Request for a new search parameter: has:label

A "has:label" search parameter. Useful for checking mail with any kind of label. I would personally use it for archiving old mails and being sure none passed through (as long as the Enforced status I asked for is not implemented).

Alos discussed here

An "enforced status" checkbox for IMAP unsubscription

Summary

• An "enforced status" checkbox for IMAP unsubscription.
• Similar in function to Enforced in GPO or !important in CSS).
• An old mail in both
  
  • an enforced unsubscribed IMAP mailbox and
  • an regular subscribed mailbox
  will not be downloaded, since enforced unsubscribe overrides "regular" susbscribe.

Scenario:

The easy part

I access Gmail with IMAP from a desktop client and the local database is getting huge (think this). In order to make it slimmer, I decide to backup old mails.

To do this, I use a filter to grap all old emails (before:2007/04/01) and affect them a label (archives) and apply the selection to existing mails (Apply the filter to x conversations below). I then activate theAdvanced IMAP feature in Labs then I uncheck the subscribe button for the archives label.

Still with me?

Now, all my old mails are in one folder/label (archives). Since I unsubscribed from this label, I should not see it locally (If I still want to access an old mail, I go to the web interface).

The tough part

Except that… These old mails have labels of their own, like grandma, birthdays and so on. And I don't want to unsubscribe from birthdays. I just want old mails out. If a mail is labelled both birthday and archives, it will be downloaded, by virtue of belonging to birthday, even if it also belongs to archives!

Proposal

With an enforce checkbox for every mailbox (once Advanced IMAP feature is on), Maild which belong to both a subscribed and an unsubscribed mailbox will be downloaded or not depending on the enforced status (of course, at least one of the mailbox must have an enforced status and at least one must not have it).

That way, I will still get new mails about birthdays on my desktop client, but I won't receive the old mail about birthday!

Please tell me if it is hard to understand.

Also discussed here and here.

Quick notes with subadresses and filters

Gmail permits subadresses (a.k.a. "plus adresses" - RFC 5233).

By combining this and an adequate filter, I found any easy way to send myself not without having them lying around.

Here's the way:

1. Create a label "Notes". Give it beige color (like Post-it) with the color 243,231,179
2. Create a filter:
   
   1. "to:(xxxxx+notes@gmail.com)" xxxxx is your gmail address
   2. apply label "Notes"

At first, you'll have to type xxxxx+notes. If you are like me, you will soon only have to type notes and Gmail will understand.

Great time (and memory) saver!

Is Google building Forever Cars?

This is a departure from the usual administration-related posts. But I wanted to write about an old feeling of mine (around 10 years old now).

In his major novel Ring around the Sun, Clifford D. Simak introduces Forever Cars. Forever Cars are higly advanced cars sold at a ridiculous price. They last very long, cost very few and plans are possible for those who can't purchase them. They are perfect and cheap.

What's the catch? Why would someone produce a highly advanced piece of tech and give it for (almost) free?

Remind you of someone? Hint: it starts with a G. With two "o" just after.

In Ring Around the Sun, Forever Cars are an example of "too good to be true" - their manufacturer's hidden agenda is to destroy the world economy. Several years ago, I wondered the same about Google. How could they give all of this for free (even by internet standards, they're cheap)? Yeah, I know. Ads. Still…

And, from time to time, even now that I am a Google Apps system administrator, I still wonder.

Is Google building Forever Cars?

Gmail Labs conflict: "Signature Tweaks" incompatible with "Quote Selected Text" lab

Quote selected text (which, by the way, only works with keyboard shortcuts, not with the mouse), is incompatible with signature tweaks.

It seems I am the first one to document this. Feedback welcome!

Changing e-mail address for Google Apps user

Now it is possible to change an existing Google Apps user email address (administrator included). I am not talking about nickname, but about real renaming (thus, it will also work for login). It works with standard edition too.

Kudos to Google Apps France for the finding.

New Font: Syncopate

It’s been a while now,but anyway: a new font is available at Google Docs: Syncopate. Notice that only a small part of Google Fonts are available with Google Docs.

Gmail’s Mail Fetcher and MobileMe

Source: chat with MobileMe support

MobileMe is in IMAP by default. It is possible to switch to POP (and thus to be able to retrieve MobileMe mail with Gmail’s Mail Fetcher, which is POP-only) but with two important limitations :

• It is an either/or proposal — contrary to most other mail services, one cannot have both IMAP and POP enabled at the same time. The very moment when POP is enabled, IMAP is disabled. So be sure to be ready (important if looking for syncing multiple devices or if you are acting on the behalf of a customer)
• The switch must be made by MobileMe staff, which further requires real-time switching (with the customer’s devices nearby)

Note: I goes without saying that these both limitations are Apple’s, not Google’s.

How to suggest a feature request to Google… and be heard!

Google has several and redundant ways to be contacted. I suspect even Google employees do not know well how to do it.

Below I list all the ways I know to contact Google. I sort of cross-post on all of them. I don't consider this spam because it is Google's fault first: If they were rigourous in their feedback policy, then I would be confident and post at the One and Only place™. Till then…

So here we go:

• (Everything) Help forum. Google does read it. But no guarantee your particular thread is read (even automatically).
• (Gmail, buzz, contacts) Gmail feature request. There is a I have another idea button at the bottom. Once again, not that updated, since there is still a request button for a request that had already been honoured (preventing auto-adding contacts)
• (Gmail labs) Google Group Gmail Labs — Suggest a-labs feature
• Google Product Ideas. No complete list, it seems Google is being overwhelmed with the feature request aspect of quality insurance…
  
  • Product Ideas for Google Buzz
  • Product Ideas for Google Apps (administrators)
  • Product Ideas for Google Groups.
  • Product Ideas for iGoogle
  • Product Ideas for Google Reader
  • Product Ideas for SketchUp
  • Product Ideas for Ad Planner
  • Product Ideas for Custom Search
  • Product Ideas for Google Places
  • Product Ideas for YouTube
  • Product Ideas for Google AdSense
  • Product Ideas for Google Images
  • Product Ideas for Google Sidewiki
  • Product Ideas for Google Docs
  • Product Ideas for Webmaster Central
  • Product Ideas for Blogger
  • Product Ideas for Data Liberation

A related address is Submit your own Gmail tips. Who knows, maybe you'll be published on Gmailblog. Unfortunately, you cannot read what other have proposed.

