Getting Started with Gmail

My first week on Gmail was disorienting. Gmail really is quite different from Outlook and other desktop email applications. There are two main features in Gmail that at first seem strange but once you get them you'll never go back. Conversation threading is one and the lack of folders is the other.

Conversations - When you send or receive email in Gmail all replies are connected to each other as a conversation. This provides the prior context for every email conversation. Before Gmail, if I couldn't remember exactly what had been said in a past email, I'd have to go search through my old email folders and try to piece together the conversation. With Gmail, every part of the conversation thread is connected to the original email for easy reference.

Whenever I talk to people about their favorite Gmail features, threaded conversations are always at the top of their list. They make Gmail far more efficient than its desktop predecessors. I find it especially helpful when someone responds to a very old email. It's so hard to remember an original email weeks or months after I've sent it. But when I see exactly what I had sent in the conversation thread, replying is much easier.



No Folders - The next major difference in Gmail is its lack of folders. When I first set up my account I spent several minutes trying to locate the folders. I finally asked one of the guys who had been using Gmail for awhile and he told me that there aren't any. I was flabbergasted! How in the world was I supposed to organize and keep track of all my old email?

Gmail does offer labels instead of folders. But I soon discovered that with Gmail folders simply weren't needed. That's because of Gmail's powerful and super fast search capability--it is driven by Google after all. With Outlook or other desktop email clients, searching through old email was painfully slow. Gmail's search is practically instantaneous. To find an archived email I just search using the name of person I sent to, or any words I remember using in the email. I've been doing this for nineteen months and I've never had any trouble quickly pulling up any old email. I don't use folders (or labels) and I can get to all my email extremely fast (and each one is threaded with the entire conversation to boot!).   next >