For anyone who is facing problems in signing into Gmail, please first read this article where we have detailed common tips which you can use to solve the problems. Also take out time to read this article about changing DNS address, in case the problem is with your Internet Service Provider.As far as Jenson’s question is concerned the answer to that is yes. You can check your mails without using Gmail Login. In this article we will focus on following alternate ways to view your Gmail mails.

1:  Use alternate Gmail Login Addresses

2: Use a desktop Email Client

3: Using Offline Gmail

4: Forwarding it to another Email address

5: Use Google Toolbar to Login into Gmail

6 : Use iGoogle to View Gmail Messages

7: View Gmail Inbox Messages with a Feed reader

8 : Other Methods

1 . Using Alternate Gmail Login Addresses

Here is a list of URLs that you can try if you are finding it hard to login at www.gmail.com.

a) https://www.gmail.com/ : It is Gmail’s SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) login page. It would show a security certificate error if date and time settings on your system are not up to date.

b) http://mail.google.com/mail : It is Gmail’s standard URL. You can see this URL after you log in into your Gmail account.

c) https://mail.google.com/mail : Secured version of above

d) http://gmail.google.com/gmail : Old alternate URL

e) https://gmail.google.com.gmail : Secured Version of Old alternate URL

f) http://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser : This URL forces Gmail to skip test for browser compatibility and load in Standard Mode.

g) https://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser : Secured Version of the above

h) http://mail.google.com/mail/h : Simple or basic html mode. If you have a slow internet connection, make sure you use this.

i) https://mail.google.com/mail/h : Secured version of basic HTML mode

j) http://m.gmail.com : Mobile version of Gmail. In normal browsers the login window is small but the Gmail loads in basic HTML mode.

k) http://mail.google.com/mail/x/ : Another URL for mobile devices and PDA. The difference between the two links for mobile devices is that if you use this link in web browser, it will load with the similar interface as in mobile devices while the m.gmail.com loads in basic HTML format.

l) https://mail.google.com/mail/x/ : Secured version of the above.

m) https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/ : Secured Inbox feed URL for reading the feeds with a RSS reader. Use this if nothing of the above works. You can view feeds of messages in your Inbox.

n) https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail : Another Secure URL to access Gmail Login Page.

o) Gmail App for Mobiles: An advanced Java app for using Gmail on your mobile phones.

2: Download Gmail Messages with Desktop Email Client

Desktops Email clients download all your mail messages (excluding Spam and Chat messages). You can login into these email clients if all the above links can’t get you to the Gmail Login Page. You can also compose and send messages through desktop email clients.  There are several such clients available but I personally prefer, Thunderbird. It’s free, it’s open source and it set ups automatically within seconds. By the way, Gmail currently supports the following Desktop Email Clients.

1. Apple Mail 3.0
2. Outlook Express
3. Outlook 2002
4. Outlook 2003
5. Outlook 2007
6. Thunderbird 2.0
7. Windows Mail

Read this article to learn how to setup these desktop email clients with Gmail.

3: Use Gmail Offline Mode

Last year Gmail launched Offline Gmail, for people who wished they could access their Gmail even if they didn’t have internet access. It’s a great feature and works pretty well. If you want to use Gmail to browse through your old messages, you can use Gmail Offline Mode.

Once enabled, Gmail offline mode downloads all the current messages (inbox, archives, outbox ,chats etc) to your computer and will keep it updated till the last login on that particular computer.

You can read this article to learn how to setup offline mode in Gmail.

4: Forward Gmail messages to another email address

Even the free version of Gmail allows you to forward your incoming mail messages to another email address (Yahoo, hotmail, Rediffmail etc) . In case you are facing problems logging into Gmail, this is perhaps the best solution for you. You can forward all your incoming mail messages to any valid email address.

Read this article to learn how to forward your Gmail messages to another email address.

5: Use Google Toolbar to access Gmail

Browser like Firefox and Internet Explorer give you the ability to use install custom toolbar and access various services of the toolbar provider with one click. One of such and perhaps the best toolbar is Google Toolbar. It is currently available only for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Once installed in your browser, click the Gmail icon on the toolbar and it will automatically redirect you to the login page. You can download the Google Toolbar form here

6. Use iGoogle to View Gmail Messages

You can also iGoogle to sign into your Gmail account and check mails. Just Sign into your iGoogle account at google.com/ig and add the following Gmail Gadget to it. You can enjoy all the features of Gmail with this method.

