Email is a great way of communicating with friends and family at the touch of a button, no matter where in the world you are
Read on to learn:
- how to begin composing a new email
- where to add recipients to your email
- where to input your subject line
- how to send your email or save it as a draft, for later
The following steps show you how to send an email using a Gmail account. However, many email accounts or applications follow a similar process for creating and sending a new message.
You’ll need:
- a computer with active internet connection
- an email account set up and ready to send and receive emails.
Follow these step-by-step instructions to send an email
Step 1: Log in to your Gmail account so that you are on the dashboard (main page) of your mail account.
Step 2: Click Compose.
Step 3: A new blank email window will open up. In the ‘To’ box, type in the email address of the recipient.
Step 4: You might want to include someone else in your email to ‘keep them in the loop’. You can do this by clicking Cc or Bcc, which will open another field. ‘Cc’ means ‘carbon copy’ and ‘Bcc’ means ‘blind carbon copy’. Adding an email address to the ‘Cc’ field means that that person will receive a copy of the email and all the other recipients will see their email address. If an email address is put into the ‘Bcc’ field, the person will get a copy of the email but no other recipient will see that address.
If you are sending the same email to lots of different people, it’s a good idea to put all the email addresses in the ‘Bcc’ field to keep your ‘mailing list’ confidential. That way, there’s no chance that it could fall into the hands of a spammer or hacker.
Step 5: The subject field allows you to give the recipient an idea of the topic of your email, like a heading. You don’t have to put anything in the subject box, but it can help when viewing and sorting email.
Step 6: Email text can be formatted in a similar way to text in a word document. You can change the font style, colour and size using the formatting icons. You can also create bullet points and check the spelling of your email. Choose your formatting from the menu shown.
Step 7: Type your message in the main body field of your email.
You can format your email using the options that are available on the toolbar. To add a link in the body of your email click on the insert link icon, then add the ‘Text to display’ and then a web or email address, finally click OK.
Step 8: When you’re happy with your email, click the blue Send button at the bottom of the compose window.
Step 9: The email you’ve sent will now be stored in the ‘Sent Mail’ folder on your Gmail dashboard. You may have to run your mouse pointer over the Inbox folder link to see the other folders.
Step 10: You may start an email but then decide to come back to it later rather then sending it straightaway. Gmail saves your drafts automatically. So you can simply close the email and the unfinished email will be saved to your ‘Drafts’ folder. When you decide that you’re ready to send it, you can retrieve it from the ‘Drafts’ folder by clicking Drafts and then clicking the correct item in the ‘Drafts’ folder list. Finish the email and click Send as normal.
Karen Maxwell is a Digital Unite tutor and assessor/trainer of computer accessibility.
Gmail is one of the most popular email tools and it’s because of how well it works and all that it allows us to do. However, there is something very practical that in principle the mail service Google does not offer: the delightful option of scheduling your emails to be sent later, at a specified time. This can be very useful for instance if you’re working from home on a Saturday evening but you want the emails to be sent on Monday morning. Fortunately, many developers have realised this problem and there are many ways to solve it. On OneHowTo we tell you how to schedule emails on Gmail.
To truly schedule emails in Gmail so that they are sent when you want, you’ll need to install an extension in your mail service. One of the most used and beloved ones is Boomerang, which is also free. To install it, go to the official website.
Click the big button that says “Add this to your Gmail now!“. A small dialog box, in which the permissions will appear, should enquire about the extension if you really truly want to open it. In this case, you can read and modify your data, and manage your extensions, apps and themes. All this is normal, so click on the “Add” button to confirm this.
After accepting the installation, you’ll first notice that the extension has been added. Gmail will then be loaded into your browser and in the centre you will see a window that will take you step by step through the operation of the Boomerang system. Click on the “start” button to see the small tutorial (or finish reading this article and skip the tutorial).
Once you have got the extension installed in Gmail, write an email to program to be sent. You will see that in the bottom of the window, you can write messages using a new toolbar. It is the Boomerang. Click on the red button where it says “Send later” to prime the email for a later date and time.
When you click on the button “Send Later” a drop-down menu will appear where you’ll see many options: send off within 1, 2 or 4 hours, during the morning or afternoon, several days later, weeks or a month later or, finally, you can select exactly when you want the delivery to be sent off. Select the option that you prefer.
A pop-up window (you’ll have to unblock them) will appear. Google will open asking you to give it permission to use Boomerang for two things: view and manage your email, and know who you are on Google. Ignore that and click “OK” to continue the schedule process for the email.
The message will then have been programmed for delivery. To view all emails that you have programmed with this tool, click on the icon of a boomerang that has appeared on the top right of the screen (including your name and configuration squares). In the dropdown menu, select “Manage scheduled messages”. A new tab with all the information will open up for you.
If you want to read similar articles to How to Schedule Emails in Gmail, we recommend you visit our Internet category.
Google’s Gmail now allows you to schedule emails for delivery at a later time or date. Here’s how to use the email service’s latest feature.
Are you a night owl who hammers out email after email in the wee hours of the morning? Maybe you spring out of bed at 5 a.m. and start firing off messages to team members, or spend your Sunday night catching up on email before the week starts.
That’s great—for you. But there are probably some people on your team who would prefer not to deal with after-hours emails. Even if you say something can wait until morning, many feel compelled to answer right away. Luckily, Google now lets you schedule emails in Gmail, so you can cross things off your to-do list without bothering your coworkers.
Previously, Chrome extensions like Boomerang and IFTTT were the only ways to perform this task. Now Gmail users no longer have to rely on third-party add-ons. Here’s how to schedule an email in Gmail.
