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10 Tips to Improve Your Google Apps Experience

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Barak Dror

6 min read

How to Improve Your Google Apps

After reading Oded Moshe’s post Migrating Exchange to Google Apps: This is My Story, I thought it would be nice to follow up with a post covering some cool stuff that I learned after my company switched from MS Exchange to Google Apps.

Here are my 10 tips to making your work with Google Apps more interesting and efficient:


1. Use Chrome. It has more advantages than any other browser for Gmail. Keep it all in the family, so to speak.

2. Use Gmail and Calendar as pinned tabs: open 2 tabs, one Gmail and one Calendar, right-click on each and select Pin tab). This way Chrome will remember these tabs next time you open it.

3. Set pop-up notifications, like you had in MS Outlook, for each new email message. You can get these notifications by going to Settings General (tab) → Desktop Notifications, and then select the radio button for New mail notifications on. Don’t forget to click the Save Changes button (this applies to all the Settings).

4. Also as in Outlook, you can set a preview window for all email messages. Just go to SettingsLabs (tab). Find the Preview Pane lab and enable it.

5. A really great little feature I found in the Google Labs gives you the option to call back an email (undo) after you already hit “Send”. Tell the truth – how many times did you hit the Send button too soon? Maybe you included your boss in an email that he/she was not supposed to see?! Maybe you forgot to attach your document, etc. Just go to SettingsLabs (tab), find the Undo Send lab and enable it. This gives you a few seconds to regret your action.

6. If you want, you can have the number of unread messages appear on at the top of your screen next to the Gmail icon on your tab (like notifications in Facebook):

Enable this under SettingsLabs (tab) → Unread message icon.

7. An image can be embedded in a message body by simply copying/pasting it inside your email message. You don’t have to send images/screeenshots as attachments. Note that this only works in Chrome (at least from what I tested, which included Firefox and IE).

8. If you don’t want Gmail to group your messages (i.e. to behave like in Outlook), turn it off under SettingsGeneral (tab) → Conversation View.

9. One cool Gmail extension I found is called: Attachment Icons – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cidllnohapeehemflbkphggicjjhideg. For emails with attachments, this extension replaces the default paper clip icon with the relevant icon for the specific type of attachment, as seen below:

10. Another useful Gmail extension is for adding web content and/or browser images to Google Drive with a single click – https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/attachment-icons-for-gmai/johdeoloijidhejmalfkpchbihbiamph, as shown in the screenshot below.

Improving Google Drive

Know of any more really great Gmail/Google Apps tips? Please let me know in the comments below!


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About

the Author

Barak Dror

Web developer at SysAid since 2009. Always trying to stay on track with new technologies. Loves A/B testing, building logic & crossword puzzles, and running his own 30,000+ people community-based trivia and word-game websites.

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