7: View Gmail Inbox Messages with a Feed reader

Gmail has a RSS Feed for inbox messages which can be read through your any RSS reader which supports “authenticated feed”. Authenticated feed means you have to authenticate with your username and password to view the feeds.

FreeMyFeed supports this feature. Alternatively you can load RSS feeds in Firefox or Chrome itself. Browsers will show only snippets of your unread inbox mail messages.

8. Other Methods

Other methods include

a. Using Google Desktop

b .Using Google Talk to access Gmail

c. Using other Google Services like YouTube and Orkut to login into Gmail .

d . Using Gmail Manager plugin to Login into your account.

Here are the currently available alternative Gmail Login URL’s

1: www.gmail.com : This one is the Gmail URL used by most of the Gmail owners around the world. It automatically redirects to the mail.google.com/mail.

2: https://www.gmail.com : It is the secure Gmail login page. Here the HTTPS refers Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It ensures that all your data is sent across networks in encrypted form and is safer than using the plain and simple http.  Https mode in Gmail is turned on by default and uses port 443 as opposed to the port 80 used by http.

3) http://mail.google.com/mail : This is the standard Gmail URL . To understand what I mean by standard Gmail URL you need to first understand the Gmail Login Process.

Gmail Login works something like this. Whenever someone tries to login into his Gmail account with any of the URL’s mentioned in the article, he is automatically redirected to Google accounts login URL at https://www.google.com/accounts/. Once the user fills in the username and password combination he is redirected to http://mail.google.com/mail. All the activities by the users like reading messages, replying to emails, chatting with friends are carried out on this URL i.e. the standard Gmail URL.

4) https://mail.google.com/mail : This is the secure version of the standard Gmail URL. It provides 128 bit encryption for information transfers across the networks while using Gmail. By default Gmail redirects to this secured version of the standard URL , however this can be changed through the settings in users Gmail account.

5) http://gmail.google.com/gmail : In its initial days , Gmail used this URL address as the standard Gmail URL. However it changed to the current standard URL on 22^nd June 2005. If you use this URL to login into your Gmail account you will be redirected to the current standard URL.

6) https://gmail.google.com.gmail : It is the secure version of the above.

7) http://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser : Gmail has two versions  – The standard version which uses Ajax heavily and thus requires modern browsers to load in full functionality and a basic HTML mode – which uses plain html and can load in almost any existing browser in the world.

At the time of login Gmail checks the browser compatibility and accordingly suggests the user to login into basic HTML mode. This URL will force Gmail skip the browser compatibility test and load in standard mode by default.

8 ) https://mail.google.com/mail/?nocheckbrowser: This is the secured version of the above alternate Gmail login URL.

9) http://mail.google.com/mail/h : You can use this alternate Gmail login URL to login into Simple or basic html mode. It lacks some of the features of the Standard Gmail version and is the recommended version if you are using a non compatible web browser or in case you have a slow internet connection. You can check out the differences between the standard Gmail mode and Basic HTML mode in our earlier article here.

10) https://mail.google.com/mail/h:  This is the secure version of the above.

11) http://m.gmail.com:  This is the standard Gmail URL for Mobile phone users.  This is basically a stripped down version of Gmail for the users who need to login into their Gmail accounts via mobile phones. It is suited to mobile phones of all display sizes and loads pretty quickly.

It can also be used to login into Gmail in normal web browsers.

12) http://mail.google.com/mail/x/: This is another alternate Gmail URL for mobile phones and PDA users . The interface is similar to the standard alternate URL for mobile devices, the only difference being that this URL also has a secure login option.

13) https://mail.google.com/mail/x/ : Secured version of alternate Gmail URL for mobile phones and PDA.

14) https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/ : Standard Gmail Inbox feed URL for reading the feeds with a RSS reader. You can use this URL if Use this if nothing of the above works. You can view feeds of messages in your Inbox.

15) https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail : Another Secure URL to access Gmail Login Page.

16) Gmail App for Mobiles: An advanced Java app for using Gmail on your mobile phones.Alternative Gmail Login URL’s

In this article we will learn how to export and backup your Gmail contacts for further use.

