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28 January '06 - 09:38

Gmail annoyances

Why is discard not going in trash??
Okay. For the week I used a new mail in Gmail as collector place for my notes. Mind you, I was on a conference and had a lot jotted down.

Now, some minutes ago, by accident, I hit instead of Save the Discard button. One week gone. Yes I know that it said discard. And yes, it would be bothersome if it would always ask for 'do you really want that'. But in this case, I really really would have liked to say "ups no!".

And why is save and discard anyhow so close together? Why does discard not put this into the trash?
I would it expect to go in there but as I just discovered it does not.

Filters. I want "not in".
And could someone please show someone at Goggle that it would be much more efficient if I had the possibility to filter on something which does *not* have the label X? I would like to work with all the files in my Gmail which does not have a special tag on it - but I can't. I only can try to filter them based on another mechanism, label them all Y (one page at a time .... great if you have hundreds of them), filter all of them which already have label X, remove from them Y and in the end use "filter all, which still have Y". Great.

Spam and the threaded conversations
I sometimes do have messages which are to be deleted. Either because they are big, or because all my comments for a blog entry are threaded - and suddenly there is spam in between. Or I want to throw out one single message. I can't. Because it threads.

Yes, threading is nice. But I want to see the single message.
I do have a sense for "which person send me roughly the mail when". I can't sort for this in Gmail. I only can try to search for the name and then go through the conversation one by one, hoping I can find what I am searching. And why can't I thread an attachment? Yes, I like to do that.

Labels
Why can't I drag and drop mails onto filters? Why do I have to mark them and select from a small (!) drop down window - and if I want more than one, i have to do it over and over again. Why can't I drag and drop messages onto a filter and when I press shift during that, it removes the filter?

Refine search
Why can't I still not search in complex terms? I know how to write a filter for what I want. Take a look at what Outlook is offering you into their extended search for mails. Well, that is not perfect either, but it is defenetly more.

Pop3-Download
Why does mail I have sent over time come down as "sent today"?

Saved searches / limited display
Why can't I save favorite searches? They are not the same as labels.

If I have to search to work with my files / mails, I usually have more than 20 results. Make that more like 200 - and try to go through all of those pages ...

Mailing lists
Tried to use it for that, unusable. Still have my normal pop3 account for this.

And the one thing annoying me the most:
In Firefox the focus is not set 'in' the page after loading. You have to at least once click into the page somewhere to activate it and be able to start using for example compose.

How about your?



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7 comments
  1. Since there is a menu to view only starred, sent or all items, why not one for Unread Mail? When it’s time to go though items I’ve been too busy to read, it would certainly make me happy to only see those that are unread.
    hilary 28 January '06 - 11:20
  2. Enter is:unread (also working for read, starred) and add if you like an in:label.

    But as I said, the opposite for labels is not available. So you could do is:unread in:inbox :)
    Nicole 28 January '06 - 11:30
  3. yah! that made my day! thanks nicole.
    hilary 28 January '06 - 16:03
  4. the ability to filter on basis of particular LABEL for pop3 downloads!!!

    i dont want to d/l 65mb of data at one go :(
    Neil 26 February '06 - 05:35
  5. you can do a “not in label” search with -label:blah
    dave 08 March '06 - 07:56
  6. Is there any way of emailing a few people at once – by selecting their names from the contact list, after you’ve written a message?
    I want to send an email to 7 of my contacts, and would like to select them, rather than write their names and addresses in one by one in the address field. At the moment, I have to write the email, open Gmail contacts in another window, select all the contacts I’d like to send to, and then copy and paste all of the addresses into my original message..am I just missing something? At the moment it’s so tedious, and time consuming, I may as well print out the joke and send it by post…
    Matt 06 January '07 - 08:23
  7. You can set up a group and send it to the group.
    Nicole 06 January '07 - 11:04



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female. european. geek.

About Nicole Simon I love working with people and help them get successful, especially through the use of social software. Though I have been on the net for over a decade and have consulted SMB for years, I also understand the corporate side, as I have worked in a major corporation for 15 years.

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