There are certainly (and unfortunately) others. I will update accordingly.

Google docs features

This is probably incomplete. Input welcome!

However harsh I may appear by time, let me be clear: this is the most powerful web editor I know. I am very demanding (I am a certified Word specialist as well as a typography connoisseur) and well aware of Google Docs’s shortcoming, but still I am very impressed. There is still room to grow, but most people won't even use half of present-day features.

I won't do the same for Spreadsheet, as I don't know it well enough.

Basic features

• Auto-saving
• Cancel/redo
• Limited formatting: non-customisable style, frustratingly basic templating, bold/italic/underline, strike-through, superscript and subscript, left/right/center/justify, nested listing (now with hybrid ordered/unordered), line-height (limited), paragraph spacing (limited)
• Webfonts (limited choice, no advanced typography settings like swashes, alternate letters or ligatures; Word or Textedit lovers, be on your way.
• Insert link, anchor, drawing, image, footnote, special characters (impressive), horizontal line (buggy with table of contents, though), visible page break, table of contents (awkwardly customisable), header, footnotes
• Search/replace (limited: the only option is case-sensitiveness—way below Word)
• Table (up to 20×20 cells quick creation, unlimited after)

Printing

• Native printing. Nor more PDF in-between. Ctr+PCmd+P supported (which means you cannot print the HTML page of the Google Docs—you can only print the doc itself, but I don't see any use for this anyway)
• Visible pagination (can print pages numbers too)
• A4, Executive,…
• Laandscape or portrait
• Background color (won’t be printed, though)

Import/export

• Import: Word (ODF too?), picture (OCR), unconverted Word (with a previewer; not that faithful)
• Export: ODT, PDF, RTF, text, Word, HTML

Localisation

• Language selection (for spellchecking and translation)
• Translate document
• Personal dictionary
• Customisable character replacement ((c) => ©)

Collaboration

Going Wave!

• Live commenting (impressive) with mail alerts and @mentions
• Real-time collaboration
• Advanced access control
• Revisions

Layout

• Ruler
• Indent/outdent
• Freefloating pictures

Others

• Equation (not calculation; just writing; LaTeX alternative, MathML?)
• Completely full screen possible (browser full screen + hide ruler + two time hide command + hide warning bar). WriteRoom beware!
• Statistics (word counting, signs counting)

Regrets

• Still no offline browsing :(

Multipage selection buggy on Google Contacts

Copy-and-paste from my writing at Google Help forum.

Summary: if you want to do an operation on contacts scattered on multiple pages, you may run into problems — so move to 250 contacts per page (the maximum).

Say you have 75 contacts. You configured Gmail to have only 50 contacts per page. Consequently, your contacts will be splitted in two pages (1-50 on page 1 and 51-75 on page 2).

Now, you want to export 4 contacts. 3 of them are on page 1, the fourth one is on page 2. You can check the fourth boxes; Google Contacts (or is Chrome? Or is it OS X?) remembers which boxes you checked for every page, which is good… and bad, because it will spread confusion, read further.

The problem arises when you want to export these contacts. Click on export and select “Selected Contacts”. If you were on page 1 when you asked for exportation, the counter will tell you there is 3 contacts to export. If you were on page 2, it will tell you there is 1 contact to export. This is because, even if Google Contacts/Chrome/OS X is able to remember the checked boxes, the script for actually counting the selected contacts is not able to remember.

Unfortunately, this is not just a display bug. It will export the contacts on the page, not the whole selection!

Worse, the same bug happens with group creation. If the contacts you want to select are on different pages, Google Contacts will only add the contacts on the active page into the group. So, if you want to add contacts from different pages to one group, you have to select all contacts on one page, add them to the group, move to the next page and start the process again.

Now, there are two questions here:
- What is responsible for the “remember checked boxes across pages”, interface-level, behaviour? Chrome or OS X (so, unrelated to Google Contacts) or Google Contacts itself? In other words, is this behaviour an artifact or a part of the problem?
- The script-level lack of memory at the across pages has to be fixed.

Two interfaces for contacts

There are two contacts interfaces, with different features:

• the “embedded one”, which is default for Google personal, is the most powerful and is the one I recommend.
  Address is: https://mail.google.com/mail/#contacts
• the “dedicated one”, which is default for Google Apps and has less features (no exporting of individual address). Until recently (12th of April 2011?), it was the only one available for Google Apps (one reason why I wrote that Google Apps standard may be less interesting than Google Apps personal). Fortunately, you can now switch to the one above, the “embedded one” (you can access the dedicated interface with Gmail regular too, but why bother?).
  Address is: https://www.google.com/contacts/?tab=mC

Be sure to use the first one. It is more powerful and is keyboard shortcut-compatible (provided you activated the shortcut in settings, you can compose a new mail by hitting c with the embedded interface, something you cannot do with the dedicated interface. Plus, it is simpler for Gmail user, because this is what they know the best. Really, there is only two good thing to consider:

• Its three-panel layout
• Newly-created contacts default to the selected group. In Gmail regular, newly created contact default to My Contacts, which make it hard to properly organize contacts.

