I thought maybe I was writing too many Gmail articles for my readers. But from the number of email questions and comments I have received, that does not seem to be an issue. You want more, so, here we go–continuing from last week. Please keep the questions and comments coming as I appreciate hearing what you all have to say.
Have you ever sent an email and immediately remembered that you left an important thought out? How about sending someone something and realizing you forgot to add the attachment that you needed to send them? Or maybe you replied to an email angrily and realized after you sent it, you should have toned it down a bit? These scenarios are common in the email world.
It could be quite useful if you could recall a sent email before it got to your recipient. That is what Gmail calls, “Undo Send.” It is already set up and running, but you may have never noticed it or have and did not know how it works. When you send an email, it appears in the lower-left corner of your screen. The information box says, “Message sent | Undo | View message.” The last two are clickable. If you click “Undo,” your message will not be sent and will reopen so you can edit or delete it. The second one, “View message” will open it but it will still be sent.
The only part you can edit is how long you get to click undo, but that can easily be changed. Go to Gmail Settings by clicking the gear icon, then look down and change the cancelation period under, “Undo send.” I believe the default is five seconds, but I set mine to the longest delay of 30 seconds years ago. Which gives you that amount of time to recall the message without it being sent. If you change the time, make sure you click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page.
Next, how to set up your Gmail if you want to let people know you are not available. Go to the same place in your Settings for Gmail but scroll all the way to the bottom. There you will find, “Vacation responder.” You will see there are six items you can set, from cutting it on and off (do not forget to cut it off when you are ready for email again). However, you can also choose to set an end date for the automatic message, so Gmail will stop them itself on your return date. It is quite easy to figure out.
Two other things I will draw your attention to when setting it up. At the bottom there is a checkbox for, “Only send a response to people in my Contacts.” I highly recommend that you check that box or you will also send this automatic message to all your spammers. You do not want to send it to them! Second, do not forget to “Save changes,” or it will not work.
More Gmail extras are coming next week.