emails, it is likely that you would never run out of space since there simply isn’t enough time in the day to type up and send that many emails.
Five years of The Digitante’s email:
Most modern email services have excellent spam (aka junk mail) filters. You may have seen emails advertising “male enhancement” or deals on “replica watches.” These emails generally will lead you to sites that will attempt to install viruses on your computer and spy on your passwords and browsing habits. Gmail gives you a separate folder which grabs these dangerous emails before they ever make it to your inbox. If you happen to receive an email like this, you can click the Report Spam button to tell Gmail to look for this message going to other Gmail users.
Google is known for search. That doesn’t stop at searching the web. You can search your Gmail in the same manner and with equal power of searching the web using Google.
Chances are, if you don’t already have a Gmail address, you are using another service and don’t want to bother with sending out an email to everyone telling them you have a new address. With Gmail, you don’t have to.
Forwarding or remote retrieval
Forwarding is the act of setting up your old email account so when it receives an email, instead of putting the message in the old email inbox, it simply forwards it on to your Gmail inbox.
Alternatively, you can use head to the Gmail Settings menu and go to Accounts and Import. Here you can import all your old mail, old contacts, and even messages that come to your old email address for the next 30 days. It also allows you to apply a label to the mail to indicate that it came from another account.
Also in the Accounts and Import section, if your old email provider allows Post Office Protocol (aka POP) access, you can set up your emails to be automatically transferred to your Gmail inbox. The main difference between this option and the Import option is that POP access lasts until you disable it instead of only lasting 30 days. However, if your old email provider doesn’t allow POP access, you might be stuck with import anyway.
So my mail is all headed to Gmail, now what?
Start receiving emails! You don’t have to delete emails anymore. You will rarely, if ever, get a piece of spam mail. You will be able to find past emails with a keyword or two.
Gmail also has tons of organizational options as well as “Labs” settings for those useful features that Gmail wants to try out but aren’t quite ready for primetime. You can expect a future post from The Digitante about how to use these organizational and Labs features.
If you are running out of space, overwhelmed with spam, or just want to improve your email usability, you can always contact The Digitante by heading over to the About page. From there you can email me to get help with setting up a new email account and transfer over your old account.
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