Again: don’t use the dedicated interface.

I asked for a merge at Google Help forum, where Google employees wander and sometimes honour requests.

Maximum attachment size in Gmail

Maximum attachment size in Gmail is 25 Mb. I don’t know if included image (with the right lab feature) images count towards this limit (I guess it does). This size limit may actually be lower for two reasons (out of inserted images):

• Technical reasons
• The recipient doesn’t accept attachments that big

(source)

List of Google employees posting on the Help forum

By checking where they posted, you have better chances to get authoritative answers. This list is destined to grow.

• Teresa C., Google Docs Community Manager
• Michelle
• Cody W., Chat Guide
• Bin, Google mobile tech support
• Jules H.
• Brandon L., Staff Software Engineer

Employee leaving: remove access to all documents in Google Docs

If you use Google Apps, you should share document at domain level (or better yet at OU level if you use Google Apps Premier or Education). Then deactivating the user would prevent access in a breeze.

I yo do not use Google Apps but only a collection of Google personal accounts (that’s my case and I don’t like Google Apps that much, but again, I do not manage thousands of users), then you can use this trick to find all the documents the employee used to have access to.

to:ex-employee@gmail.com

The beauty of this second solution is that it also proves useful for Google Apps: an external contractor may need occasional access to internal documents. With this search operator, the contractor can be unauthorized too (deactivating account would not have work since the contractor was not an employee firsthand).

works Kudos to Google employee Teresa C. who alse pointed to search operators for Google Docs.

Fixed-with font for text/plain email in Gmail

There used to be a lab for fixed-with font for text/plain in Gmail, but it had been removed. This is really a shame.

You can complain here: Default font for plain text message

Meanwhile, you can also install a Chrome extension: Fixed width text in Gmail™. You can then change the particular fixed-with font in Chrome preference (direct link for Chrome users), but beware: it will apply to every website, not Gmail only.
Coupled with extension synchronization, this is a passable solution. It will still not work for mobile access. It is not worth a native lab, but that’s all we have…

In order to optimize the chance of being reading, I also opened an issue at Gmail’s help forum. Maybe Sara Goetz will read me.

Coding Horror: HTML in Gmail

I am OK with badly written HTML on a daily basis if I have to. But a signature is something one has time crafting properly. And so, I would like to be able to create a clean HTML signature. Plus, experience told me that even the signature is not that clean when copied and pasted from a mail. Pure HTML is so much better.

I WANT to be able to instert my HTML signature in code way, not WYSIWYG way!

Not convinced? See for yourself:

First the result:

David Latapie

Informatique
Email : david.latapie@adnfrance.org
Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris

Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: http://adnfrance.org

Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !



Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.

Then the clean code:

<div><img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/LOGO-ADN-sig.jpg" height="55" width="96"></div></div>
<address> style="font-style:normal";<strong>David Latapie<br />
Informatique
Email : <a href="mailto:david.latapie@adnfrance.org" style="color:#36F">david.latapie@adnfrance.org</a>
Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris<br />
Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: <a href="http://adnfrance.org/" style="color:#36F" target="_blank">http://adnfrance.org</a><br />
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf" target="_blank" style="color:#C3C">Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !</a><br />
<br />
Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.</strong>

Then (beware), Gmail’s horrible code:

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/LOGO-ADN-sig.jpg" height="55" width="96"></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></div></b></span></span></div>
</b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">David Latapie</div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Informatique</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Email : <a href="mailto:david.latapie@adnfrance.org" style="color: rgb(17, 37, 8);" target="_blank"><font color="#3366FF">david.latapie@adnfrance.org</font></a></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold;">Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: <a href="http://adnfrance.org/" target="_blank"><font color="#3366FF">http://adnfrance.org</font></a></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><div><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<b><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#CC33CC">Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !</font></a></b></div></div></span></div></b></span></div>

<div style="font-weight: bold;"><br></div></span></span></div></span></div></div><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-weight: bold;"><div style="display: inline ! important;">Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.</div>

Still with me? Please Google, do something! It is not just a matter of aesthetics or bandwith: It also made it very hard or even impossible to manage HTML signature for all employees in my company!

Gmail’s Autoresponder doesn’t support HTML Signature

Autoresponder sends mail in plain text, regardless of the format set up in settings. As a consequence, HTML signature appears badly.

Consider this (rendered result):

*Stéphanie Goujon
Déléguée Générale
web: http://www.adnfrance.org

**
Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI
!<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf">

Instead of this (expected result):

Stéphanie Goujon
web: http://www.adnfrance.org

Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !

Google Motion, the body as an input device, Google’s way

• Microsoft’s Kinect brought bodily interface to gaming.
• Google’s Motion will hopefully do the same for working à la Minority Report

(announcement)

It’s an April’s Fool, but I would not be surprised they are working on the real thing!

Google Contacts’ CSV syntax

Google gives only sparse information about Google contacts’ syntax (I need it for converting various Outlook files). And I did not find any reliable information on the web about its syntax.

So, I braced myself and “reversed-engineered” it. Below is the result. Since Blogger doesn’t allow inline overflow, you suggest you take a look at the spreadsheet version.