1: Sign into your Gmail account and click “Contacts Link”. See image for assistance.

Alternatively login into your Google contacts account  here.

2: You will find several options on the contact page . Look on the right hand side some where just above the middle of your screen . You will see three options Import , Export and Print.  Click on “Export”

3: Select “Everyone” in who do you want to export? & choose an appropriate export format from the three options as per your need.

1. Google CSV format (for importing into a Google account)
2. Outlook CSV format (for importing into Outlook or another application)
3. vCard format (for importing into Apple Address Book or other application)

4: Click Export.

That’s how you backup your Gmail contacts in a few seconds.

To render these advanced features to its users, Gmail makes use of Ajax, employing JavaScript codes.  While these work fine on advanced browsers like IE7 +, Mozilla Firefox 2+ and the Gmail interface loads in the Standard mode, the features don’t properly load on earlier browsers.

For users who still browse web with earlier generation of web browsers or  are using a slow internet connection, Gmail offers a Basic HTML mode. The basic HTML mode is compatible with almost any browser.

As the name suggests, the basic HTML mode is plain basic and lacks interactive features of Gmail.  You will find the following features missing in the basic HTML mode.

1. Gmail Chat
2. Spell checker
3. Keyboard shortcuts
4. Ability to manage filters
5. Adding, editing, importing, or deleting contacts
6. Custom ‘from:’ addresses
7. Rich formatting

You can access Gmail in basic HTML mode by using the URL’s http://mail.google.com/mail/h or https://mail.google.com/mail/h ( for secure login)

To switch from Standard mode to basic HTML mode or from basic HTML mode to Standard mode in Gmail, scroll down to the bottom of the page or press the “End” key and click on the version of Gmail you want to view against the “Gmail view” option.

Ideally if you have enabled “Save Chat History” and are not chatting “Off Record”, Gmail will save the Gmail Chat and Google Talk chat history in a separate “Chat folder” online. This folder can be accessed anytime online. However if you want to take an offline backup , you can follow the instructions that follow.

Gmail offers offline access to its users. We will use this Gmail service to backup our Gmail Chat conversations. For this method to work you need to Install Google Gears for your browsers first ( Google Chrome comes pre-installed with Google Gears).

It is a free software offered by Google that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser . You can download it from here. Run the .exe file and wait for a few minutes for it to install. You would need to restart your open browsers to see the effect of Google Gears. Restart your browser and move ahead with the following guide.

If you wish to take a backup of Gmail Chat History offline, follow the following steps.

Step 1 : Click Settings > Offline.

Step 2 : Under the Offline Mail chose “Enable Offline Mail for this computer”.

Step3 : In the Download options Click on “Change Label Settings”.

Step4 : Choose “All” for the labels you want to take a backup of. To backup Chat conversations only select “None” for all the other Labels. You can also alter the time period for which you want the backup.

Step 5 : Click Save Changes.

Step 6  : In the popup window asking you to Install Offline Access for Gmail , Click on Install.

Takes a bit of time .

Once you click Install, Gmail will automatically sync your Chats to your computer which can be accessed anytime in the friendly Gmail enviornment. The process may take a bit of time , if the backup is large. Next time you login into your Gmail account , it will automatically sync to update all your conversations to the current date.

To access Offline Gmail mode , you will need to use your Gmail password.

This is how you backup your Gmail Chat History . If you have any further queries , ask us through comments . We will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

With the number of phishing and hacking activities increasing with every passing day it is vital that we take effective security measures to protect our personal and professional information from getting into wrong hands. One step towards this would be to change your current email passwords to a longer, complicated yet a memorable password.

As far as Chiru’s question is concerned, I would say changing a password on Gmail is easy. You can do it in matter of seconds. Here is a complete guide followed by a video tutorial.

There are two ways you can do this.

First Method: Change Gmail Password in 10 Seconds

Step 1: Login into your Gmail account with your current password.

Step 2: Click this link to change your Gmail password. It will open a window , Now first enter your current password and then enter new password that you would like to have,  twice and click save.

Second Method: Change Gmail Password in 2 minutes

Step 1: Login into your Gmail account with your current password.

Step 2: Click on settings on the top right hand corner of your mailbox.

Step 3: Click the Accounts and Import tab in the Settings window.

