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First, we need to access our Google account. For the purposes of this tutorial, we are
assuming you already have an established account, whether it was created for you at your place
of employment or you generated it yourself should not affect your account in regards
to the topics covered here today. Notice we are using Google Chrome as our browser,
we at Affinigent University recommend you do the same as Google Applications are generally
optimized for peak performance on the platform. In the URL bar here,
(if you haven’t already) type in www.Google.com. Notice in the far right we have a group of
links we can click on including Gmail, however, because Google uses a unified account system
(meaning whenever you log into your Google account you have access to multiple Google
applications), we will be clicking the “Sign In” button
furthest to the right, here. If this is the first time the computer you
are using has ever logged into a Google account you should be brought to this page.
It is possible you may see a similar page which does not have the “Email” line located
here, in the center. If there is already a user name filled in,
you will need to click “manage accounts on this device” which should be located
here, this will allow you to add your account, and
will bring you to the page you see before you now.
After filling in your email address, complete with domain name (domain is the part
listed after that @ symbol), in my case: affingent.university@affinigent.com ,
and filling in your password (which you created upon the creation of your account),
you can then choose to click the “Stay signed in” box located here below.
Doing so will automatically fill in your username on the computer you are currently using every
time you go to a Google accounts sign in page. This is to expedite your sign in process and
is still generally secure, as you will still be required to type in your
password before you may use the account each time.
After clicking “sign in”, we will be brought back to the same Google search page we initially
saw with one important difference: we now have access to all of our Google applications,
located here, in the upper right hand corner -denoted by nine squares stacked in rows of
three, called the Apps icon. Click the Apps icon and notice the mail icon
located here to the right. Today, we’ll be exploring gmail, so go ahead
and click “Mail.” This brings us to the Inbox page of our mailbox.
Here we can see all of the messages which have been sent to us, currently I have none
and Google is kind enough to tell me so- here. Clicking on the COMPOSE button in the upper
left hand corner here allows us to type up our own message to send to someone else.
By clicking on the “Full Screen” icon, located in the upper right hand corner of
the new message, here, we can provide a larger view (which is great
for tutorial purposes, but completely optional for personal use).
Like any message, first we need to establish who will be receiving it.
In the “To” line, here, we can type in the email address of anyone
at any domain, not just @gmail.com. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be sending
myself a message so as to further demonstrate gmail’s capabilities.
My email address is affinigent.university@affinigent.com, and the subject of this message will be “Testing
Gmail Capabilities.” It is important to put a relevant subject
line in your composed messages, this helps the recipient categorize your email, prioritize
it, and most importantly, find it again in the future if it needs to be retrieved at
any time. The body of the email is up to you and entirely
depends upon the message you wish to communicate, in this case, I will supply a simple a “TEST”
message. Notice at the bottom there are multiple icons.
We can adjust formatting, attach files including documents and images, and make use of many
other capabilities. This may be covered in a future tutorial.
After finishing our message, we click “Send” located here in the bottom left corner, and
wait a moment for the message to arrive at its destination.
Notice a number appears next to the Inbox heading located here,
this number indicates I currently have 1 new email waiting to be seen.
Clicking on Inbox will refresh the page and we can now see the new email located here.
Click anywhere on the message listing to open the email and read its contents.
Notice everything came through as I sent it, the correct Subject line as well as the message
body. After reading the message, it’s typical
to respond, which can be done by clicking HERE or clicking the arrow located here. In
this case, responding will once again send a message to me because I was the initial
sender so it is unnecessary. After reading an email and responding to it,
we may want to delete it if we see no reason we may need it in the future.
It may be wise to keep recent emails in our inbox until we are sure we will not need them
again, but when it is time to purge old messages, the process is rather simple.
Return to the inbox, by clicking here, and notice the small box located next to the
message here. This box can be checked off and it allows
us the ability to move our emails around, mark them as spam, or- in this case, delete
them individually or multiple messages at a time.
Click the box here, and notice above a new bar of icons appears. You can choose to archive
your email, report as spam, or delete it. In this case, click delete.
Gmail will then move the selected message into the Trash folder, (you may need to expand
your “More” options located here to get to your Trash folder).
Click Trash to open your Trash folder and view all of the emails you recently chose
to delete. Be warned, messages in the Trash folder for
more than 30 days will automatically be deleted and it is good practice to never depend on
files in your trash folder as they could be removed at any time.
Sometimes, however, a stray click may send a message into the trash folder by mistake
and Google is kind enough to allow you the opportunity to rectify it in most cases.
Much like before, we click to check the box of the relevant message, in this case here,
and then a new list of icons will appear above. Here you will see the “Move to” folder.
Click this box and have a drop down menu appear and locate Inbox, located here.
Clicking this will send our message from the Trash folder into the Inbox. By clicking Inbox,
here, we’ll see it has returned, safe and sound.
This concludes the Affinigent University’s Introduction to Google Mail Tutorial; we hope
it provides useful for first time users. If you enjoyed it, feel free to visit the links
provided for more tutorials on Internet Strategy with Execution Excellence.