Name                 ,Given Name,Additional Name,Family Name   ,Yomi Name,Given Name Yomi,Additional Name Yomi,Family Name Yomi,Name Prefix   ,Name Suffix   ,Initiales,Nickname  ,Short Name,Maiden Name,Birthday  ,Gender,Location,Billing Information,Directory Server,Mileage,Occupation,Hobby,Sensitivity,Priority,Subject,Notes,Group Membership             ,E-mail 1 - Type,E-mail 1 - Value       ,E-mail 2 - Type,E-mail 2 - Value,Phone 1 - Type ,Phone 1 - Value,Phone 2 - Type    ,Phone 2 - Value                   ,Phone 3 - Type    ,Phone 3 - Value   ,Phone 4 - Type         ,Phone 4 - Value    ,Address 1 - Type,Address 1 - Formatted              ,Address 1 - Street,Address 1 - City,Address 1 - PO Box,Address 1 - Region,Address 1 - Postal Code,Address 1 - Country,Address 1 - Extended Address ,Organization 1 - Type,Organization 1 - Name,Organization 1 - Yomi Name,Organization 1 - Title,Organization 1 - Department,Organization 1 - Symbol,Organization 1 - Location,Organization 1 - Job Description,Website 1 - Type,Website 1 - Value  ,Custom Field 1 - Type,Custom Field 1 - Value
Sir Wile E. Coyote Sr,Wile      ,Ethelbert      ,Coyote        ,         ,               ,                    ,                ,Sir           ,Sr            ,W.E.C.   ,The Coyote,Coyote    ,           ,1949-09-16,M     ,          ,                 ,                ,       ,          ,     ,           ,        ,       ,Notes,* My Contacts ::: Other group,Home           ,mail@perso.org         ,* Work         ,mail@pro.com    ,Home           ,01 22 22 22 22 ,Mobile            ,06 55 55 55 55                    ,Work              ,01 55 55 55 55    ,Work Fax               ,01 55 55 55 56     ,Work            ,Route 66 - Sonoran Desert - Arizona,Route 66          ,Sonoran Desert  ,                  ,Arizona           ,                  ,U.S.A                   ,Shout “BEEP-BEEP” to find him,                     ,ACME inc.            ,                          ,Honorary member       ,User experience            ,                       ,Delaware                 ,Involuntary beta-tester         ,Work            ,http://www.acme.com

And tada!

(please note the lack of picture is voluntary: a CSV cannot embed a picture of if it can, I don’t know how to do it. Also, the Etherlbert middle name does not appear on the vCard, but it is here—I checked)

Please share and correct.

Case study: making a huge IMAP account work again with Mail.app

Problem

A 40 Gb Gmail account, accessed via IMAP with Mail.app. The machine has it harder and harder to still work. Old mails do not need to be instantly accessible.

Solution

Assign old mail a historic label (you can use a filter like before:2010/01/01). Activate Advanced IMAP feature lab in Gmail. In the Label tab, uncheck visible in IMAP for the historic label. The machine works again, the new mails are instantly available and for the old ones, web interface at the rescue!

Notes

Mail.app is notorious for not allowing IMAP unsubscription (except on Exchange). Fortunately, IMAP subscription is a server-side feature. So, if enabled at Gmail-level, all mail clients will comply. Even stoopid Mail.app.

I still have to check how Mail.app behaves with an already cached folder. Does it empty the cache accordingly (this is what is expected)?

Shared contacts in Google Apps: I finally understood

I keep reading that Google Apps allows shared contacts and that it does not allow shared contacts? Why two opposite statements?

Because its sharing is not what most people expect when talking about sharing.

What you can share is the list of users in your domain. Not the list of partners/clients/prospects. And this is what most people (me included) expect.

Shared contacts, but not shared addressbook. And this is deeply annoying. This is the number one feature request for Google Apps (closed, read-only survey, sorry). Hopefully, someone at Google will investigate upon this.

Import Outlook Contacts to Google Contacts

There is a lot of instructions on the Web, but none truly worked for me (either incomplete or blatantly wrong). Here’s how I did it:

What you’ll need

• A spreadsheet (I used Excel 2011 out of lazyness; I should have tried Google Spreadsheet).
• A Grep-capable text editor (EditPadPro on Windows (Notepad++ is not that great), Coda on Mac (TextWrangler should be OK too; it is just pretty old interface-wise)).

Preparation

First, save your Outlook contact as a CSV file (I’ll assume you either know or will find out). Then open it up in your text editor. And let the fun begin.

Before any exhaustive editing, we have to make this CSV file readable. This start by configuring the text editor properly, by having soft wrap off and line numbering on.

Then, we will start working on the file itself. We want to make sure one entry is exactly equal to one (hard) line. Why do we have to check? Because postal addresses line usually come with carriage returns. This is all well and good when reading an actual business card, but when editing a CSV file, this is just plain tough. Even worse, it will make your spreadsheet program (see later) going crazy with the file. Plus, Google will know when to have the carriage return back after import. So, remove any extraneous carriage return. In the end, one entry should equal one hard line. Double-check this, it may be pretty tough to check on a long CSV file (180 addresses for me).

Filtering

OK, now we have a passable CSV file to work on. Time for the real thing. Two are of particular importance and should not be oversighted:

• Remove the first column (name) because it is unusable and its informations are available elsewhere; the first column is just a concatenation of other columns with no added value (well, it is possible to add some specific value, but most people won’t do it and that’s good for us they don’t).
• Rename the column Name Prefix into Title. I have yet to see someone correctly inputing Mr. here; most people use this field for job’s title. If it doesn’t show up in Outlook, it does a lot in Google Contacts. Trust me, you don't want job’s titles in lieu of name prefixes. Associate manager for Europe Bertrand duGué is simply unreadable. Bertrand duGué (Associate manager for Europe) is much, much better! If you don’t believe me, trust your boss to tell you!

These are the two most important things to consider for mere importing. The rest will be about optimising.

