Gmail

Unsubscribe from emails on Gmail more easily

Google has introduced new ways to make it easier to unsubscribe from unwanted emails in Gmail on the web and mobile. 

Hover over an email and click on the Unsubscribe button on the threadlist on web

Click on the prominent Unsubscribe button at the top of a message on Android and iOS devices. 

Important update for delegated Google Contacts

If you have delegated your Google Contacts to a colleague, they will soon be able to update contact labels and manage “other” contacts. As part of this change, you will need to review and approve any contact delegates by 13th November 2023, otherwise your delegates will lose access to your contacts. 

If you have delegates any contacts, you will see prompt when you visit the Google Contacts screen. From here, you can approve or remove delegates as required. 

New emoji picker in Gmail

You can now access a more complete set of emojis in Gmail and can set your emoji skin tone and gender preference. When you choose a particular preference, it will be saved until it is updated by you.

Add a choice of Google Calendar meeting times to a Gmail messages

This update will allow you to find a time for 1:1 meetings with other people much quicker, even if their calendars are not visible to you. You can offer times that you're free in your own calendar, allowing the email recipient to select a proposed time to automatically generate a calendar event that you are both invited to. 

Find out more in our how-to video:

Google sheets now integrated with mail merge in Gmail

This exciting update allows you to link a sheet with up to 1500 people in it, to an email message and use any data from the sheet as a mail merge tag. 

Note: Your recipient data must be in the first tab of the Sheet. Merge tags can’t be used in the subject line or in links in the message.

Find out more in our how-to video:

Mail merge tags in email messages

If you use multi-send emails in Gmail, you can now add personalised information to the body of your email, by using mail merge tags such as @firstname and @lastname. 

Find out more in our how-to video:

New marketing tools in Gmail

Gmail has two great new marketing tools available. 

With the first, you can create emails with a predefined set of email templates, which feature images, text elements, and buttons. You can further customise these templates with your own colour schemes, logos, images, footer text, and links.

With the second update, you can send mass emails without the need to BCC all recipients. By default, multi-send emails include an unsubscribe link unique to each recipient — anyone who unsubscribes is automatically excluded from future multi-send emails from you.

Find out more in our how-to video:

Search for Chat Spaces from Gmail

When performing a search in Gmail, you will now have the option to view spaces that match your search query. This will include spaces you’ve joined, as well as discoverable and restricted spaces you have been invited to join. 

Google Group access to shared mailboxes in Gmail

You can now delegate access to a mailbox using a Google Group, giving everyone in the group access to the mailbox in one step. If you are given access to a mailbox via a Google Group, you will be able to read, send, and delete messages on the account owner's behalf.

You can also enter contacts.google.com/emailaddress into the address bar of your browser to search for a contact in your organisation e.g. contacts.google.com/jsmith@tralliant.com

You can make any changes to an event, including using the Find a time button to see other attendee’s calendar availability when scheduling events. 

You can now hide the Meet links to start or join a meeting from your Gmail screen if you would prefer not to show them. 

To do so, click on the Settings cog and choose Settings, then click on the Chat and Meet tab. You can then choose to show or hide the Meet section in the main menu of the Gmail screen. 

A new interface is now available for Google Groups, allowing you to create and manage groups in a clearer interface.

Note that the new interface is still being developed by Google and same features are not yet available, including collaborative inboxes, shared labels, subscription management and default group roles.

Watch our How To video to find out more:

You can now start or join a Google Meet video meeting directly from your Gmail screen, by clicking on the Start a Meeting or Join a Meeting links on the left-hand side of the screen. 

Using the Join a Meeting option, you can type an ad-hoc meeting name for everyone in your organisation to use e.g. dev-team or john-william and reuse the same code every time you start a new meeting within your domain.  To meet with people outside your domain, click on Start Meeting to create a new meeting link that you can share with other people, or simply add people to the meeting once it’s started. 

Watch our How To video to find out more:

It’s now possible to use multiple signatures in Gmail. You can insert a new signature into a message, or remove the signature entirely using the new Insert Signature button in a message. 

Watch our How To video to find out more:

You can forward an email as an attachment to someone else, and can drag and drop email messages from your Inbox into a draft message. This has always been one of our most requested features during the training courses we run, so we’re especially happy to see this update. 

Watch our How To video to find out more:

When you perform a search in Gmail, search chips will allow you to refine the search quickly and easily e.g. to find only unread messages, or those with attachments. 

Watch our How To video to find out more:

When you open a calendar invite in Gmail, you can respond to the meeting by clicking on Yes, Maybe or No. 

In addition, you can now click on the More Options button to propose a new time for the meeting or add a note. 

When you enter an address into an email message, you will instantly be able to see if they are out of the office. 

A banner will be displayed along the bottom of the message, showing when they will be back online. 

You can now use a dark theme in Gmail on your mobile, which will reduce the brightness of the app, while still showing colour contrast to make it accessible to everyone. On both Android and iOS, go into Settings within Gmail to turn this theme on. 

Gmail’s spelling and grammar functionality has been improved with the introduction of artificial intelligence to detect potential errors and auto-correct your text as you type. 

Google Workspace has a revamped dashboard that you can use to access all of the apps from a single screen. There’s also a search bar that you can use to find an app. 

Go to https://apps.google.com/ to view your dashboard. 

Confidential mode provides built-in information rights management controls in your emails by allowing senders to create expiration dates and revoke previously sent messages. Additionally, with confidential mode, recipients don’t have the option to forward, copy, print, or download their content or attachments. 

