12 Tips for Making Google Gmail, Google Apps Easier to Use

by Clint Boulton

In Gmail, select the Settings menu. You will see the option to turn on keyboard shortcuts. Click the “on” box and hit “save” and you’re ready to begin.

This slide shows the keystrokes for composing an e-mail, putting the cursor in the search box and more, all sans mouse. Tip within a tip: The J and K options for moving between e-mail messages work by default in Google Reader. When you have a Reader item open, hit J to go to the next item down the list. Tap K to move up.

Keystrokes for having e-mail routed directly to the archive, reporting spam and sending e-mails to the trash.

Keystrokes for triggering labels, marking messages as read and undoing previous actions.

Click tab, then enter to automatically send a Gmail message from your keyboard. You can also navigate throughout Gmail and select several options with these two-step taps.

Those of you who use the video chat feature in Gmail may not know you can super-size your chat window. Use the “pop-out” arrow on the top of a chat window to make a video chat bigger. This will separate the video chat into its own window. To have the video chat block everything else out, click the Full Screen button in the top left corner of the video area.

Google is intent on propelling more adoption of its video chat feature. Last week, the company began allowing users to connect to their friends via video chat with iGoogle.

Groups can be given permission to edit or view individual documents, spreadsheets, presentations or files.

Share a calendar with a group by navigating to “Share this calendar” and then entering a group’s e-mail address. The calendar will be shared with everyone in the group, and will automatically adjust to any membership changes over time.

Share a site with a group in the same way, then designate whether you want members in the group to be an owner, collaborator or viewer.

Add groups as collaborators or viewers of videos.

Also, Google Video for business users can accelerate their video play using these controls. Select a video and you’ll see a speed tortoise-versus-hare control in the player. Click the button to switch between 1.5x and real time, or drag the pop-up slider to select the speed you want.