Optimisation

Did you notice how people don’t know how to write? Looks like their caps-lock is locked. Full caps reigns supreme…

Here comes the spreadsheet. Its main advantages are formulæ (I’m sure Grep gurus may go without a spreadsheet, but I can’t) and… tadam! proper column display (it’s hard to figure out columns of text only with semi-colons as separators).

Add columns at the right of each one you want to sanitize and use the =PROPERCASE(A1) function (change A1 accordingly, of course); yes, I know, PROPERCASE is not perfect; that’s what manual editing if for. As for the e-mail field, I used the =LOWERCASE(A1) formula instead.

While we’re a it, we can also mass change various typos (like the ones PROPERCASE generated). Some spreadsheet programs may allow regular expressions during this process. Excel doesn't, so I just switched back to my text editor. I made sure all mails and phones where moved from other to work, I removed the parenthesis around the leading phone digits (this code works for French formatting: \(([0-9]{2})\)) and did some other things (mostly manual there). Anyway, this is your chance for batch editing.

Conclusion

Scrap the name column and rename Name prefix as Title. If you do that, your import should work well (at least with an Outlook 2007 CSV export). The rest is just taking advantage of being in a editing process. Your customer would probably not care for the rest as long as the first two part are done well.

Of course, it won’t work the first time. You’ll have to do it several times until it becomes second nature. This may look like an easy thing, but it took me five hours to have it work. Hopefully, now that you have this tutorial, you’ll import your file much faster, right?

Clipboard in the cloud — Chrome webclipboard extension

The webclipboard is a tool for:

• Better copy-and-paste in Google Office (striked-through text do keep the strike when copied with the webclipboard whilst they do not with traditional copy-and-paste)
• Multiple clipboards (useful for those who often copy and paste one or more thing — not my case)
• Multiple computers clipboards (since the clipboard is in the cloud, not on you computer)

The webclipboard is not transparent. It must be invoked by right-clicking and selecting webclipboard — this may lessen its appeal. I suggest, for a better trans-computer experience, to combine it with Chrome sync.

The Chrome webclipboard extension allows using all these features even out of Google Office. Since it doesn't override the usual copy-and-paste (including keyboard shortcuts), no danger.

More information: help and security.

Gmail and label colours

Checked today: when applying a colour to a label and its sub-label, colour only apply to already-existing sub-labels. If you create a new label later on, it won't have any colour, you will have to update it manually.

Depending on cases and people, it may be a feature or a limitation (for me, it is a limitation).

Gmail bug with label and Select all conversations

It seems I discovered an annoying bug with Gmail: Labelling a selection doesn't work with "extended" select all (selecting all messages in all results, not only the present page).

Summary

Impossible to add labels on multiple page result at once. Each page must be labelled separately (once per page, not once per conversation, fortunately!)

Steps to reproduce

1. Go to Settings, Labels and create a test label. Say, Dummy label.
2. On the main page, Enter the following query before:2009/06/01 (this is what I used because I wanted to select old mails). Be sure the result will span over multiples pages; if it doesn't just create a search string that will.
3. Just for checking everything else works fine: open the first result and add the Dummy label to it. It should now have the Dummy label, as expected. Then remove the label to reset.
4. Just for checking everything else works fine: on the main page, check the first result and add the Dummy label to it. It should now have, again, the Dummy label, as expected. Then remove the label to reset.
5. Now select all by checking the checkbox over Search results. Since it is a multiple pages search result, a message will appear atop the list, saying All xx conversations on this page are selected. Select all xxx conversations in Search results.
6. Add the Dummy label to the selection. All the messages on the page will have the Dummy label label. Once again, this is the expected behaviour. So far, so good. Remove the label to reset.
7. Now the tricky part: again select all by checking the checkbox over Search results. Since it is a multiple pages search result, a message will appear atop the list, saying All xx conversations on this page are selected. Select all xxx conversations in Search results. This time, do click the Select all xxx conversations in Search results.
8. Then you'll get it. No conversation had been selected!

Thus: incompatibility between adding label and select all on all pages.

If you cannot reproduce, please specify at which step it stop working like I described.

Copy goo.gl short addresses more easily

At least with Chrome 10, now when you shorten an address, the resulting short address is automatically selected. I don't think it was the case some days ago.

Mail features that Gmail doesn't support (yet)

• Recipient-based mail formatting. Your boss wants you to attach an nice signature, but you hate HTML. With offline clients (Thunderbird, Outlook…), you can decide to reply with HTML for a given contact and with plain text for others
• Sender-based recipient address. You have configured two addresses for sending: me@home.org (default) and me@work.com. Way too often, you accidentally send a professional email with your personal address. The only known software I know which can prevent this is the incredibly-powerful-but-scaringly-CLI mutt (and the even more powerful mutt-ng)

Want them? Ask for them!
Template:

Recipient-based mail formatting. See http://goo.gl/yyR6Z

Sender-based recipient address. See http://goo.gl/yyR6Z

On Google Contacts

When entering a new contact’s email address, Google will automatically scan its database to check if this user has a public profile with a picture. If s/he does, then it will be displayed on the contact entry. Neat!

This picture won’t show up as a thumbnail in list view, though.

Limitations with Google Docs

Google Docs

Copy and paste

• On Chrome 10, without the web clipboard, copying and pasting a text from one Google Doc to another loses strike-through. I did not check with the web clipboard (neither normal nor enhanced) or with another browser.
• Horizontal rule count as a hierarchy level and as such appear on table of contents. Looks like a bug.

Google Spreadsheets

Copy and paste

• On Chrome 10, without the web clipboard, copying and pasting a text from one Google Spreadsheets to another loses rules and formulæ. I did not check with the web clipboard (neither normal nor enhanced) or with another browser.

