Email Vacation Mode

If you are going to be away from your email for a lengthy period of time, this tip is for you.

By activating "vacation mode," anyone who emails you will get a message stating that you're away from email.  This message can say things like, "I'll be away for the next week.  If you need a reply before then, contact my coworker at..."

Setting this up is quite easy.

1. Login to your email.
2. Click on the gear icon above your inbox on the right side.
   
3. Select "Settings" from the menu.
   
4. Scroll down to "Vacation responder" and fill things out.
   
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Save Changes"
   

Make sure that you fill in start and end dates in "First Day" and "Ends."  By doing this (and checking off the box next to "Ends") the system will kick in for your vacation.

I recommended starting this on your first day before you leave, just in case someone emails you late that afternoon and you don't have a chance to respond.  Likewise, you may wish to set "Ends" to the day you come back, in order to let people know that you're working to catch up with your backlog.

A great time to use this is during any school recess, so that people know you might be slow in getting back to them.

Changing Themes in Email

A few people have recently said that they don't like the new look of our email system. You can set a new "theme" to change the look, if you want.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner.
• Click on Mail Settings.
• Click on "Themes"
• Select a theme that you like.
• Click on "Inbox" on the left edge to return to your email.

If you want to leave feedback with Google about their changes, you can use their feedback form.

Email Improvements

Google has notified me of an upcoming change to our email system.  This should be happening within a few weeks, at most.

To learn how your cairodurham.org email is about to change, please look at this web page.  The video at the top takes less than 2 minutes and the descriptions in the page give a lot of insight.

Forwarding All Email

Want to see all of your school email at your personal email address?  You can set it up to forward all incoming email to another address.

This may be especially useful for students who do not like to use their school email address but still need to receive email from teachers.

• Go to start.cairodurham.org.
• Click on "Email".
• Login.

• Click on the small gear icon in the upper right corner and then click on "Mail settings".

• Click on the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.

• Click on the "Add a forwarding address" button.

• Enter the address and click the "Next" button.

• If it says that a confirmation code was sent, check the other email account for a new message.  Follow those directions.

• If necessary, switch from "Disable forwarding" to "Forward a copy of incoming mail to <your address here> and <keep Cairo-Durham Central School District Mail's copy in the inbox>"

Now send yourself an email message at your <you>@cairodurham.org address and check the other address to see if it arrived.

Email Searching

Ever have a hard time finding an email message?  Check out Gmail's search tools.

At the top of your email, you can type in a search for "SAT" and find everything that mentions SAT exams, but also anything with the words "sat in a chair."  Make Gmail find exactly what you want with these searches:

• "from:<email>" searches for any messages from the email address you listed.  So "from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" will find messages from him, but it doesn't list messages sent to him, CC-ed to him, that just mention him.
• "to:<email>" acts like "from:<email>" in reverse.
• "subject:<word>" looks for any messages with <word> in the subject line.
• "has:attachment" will find messages with attachments.
• "is:starred" will find messages that you've placed a star on.  You can star or unstar a message by clicking on the star next to it in your inbox.
• "before:<Year/Month/Day>" is great for searching for old messages.
• "after:<Year/Month/Day>" is a way to find recent messages.

You can combine these, too.

• "after:2011/09/01 before:2011/09/30" will find messages during September, 2011.
• "has:attachment from:jkikpole@cairodurham.org" finds messages from jkikpole@cairodurham.org that contain attachments.

See the full list of search tricks, check out this list from Google.

Google also offers this printable list of shortcuts.

To become a full Gmail ninja, check out this list.

Customize Email's Look

Want to make email look better?  You can customize the background picture, colors, fonts, etc. of your email account.

This does not effect the look of email that you send.  So you can make a very personal working environment without worrying about looking unprofessional to anyone you email.

Fo details, check out Google's announcement of this new feature:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/custom-background-image-themes.html