Weekly Google Apps Tips By EXEO

Let’s get started with Gmail!

Here are some of the key features of your Gmail inbox: – Gmail displays snippets, which are lines of text next to each message that reveal a bit of the content of the most recent message. – In Gmail, messages are grouped into ‘conversations’ so that all follow-ups and responses appear as a single line in your inbox. You can turn it on or off by going to Settings- Conversation View. – The time or date of the most recent message in a conversation is displayed on the right of a conversation line. Note that Dates appear when messages are older than 24 hours. – Use the check boxes next to the sender’s name, then perform actions on those selected conversations using the Action buttons at the top as shown in the picture below. – Add stars to mark special messages or conversations and go back to it later. – If you want to see the messages you’ve starred, deleted, sent, etc., click on the labels on the left hand side of your Gmail page.

Display: Inbox styles

Choose the Style that suites you best! Gmail offers the following Inbox Styles: – Default – Choose which tabs to use. If you want to see all your messages in one list, just turn off all tabs. – Important First – This style brings mail from the contacts you email most often and other important mail to the top of the page. Everything else is in its own section at the bottom of your inbox. – Unread First – Unread mail stays at the top; everything else is at the bottom. – Starred First – Starred mail stays at the top; everything else is at the bottom. – Priority Inbox – Messages classified as important and unread are in the top section, then starred messages, then everything else. Each section can be customized further, so if you want more control over your inbox, Priority Inbox is for you. Select which inbox style you want to try by clicking the  arrow that appears when you hover over “Inbox” on the left side of your Gmail page. You can switch between inbox styles any time you want.

Google Plus

To begin creating your Google+ account, sign in with your Google Account on the Google+ Start Page If you don’t have a Google Account, you will be directed to create one first. To start creating your G+ profile, the first thing to do will be: adding your profile photo! This is the most skipped step, users tend to skip adding a profile photo on Google Plus which is a bad thing and people won’t be able to recognize you easily. Make sure to use the same photo for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn so people can find you if they are connected to you elsewhere and you’ll be recognized easily specially if your name is too common in your country. Next, a pop up will ask you to find people you know from other email providers. If you don’t use these email providers, you can skip it and continue to suggestions. In this step, Google will search for connections you might recognize from your Gmail Account. If you don’t use Gmail already or you’re a new user, you will not have any suggestions and have to use the Google+ search engine to find people to connect with. If you continue without searching, Google+ will also suggest some celebrities, journalists, photographers, and other public figures for you to follow. Before you start connecting with others, we recommend you to complete your profile first so people will be able to recognize you easily and know who you are. Click continue, and then when Google+ warns you that you might be lonely without making connections, click continue anyway. Here’s a fast tutorial

 

 

Google Docs

Google Docs is an online word processor that lets you create and format text documents and collaborate with other people in real time. Here’s what you can do with Google Docs: – Upload a Word document and convert it to a Google document: You can do that by opening the Word Document in Drive with Google Docs, or you can select the option in Drive Settings to automatically convert files to Google format. – Add flair and formatting to your documents by adjusting margins, spacing, fonts, and colors. – Invite other people to collaborate on a document with you, giving them edit, comment or view access if you don’t want them to modify your document: You can do that by clicking on the Share button on the top right of every Doc. – Collaborate online in real time and chat with other collaborators — right from inside the document: When you give a collaborator Edit access, you can see Real Time editing and chat with all the collaborators right from Docs! – View your document’s revision history and roll back to any previous version: See What your collaborators edited while you were away, and roll back to any version you want. – Download a Google document to your desktop as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip file: You can do that by clicking on File, Download As. – Translate a document to a different language: If you have collaborators from different countries, you can let them write in their native languages and translate the document later with just a click! Here’s how you can do it: Go to Tools, Translate Document. – Email your documents to other people as attachments, You can email the document you’re working on with just a click, right from the document without going to Gmail and attaching the file: Go to File – Email as Attachment.  

Google Calendar

With Google Calendar you can control who can see your calendars and events. When you make your calendar public, the events on that calendar are public, which means that people can search for it and find it in a variety of ways, including via Google Web search.

Share your calendar with everyone

To share your calendar with everybody, just follow these steps:

1. Open Google Calendar on a computer.
2. On the left, find My Calendars. You may need to click to expand it.
3. Find the calendar you want to share and click the arrow next to it.
4. Select Make this calendar public.
5. If you don’t want others to view the details of your events, select See only free/busy (hide details).
6. Click Save.

Control who can see individual events

By default, when you add an event to a public calendar, the event will be public. But you can change your visibility settings for an individual event to make it private. Here’s how:

Stop sharing publicly

1. Open Google Calendar on a computer.
2. On the left, find My Calendars. You may need to click to expand it.
3. Find the calendar you don’t want to share with the public anymore and click the arrow next to it.
4. Select Share this calendar.
5. Make sure the box for Make this calendar public is not checked.