Step 4: Click on Google Accounts Settings links seen at the bottom of Account Tab.

Step 5: Under the heading Personal Settings click Change Password as shown in the figure.

Step 6: Now enter your old password or the security question that you entered while registering your Gmail account. Now enter your new password twice and click save.

Congratulations you have changed your Gmail Password.

How to Change Gmail Password : Video Tutorial

To avoid privacy issues Sxipper stores all your personal data securely on your computer’s hard disk. In case you use multiple PC’s at your home you can also backup and restore all login information easily.

To avoid Gmail Sign In problems, you need to set Sxipper to Auto Submit for Gmail.com. This will ensure that you will not have problem logging in until it’s a server side error. If still you face issues make sure that read the possible solutions that we mentioned in our last article.

Download Sxipper Here.

Well Tim, Gmail comes with a pretty good spam filter that works on community clicks i.e. Gmail users vote with their clicks to report a particular email as spam, and Google learns and blocks similar messages to other users.

These messages go to the Spam Folder in the mailbox, and are automatically deleted after 30 days. Before that you can examine them and check them as “Not Spam” individually.

The problem generally arises if you forward your mail to another email address or download your emails from Google Server via POP3 or IMAP access with desktop email clients like Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. In such cases any mails in Spam folder will not be forwarded or downloaded to email accounts and therefore until you login into your Gmail account, you would not be able to see these mails.

Since Gmail doesn’t provide you an option to disable the spam filter, we will have to use a workaround to turn off spam filtering. We will use Gmail’s Filter for this purpose. We need to create a filter that forces all the incoming mails to skip the spam folder and remain in the Inbox.  Here is the video tutorial followed by a detailed guide.

Video Tutorial

Step By Step Guide

Step 1 .Click on Settings > Filters > Create a new Filter

Step 2 .You would see 4 text boxes. In “Has the words” enter is:spam and click on next step .

Step 3. Click OK on the pop up that follows.

Step 4. Check the box against “Never send it to Spam” and click on “Create filter”

This will disable Gmail Spam filter and all your new mails will be directly delivered to your inbox. However Gmail will still warn you that particular email has been identified as spam, but not sent to Spam folder due the filter. You can ignore it .

If you are not aware of what Nick  is referring to, then lets first understand what Gmail threaded view actually is. Gmail uses threaded view to organize conversations – For example if I send you an email message and you reply back to the same email, Gmail considers it’s as a single message, but with two threads. First thread will be my original message, while second one will be your reply.

Personally speaking, I find this feature of Gmail to be of great help as I don’t have to spend time searching for individual emails to get the required information, especially if the previous emails messages are more than a month old.

The main problem with threading is that if the messages are relayed from some source and with a common subject (automated messages); Gmail recognizes them as one message even if the original senders are different. A classic example of this would be a forum message where you get replies from different people.

Now let’s come back to the original question, Can you disable threading in Gmail messages? The answer is No, you cannot.

What you can do for now is to “Get used to the Threaded view of Gmail”.  When you have such messages click “Expand All” link on top right side of your email message and use Ctrl + F (find), function of your browser to find what you need. This will save you time in going through threaded messages. You can also individually delete any of the useless threads from entire conversation.

Another long term alternative is to suggest Google to remove threading in Gmail. You can do it here.

]]> http://www.aeinrst.info/disable-gmail-threading/feed/ 1 http://www.aeinrst.info/gmail-checker-google-chrome-gmail-new-email-indicator-add-on/ http://www.aeinrst.info/gmail-checker-google-chrome-gmail-new-email-indicator-add-on/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:38:42 +0000 Admin http://www.aeinrst.info/?p=501 Most of us have the habit of anxiously checking our email account for that one important mail.

We constantly switch tabs and refresh our browsers to see if the new mail has arrived or not.

If you also belong to the above category of web users, you can now avoid such anxiety by adding a small extension to Google Chrome.

Gmail Checker is one of Google’s official sample extensions which displays number of unread in users Google Mail inbox. This little extension adds a small button to Google Chrome’s address bar.  It indicates the number of unread emails in users’ inbox. Gmail Inbox can be accessed simply by clicking this button as well.

To add Gmail Checker to Chrome, visit this page and click install.

Similar add-on for Mozilla Firefox is Gmail Manager.