As a remainder: copy-and-asting is made necessary when it is required to transfer ownership of a document out of the domain (this obviously only apply to a Google Apps account), because Google Apps doesn't allow transferring ownership out of domain.

On Google Docs

Google Docs has two meanings:

• The Microsoft Word replacement (but much lower-grade). It is based on a former product called Writely.
• The Microsoft Office replacement, of which Google Docs (1) is a part.

I'll try to stick with using the Google Docs for the Google Docs (1) and will introduce the neologism Google Office for Google Docs (2).

Why Google Apps Standard may be less interesting than Google personal

• Some services are unavailable.
  • Impossible to transfert ownership of a document to an address outside of domain.
  • Despite numerous transitions, somes services are still not available (Google Buzz and probably Google Health too).
  • (update 2011/03/31) No sorting by family name in Apps version of Google Contacts. Only default sorting (by first name) is available. Gmail regular's interface has finally did it in Google Apps.
  • Email recovery is not available (source). This is a minor annoyance, since an administrator can still use reset the password.
  • dot-insensitivity does not work in Google Apps (david.latapie is the same as davidlatapie ou davi.dla.tap.ie in Gmail; no so in Google Apps)
• Google personal may emulate Google Apps Standard.
  • Inbound mail address: use an alias at your mail provider.
  • Outbound mail address: Gmail may send as another address.
• Some handy things can't be completely emulated though.
  • Sharing a document with the whole domain can't be done. A solution is to use address book (manual autocompletion doesn't work; only clicking on select in my contacts does).

Setting up Google Apps standard

I said earlier that Google Apps standard is not that great and may even be less interesting than Google personal. Still, you may want to give it a try, as I did.

Here is a good rundown of the different things to do:Setup Your Personalized Google Apps Suite. The process is probably the same for Google Apps for Business. Plus, know that you have a 30-day trial for Business for free—after these 30 days, you can revert back to Google Apps Standard with no problem.

Selecting a date range with Calendar

This will later be part of a longer chapter about Calendar. For now, it will be a standalone post without any introduction to Calendar — this will come later.
It is possible to select an arbitrary date range with calendar, as shown here.

Three days

Two weeks

Just a limitation: after more than seven days in a row, Google Calendar switches to week selection. Which means that after 7 days comes not only 14 days, but also Monday to Sunday (or Sunday to Monday, depending on your locales). And that you can’t have a ten-days calendars.

Evangelism: training users to use Gmail

Administrators should encourage people to use Gmail web interface (Gmail/web for short). Why? Less work. Do you want to handle Outlook/Thunderbird/Mail.app… problems on top of Gmail? Trust me, you don’t. I have my share of Mail.app issue (bad encoding, winmail.dat issues; both were perfectly handled by Gmail/web). Let alone Outlook.

Plus, a mail interface means minimal hassle for reading their mail on an mobile device (still some, because Google has different layout depending on the device). If users only use computers, no hassle at all (apart for the occasional resolution changing stuff).

First step: briefing with Boss

1. Ask if it is OK for photo to appear on mail from employees. Say it make the company more humane or stuff like this. There is no bad answers, just be sure to know.
2. Check if there is any Firefox- or IE- exclusive feature (that would prevent using Chrome, but don’t talk about Chrome, except if Boss is tech-savvy—Chrome is more responsive than Firefox 4 beta and support desktop and chat notifications; with other browser, one has to download external notifiers)
3. Ask or prepare policy for signature
4. Ask or prepare policy for default fonts and colour
5. Ask if Boss is okay for you having a backdoor to users’ mail account (sensitive topic, explain this is for maintenance reasons). A positive answer is better as it will make you job easier but don’t be surprised if you get a “no”.

Second step: configuring

In order to optimise the experience, you’ll have to tweak Gmail first. Don’t count too much on automated deploiment—I heard Google Apps Premier is not much better here. The following operations will have to be made by hand on each account. Sorry, no answer file thus far…

Everything is in Settings.

1. [General] Select the proper language
2. [General] Activate shortcuts
3. [General] [Depending on briefing] Activate Chat notifications and Desktop notifications
4. [General] [Depending on briefing] Add a picture (or not)
5. [General] Force sending in UTF-8 (die, pre-UTF8 encodings, die!)
6. [Account] [Depending on briefing] Grant access to yourself (buggy with Google Apps–not Google regular–as of March 2011)
7. [Forwarding] Deactivate POP, activate IMAP (POP sucks)
8. [Labs] Activate Apps Search, if they use Google Docs (do yourself a favour, make them use it)
   send feedback to Google about it
9. [Labs] Activate Canned Responses. Requires proper training. Prepare training before enabling, because it is visible.
   send feedback to Google about it
10. [Labs] Activate Default ‘reply to all’. Fewer people will bug you if this lab is on rather than off.
    send feedback to Google about it
11. [Labs] Activate Default text styling. You hate HTML mail, but they don’t… Make it easier for them to adapt to Gmail by telling them they can change the default font. Be sure to first check with Boss about any existing policy.
    send feedback to Google about it
12. [Labs] Activate Don’t forget Bob. So far, I did not have any feedback from my users. I should communicate on this feature. Useful for informal group mailing (contact group is still better but it requires some work on their address book)
    send feedback to Google about it
13. [Labs] Activate Flickr previews in mail, Google Docs previews in mail, Picasa previews in mail, Google Maps previews in mail. At worst, they won’t see them. At best, they will like them.
    send feedback to Google about Flickr preview, Google Docs preview, Picasa preview, Google Maps preview
14. [Labs] Activate Got the wrong Bob?. Another useful feature to communicate on.
    send feedback to Google about it
15. [Labs] Activate Inserting images. Talk about it during the drag-and-drop part (where you will talk about drag-and drop attachment).
    send feedback to Google about it
16. [Labs] Activate Nested Labels. Again, something natural (at least for one of my users). For some times now, it had been possible to create nested folder with a GUI. Be sure to show them the GUI way!
    send feedback to Google about it
17. [Labs] Activate Pictures in chat. Useless but appreciated
    send feedback to Google about it
18. [Labs] Activate Undo Send. Definitely something to communicate upon. I tend to configure it to 30 seconds (you'll have to go back to general for this), but that’s just me.
    send feedback to Google about it
19. [Labs] Activate Video chat enhancements. It’s a double-sided sword. Useful for video chatting, but you’d better have a good computer and a good connection..
    send feedback to Google about it

Finally, place a shortcut on their desktop and on the quicklaunch (Windows XP-Vista), taskbar (Windows 7) or Dock (Mac OS X).

