Ten tips for making the most of Google Mail

5. Import contacts
After getting a Google Mail account, one of the first things you are probably going to do is port over your contacts from your other email clients like Outlook or Eudora. The Google Mail contacts upload wizard will accept contact lists in comma-separated values (CSV) format, which means just about any other client, if it can generate a CSV list, is fair game for importing into Google Mail. The only caveat to remember is that Google Mail contacts use a limited number of fields: name, email address, and notes. All the fields beyond name and email address will be transferred into the notes field.

6. Rich formatting
Email composed in the Google Mail service is defaulted to be saved and sent in the Rich Text Format (RTF). This means that most of the email clients receiving your sent email will be able to see formatting without having to render and display HTML. Many security conscious recipients refuse HTML encoded email out of hand, without even looking at it because of the inherent security risks associated with worms and viruses.

To help you create your fancy formatted email documents, Google Mail includes several common word processing features on the composition toolbar including bold, italic, text colour, bullet points, and hyper linking. If you prefer, you can remove the formatting and send your message in plain text.

7. Built-in security
Google Mail offers an SSL-encrypted login by default, which means entering your password for access to Google mail is a protected transfer of information. Encrypted login is probably something you would expect, but you can add another layer of protection by adding an "S" to your URL request. Using this link to get to your Gmail account will activate secure access:

https://mail.google.com/mail

8. View attachments
When you receive an attached image in your Google Mail account, you are presented with a thumbnail copy of the image and given two choices for viewing it. You can choose to view the image and Gmail will show it to you there in your browser or you can choose to download it to your personal PC for viewing later in an application designed for image and photo manipulation.

9. Spelling
For those of us who are correct spelling challenged the invention of the spellchecker inside word processors ranks as one of the greatest feature enhancements of all time. The lack of a spell checker in most Web-based email services is probably the one feature that made the prospect of using those services daunting and kept us away in droves. Google has addressed that concern by adding a very good spell checker to the email composition interface. Click the spell check button and the system will scan your email, mark what it perceives to be misspellings and then suggest possible changes.

10. Forwarding and POP access
In this always on, always connected technology-driven world which we live in being away from your email is just not acceptable anymore. To help you keep in touch with your Google Mail account you can forward whatever email you receive to another email client and you can use POP3 to retrieve the email sitting in your inbox from another client. Both of these functions can be accessed from the Mail Settings dialogue page.

More tips
This is just a short list of Google Mail's many features. The power and sophisticated feature set of the Google Mail service is remarkable, especially when you consider this is all processed from your browser. Now you can truly get email from just about anywhere—all you need is a PC and an Internet connection. Is it any wonder that the Internet Café has become a so popular around the world.