Dynamic email allows you to take action directly from an email message. If you are notified of a comment in a document that mentions you, for example, you will be able to view and respond to that comment directly from the email notification, without the need to open the document that the comment is in.

You can now schedule your emails in Gmail to be sent at a later date and time. After composing your message, choose to send it later, and it will be added to a new Scheduled folder before being sent at the specified time. 

Find out more in our How To video:

Smart Compose can now make suggestions for the subject of your email. When you write the body of your email and then place your cursor in the subject line, you may see Smart Compose suggesting a subject for your email.

Google Tasks have been improved with new features this month. As well as setting a date, you can now set a time when creating tasks, and create recurring tasks to show automatically at specific intervals.

Find out more in our How To video:

If you use the Canned Responses advanced feature of Gmail, you will see new menu options and an easier way to view your canned responses.

To create a canned response that you can insert into a message at any time:

1. Create a new email message and type all text to be stored as a canned response

2. Click on the ellipses in the bottom-right corner of the message

3. Choose Canned responses

4. Choose Save draft as template, then Save as new template

5. Type a name for the new canned response and click on Save 

You can now insert the canned response into any email message as follows:

1. Click on the ellipses in the bottom-right corner of the message

2. Choose Canned responses

3. Choose the name of the canned response under the Insert Template heading 

You can now right-click over a message in Gmail to view useful options to reply to a message, forward the message, and perform housekeeping tasks. You can also search for similar messages to the message selected, by finding messages from the selected sender or with the selected subject. 

You can now undo and redo commands in the Gmail compose window, and apply strikethrough formatting to selected text. Click on the Formatting Options button in the compose window to show the new buttons.  

Note that  if you are not using full-screen view, you may need to click on the More button to show the Strikethrough option.

You can now download an entire email message in Gmail, including attachments. The email message will be saved in .eml format, which can be opened in any email application, including Outlook. Once an email message has been downloaded, it can be attached to another message to forward to colleagues as required. 

Find out more in our How To Video:

The interface of the Gmail app on both Android and iOS has been updated to follow the new Google material design guidelines. As part of the new design, you can quickly view attachments such as photos without opening or scrolling through the conversation. It’s also easier to switch between personal and work accounts.

Google Workspace will have a new sign-in screen from the end of November 2018, to match Google’s new material design principles. 

If you communicate with a Google Group in Gmail, you can now position the mouse over the group name to show the group contact card. From this card you can create a new email to the group, schedule an event with the group and view group members. You can also click on the More Info link to view the group’s page in Google Groups. 

On February 12, 2019, old Contacts will be turned off completely, and any remaining users will be moved to new Contacts. There will be no option to use the old version.

Find out more about the new Contacts interface in our How To video:

As well as delegating your Gmail mailbox to colleagues, you can now delegate your contact list so that delegates can view, edit and delete your personal contacts on your behalf. 

Find out more in our How To video:

The Gmail app for iOS has been updated to allow you to view mail from multiple Gmail accounts in a single screen. You can view mail from a single account as before, or from multiple accounts as required. 

If you use Gmail on your mobile device, you’ll be used to your text being completed for you as you type. Gmail on the web now offers the same functionality with a feature called Smart Compose.  This feature scans the content of your messages and suggests phrases and words as you type, based on common sentences and text that you type yourself in other messages. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about Smart Compose:

If you are using the new Gmail interface, you will no longer be able to view contacts using the Mail drop-down list. Instead, view your contacts using the App launcher button, and choose Contacts.

Your administrator can now set Google Workspace to ask for your employee ID at sign on, if it doesn’t recognise the device you are logging in from. 

Google has introduced a new Tasks application that allows you to keep track of to-do items. This is now a core Google service and can be accessed via the App Launcher in the top-right corner of the screen. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more about the new Tasks application:

With the new Gmail Offline setting, you can read messages, compose new messages, and search, delete and label email messages using Gmail offline. 

When you are offline, you can reply to messages or create new messages, which will be stored in your Outbox when you click on Send. Once a connection is available, Gmail will automatically send messages in your Outbox and download any new emails from the server to your Inbox.  

Watch our how-to video to find out more about working offline in Gmail:

By default, Gmail stores the last 30 days of mail, including attachments, but this can be increased to 90 days if your domain administrator has allowed it.  Spam and deleted items are not stored.  

To work offline in Gmail, you need the latest version of the Chrome browser, version 61 or later, and must keep one Gmail tab open in Chrome while offline.

The new Gmail interface has introduced a new feature which will “nudge” you to respond to messages you may have missed in your Inbox, or to follow up on sent messages that you haven’t received a response for. 

You can turn both of these nudges on or off via Settings. 

Anyone can now try out the new Gmail interface, as long as it’s been enabled by your Google Workspace administrator. The new interface has some great new features such as attachments showing directly in the Inbox, snoozing messages and quick links to perform common actions on your messages. 

Watch our how-to video to find out more the new Gmail interface:

Add-ons can now be used to integrate information from email messages into 3rd party applications, without the need to copy and paste information manually. A number of Google partners have created add-ons for Gmail, including RingCentral, Smartsheet and Docusign (coming soon)

After installing the add-on from the Marketplace, simply click on the add-on icon on the right-hand side of the Gmail screen to integrate with the application:

Gmail has a new update this month, which you may have seen while composing your email messages. If you type an address, phone number or email address into your message, it will now change to a URL automatically. Addresses will link to Google Maps, while phone numbers can be used to call the number if you are viewing the message on a mobile device.