Notice I am well aware of several other labs (I use a lot of them myself). But they impact to much the interface for an average user who should not even know there are labs on.

Also: I know that labs may disappear.

Third step : training

This is where the fun begins. Show some thematics. Go crescendo, with something expected at the beginning and surprises at the end. Use two computers (one for sending, one for receiving).

Prepare two computers (Computer A and Computer B), with window not taking full screen on Computer B. Prepare an image and a doc file on the desktop, close to the window. Also be sure to use a used gmail account (so that it will have memory of who you mail the most, it will come in handy when demonstrating the two Bob features) and that computer has Gmail as HTML composing (or else, the attach image won't work).

Also: know which Mail client is used in the company (usually Outlook) and prepare a list of all the differences in philosophy.

Finally, prepare a printed summary for every attendant, summing up the main point. And when inviting people to the training, ask them to bring something to take notes (even though you’ll give them a printed summary).

Round one: Reply to a mail

1. [Computer B] Login
2. [Computer B] Show the interface. Tells that it auto-refreshes and that there is even better.
3. [Computer A] Send a message with another of your address in Cc and an attachment (the audience does not need to see; click on a link to override undo send).
4. [Computer B] Let Desktop notification do its job (if they don’t want Chrome, get a Firefox extension).
5. [Computer B] Open the mail
6. [Computer B] Show attachment visualisation for those in Google Docs (be sure to have trained on Google Docs before or at least to have planned to move to Google Docs)
7. [Computer B] Get the attachment out with drag-and-drop of attachments off the mail doesn’t work by clicking the icon or the Download link
8. Reply with reply to all (which is default). Delete the reply with the delete button and reply again now with a (tell the f will do the same for forwarding). Make sure to “forget” to write Thank you.. Show the audience that the mail is not saved. Dont save it, show this screenshot about quickreply then go back to the computer and show how the message had been saved meanwhile.
9. Attach an image via drag-and-drop and an attachment the same way
10. Send it with the send button, tells the audience your forgot to say Thank you and undo the sending with the link. Add Thank you then send. Explain it is setup to wait 10/20/30 seconds (depending on what you chose) except if you perform an action on the windows (closing it or clicking a link).
11. Once back in inbox, show the archive button and say how important it is. Finish by opening a read mail, and delete it with the Delete button. Cancel the action and delete it again with #/

Round two: New mail

1. Compose a new mail with New message. Select the address by clicking on To and show contact groups (tell that contact groups won’t be covered this time; it will be for another session, with filtering). Show links for Cc and Bcc. Delete it with the button (# doesn't work for drafts). Compose again, but now with c and send it with tab + enter.
2. Create a new mail (again with c, so that they see it better). This time, enter the address by hand. Enter some person you usually mail together and, after three such person, voluntarily chose someone who does not belong to that group, in order to invoke Got the wrong Bob?
3. Delete the addresses, start again with some people you usually mail together. Add them until Don’t forget Bob starts up. As for the previous tip, it may take some time to have it work.
4. Type a message like I attached the result. Do not actually attach anything. Send (with Tab + enter, for good measure).
5. Show the audience the forgotten attachment detector working!

Round three: Organisation

1. Start by saying that one the main idea in Gmail is to have an empty inbox. It eases the mind and help getting more organised (note: the Sentbox, can’t be emptied that way; this will be a surprise for Outlook users).
2. Show how to create a label. Go to a message, click on label, type Urgent, create. Show that now the label lives on the left column.
3. Show multiple labels. Go back to the message, select label again and start typing Partners, a label you will already have created; then check it, click apply). Show the audience that the message now belong to two label at the same time.
4. Create nester label. Don’t show direct nested label creation (typing foo/bar), because it is nerdy enough and even power users will be content with a two-step creation).
5. Show drag-and-drop assignment. Select the message and drag it to a third label on the left. Show the highlighting, the fact that it is now out of the inbox and the Cancel link. Cancel and do it again.
6. This time, go to the said label, select the message and show how it belongs to the label. Hover over the label and click it to show the filter by label view. Go back with the mouse (so that they see the action of going back), in order to show that you can navigate back and forth.
7. Show how to remove the label with the small cross (show also that if removed, it won’t go back to inbox but will go to All messages: the only way is to search for it then open it and click Put in inbox; this is complicated, so don’t mention it)
8. Show delegation with grant access for assistant (extra page with video). If you also granted access to yourself, tell it!
9. Hint at filters, but don’t actually show how to create one. Just sum up what can be done (only get unread messages, auto-sorting without marking them as read, auto-prioritising, sub-addresses…). Say there tools for better catching important mails, but that would require another session and you prefer them to be comfortable with Gmail before going further.

