Switching to Gmail and other google apps…the saga continues
beingzoe 4 months ago // Digital Life Tips, tricks, and advice

A couple of weeks ago I officially made the switch from using pop3 mail and Outlook as my email client. While seeking an outlook replacement for years, nothing ever seemed to work. But then my needs were always somewhat unique. In the end Gmail would not have necessarily satisfied those needs when I first began my quest, but as I am discovering some of my preconceived notions of what I considered “needs” were greatly exaggerated and ill-founded.

Where are my folders?

As one our clients pointed out, Gmail does not use folders or directories like the traditional email client. He absolutely hated the Gmail concept of labels and searching for everything. When first looking for an Outlook replacement I would felt similarly. But this wouldn’t have been a deal breaker. It does take some getting used to, but I think opening our minds up to paradigms can be good thing. It is easy to get stuck on what we know, but sometimes what we know and how we’ve always done things isn’t the best way.

Gmail uses a concept called labels which for all intents and purposes are a type of folder. But they function very differently. While you can assign multiple labels to an email, labels cannot be nested. This translates to no anal sorting of emails into a finite hierarchy of “work > clients > client name > project > and so on”.

When first faced with the loss of the folders and this kind of organization I panicked. Considering how difficult it already was for me to stay on top of communications already, how in the world was I going to cope with a giant list of unsorted emails?

Do a little search, make a little love, get down tonight

And yet even with a handful of labels to mass group common emails it is surprisingly easy to navigate and find what you are looking for. But the real power comes from what Google does best…search.

Search everything, search within labels, do advanced boolean and exclude searches. It works amazingly well, and in fact seems easier to find stuff than having it all sorted by category.

Let’s have a conversation

But the real reason I think the labels and search are so conveniently powerful and functional is due to the Google implementation of email as an ongoing dialog. They call them conversations and the concept seems to derive from the newsgroup/usenet threads that are less commonly used today.

When I send an email and a person responds, the email is grouped by that subject and all the emails in the conversation appear together in chronological order.

So now what would have been as many as 10 or 15 emails in my inbox (or overly categorized folder structure, turns into one item intelligently put together for easy review. This functionality quickly broke me of the habit of changing/updating email subject lines so that I could have an easier way to scan emails for the progress of a dialog.

And Gmail also deals intelligently with quoted text, so if you correspond with people who are prone to leaving every previous email in their replies and forwards, you are not staring at a mile long screen with duplicate information.

This conversational mode was probably the biggest complaint from my client when he attempted to switch. In his case, the complaint was that for orders and other form-style and notification emails from his site, they were getting grouped together in ways he didn’t like and felt were beyond his control. He is clearly a folder junkie and committed to grouping all email information by the sender and not the purpose. And this is a big distinction in how Gmail treats email as opposed to traditional email clients.

But for me the combination of all these Gmail features is actually increasing my ability to keep up with daily communications. The fact that my email is always available where ever I am (as long as there is internet access) is a great thing unto itself. I had attempted to use imap several times, but Outlook just didn’t seem capable of dealing with imap in a stable and useful way. The fact that I’m not constantly thinking about how and where to sort new emails means I can spend more time reading, responding, and acting on them. Email has finally become a more useful tool to me.

Though I haven’t yet finished importing all my old mail and getting it properly labeled and archived, that is really my fault for how bad my

And now my docs are taking the Google brick road

Since my experiences with Gmail have been going so well I have begun a slower migration to using Google docs instead of word. This migration has begun by simply choosing to open and save doc attachments in Google Docs. I am going to continue trying out Google Docs this way, as well as using it to create new docs before migrating everything there. While I nearly always have internet access, sometimes that is simply not true leaving me cause for consideration.

Which leads to the possibilities of the Google Gears concept which from what I understand is a desktop application for using your Google content offline. I haven’t played with it or done any research but I will be looking into and sharing my experiences in the future.

The bottomline?

Google apps are working out. So well so far in fact that I am already looking at ways to leverage the Google tools for better communication and information sharing internally at CoTradeCo since we mostly work in decentralized locations.

All of which makes me wonder if I should be posting this in Business Interests or Digital Life. Likely this topic will end up spanning both.

I would love to hear about your experiences switching to Google Apps for any reason. Any tips or tricks? I love tips and tricks.

Check out some interesting VERSUS videos in the Prizefight category of videos at CNetTV. This Prizefight is about Gmail vs Yahoo but there are a lot more on various subjects you might find useful or amusing.

The Google apps saga began in the post Switching to Gmail and other google apps