Round four: Customisation

1. Go to Settings, General and show that Default new styling is possible, as well as changing signature (but first check with Boss) and vacation responder.
2. Show canned responses.
3. Show how to fetch mail from other account. Don’t actually do it, just show the potability. If they have a need for it, either they’ll do it by themselves or they’ll call you. People willing to retrieve several mails on the same account are already a bit geeky and so will probably be able to do it by themselves. So, you’ll do yourself and your audience a favour by not delving much into it.

Conclusion

Say something like there is much more to say, so I suggest setting up a new session in, say, one month, for dealing with sorting, fast scanning, canned responses, security and address book. There you will talk about what had been left out as well as remote logout (forgot to logout at the public library? Now it's your chance).

Note to self: fast scanning is next/previous conversation (message if conversation view is disabled), with k and j, as well as enabling the quick preview lab feature.

Utilities — available storage space

Google Accounts — Manage Storage. Unified page for all of your storage (at least Gmail and Picasa—I don't see Google Docs, why so?)

Advantages of Google Apps Premier/for Business

Main page for differences

• More than 50 users (more than 3000 for U.S. non-profit other than schools). Starting from May 10th 2011, the upper limit for the free edition will move from 50 to a meagre 10!
• Mail advantages
• Triple the amount of mail storage (one can still buy more, but it will be on an individual basis and will be shared with all services instead of being limited to the mail)
• Mail redirection handling
• Mail support (even phone support for service unavailable emergencies)
• Extra mail control (Postini, mail quota, mail blacklist (inbound only))
• Much easier migration (from Outlook or Lotus, for instance)
• Shared addressbook (in practive, works very badly without a third-party addition)
• Some advanced mobile device management
• Login advantages
• Single Sign On (SSO)
• Password complexity tuning
• No ads
• User-managed forums and mailing-lists
• Access to Google API

How much does Google Apps cost?

As usual with Google poor documentation, it is not easy to have definitive answers.

Pricing for Google Apps

Edition	Pricing	Eligibility	Notes
Standard	Free	Everyone	Compared to personal account, addded value is minimal or even negative
Non-profit	Free	U.S., up to 3000 users, comply with some part of the U.S. law.	Beyond 3000 users, Premier with a 40% discount (40 $/year/user; there is no price in euros or pounds since Non-profit is only for the U.S.). Hopefully a complete feature set (contrary to Education), whatever the amount of users, but no evidence so far. Not to be mistaken with Google for non-profits
Education	Free	U.S. school
Business/Premier	50$/user/year (40€ or 35£; doesn't change with exchange rate).	Everyone	This starts from user #1, not user #51 (I have to check this, though). So, if you are 50 users using Google Apps Standard, think twice before upgrading!

What is Google Apps?

There are two definitions of Google Apps:

• The first one, which is both official and accurate, defines a set of Google services wrapped together and attached to a domain. Google Apps exists in several forms (see pricing), depending on who you are and whether you are willing to pay — the most basic form (Standard) being sometimes worse than a collection of Google regular services. Even in its most powerful edition, Google Apps Premier is not on par with Microsoft administration stack when it comes to fine-tuning deploiment. Well, at least it is not on par for the moment!
• The second definition encompasses the practice of using more than juste Google search and Gmail (personal). This is not Google Apps, but quite a lot of people (including your boss!) may think this is Google Apps. After all, from an frontend point of view, there is not much difference (from an extra hours-point of view, there might be).

At GoogleAppsManual.com, we will use both definition. The main reason is that, for a lot of companies, aggregating various services may be enough. Plus, you won't have to delve with MX migrating and redirections for special cases (lesson: there is always special case :(), especially considering that handling special case requires Google Apps Premier (wich is not free).

Using English

My English is good enough that I can highlight it on my résumé. But I am not a native and it shows, especially when talking. Even when writing, it is not that idiosyncratic; idiotisms, phrasial verbs and plain vocabulary are (somewhat) frequent shortcomings.

I try to use international English, because I find id “classier”. Colour, grey.

Tricks for non-native:

• For translating a technical term, go to Wikipedia in your language, expect to have an entry for the term, then look on the left column for the English interwiki link (provided it exists).
• For translating a phrase, go to Wordreference.com. It is a gold mine.

Using Blogger

This should be an often-updated page.

• Blogger's HTML is awful. 30 seconds after starting composing my first post, I switched to raw HTML. WordPress is so much better. Fortunately, Bloggers detects unclosed tags (very common when writing with neither colour syntaxing nor advanced text editor).
• To justify a text
• Blog know how looks like a good meta-Blogger site (Blogger blog on how to blog on Blogger). There I learnt how to justify a text (answer: no interface, edit the CSS).
• I don't see any way to change a post to a page (in WordPress neither, but if you self-host it, you can access the database and change a small value). I may end up changing this post as well as the to-be-written Using English post as pages.

Fundamentals of system administration

• Know your needs. Write a good scope statement. More often than not, you boss won't know what he wants or even worse, will want some thing without knowing the bad of it (yep, experience talks here).
• Accept your limits. Don't expect to hide them (especially to yourself). You won't (I speak by experience, I followed this path, unfortunately).
• When you have the choice, choose the product with the best mix of size of installed base / technical knowledge / genuine interest. Why? Respectively for:
  • Support
  • Maintenance
  • Motivation
  Experimental is fun for your curiosity and to stay ahead of the curse. But it is not fun for your boss or for your users. Don't forget: your job is to make your users job smoother. They are not your guinea pig; you are their servant. If you don't want to run out of frustration and wish an outlet for your desires (I do), get a pet project for experimenting. Me, I run an gamebook association where I dig further in Google Apps than I can reasonably could at work.
• Diagrams! A picture is worth a thousand word. Especially a synoptic picture. On Mac, try Omnigraffle. Expensive, but impressive.
• Make it simple. It will get complex by itself easily enough.