Sending and Responding to Emails

To start a new message, click Compose . A New Message window will open and your cursor will be active in the To box. Type the email address of the person you wish to send the email. As you type, contacts that match will display, and you can add them by clicking on their name.

Sending an email

1. Click Compose on the left side of your screen to open a New Message window.
2. You can send a message to several people at the same time—just put a comma between each email address. If the recipient is in your contacts, type their name and Gmail will add their email address.
3. Click in or Tab key to the Subject box and type a few words telling what your message is about. This should be descriptive of the content.
4. Type your message in the body.
5. Use Cc (carbon copy) or Bcc (blind carbon copy) to send the message to others for informational purposes.
6. Proofread your message.

1. Click Send when you are finished composing and are ready to send your message to the recipient(s).

After you read a message, you can write back to the sender (Reply). If the message was sent to two or more recipients, you can send your response to everyone who was in the original list of recipients (Reply all). You can also forward the message to someone not in the original recipient list (Forward).

Replying to a message

When reading a message, click Reply  to write a response to the sender. There are also Reply, Reply all (if the email was sent to more than just you), and Forward buttons at the bottom of the email.

Using quick reply

Sometimes you will see three Quick reply choices. Click one of these and Google will load up the phrase you clicked at the top of a reply email. Add more text, attach a picture, or just click Send.

Note: There are many horror stories about email replies that went to all when the message was really meant to go to the sender only. Gmail’s default reply behavior is Reply, not Reply all, but it is possible to choose Reply all accidentally. Be cautious.

Add an attachment

One reason email is so popular is the ability to send attachments like pictures and documents with your email.

You can send pictures, videos, and documents in your email, as long as they are smaller than 25 MB in size, combined. Click , find the file on your computer, then click Open.

You can also drag files from Windows File Explorer directly onto the email. Drag the file from Explorer to the email and drop it.

Size limitations for attachments

Large files can pose problems when sent via email. Gmail has a file size limitation of 25 MB (megabytes). That’s adequate for most files. However, you may encounter issues when:

• You are sending a file to someone on a service that has a smaller file-size limit.
• Your message passes through a mail transfer agent that has a smaller file-size limit.
• The additional information that email services add to your message pushes a large file over the limit (MIME encoding adds about 33% to the original size.)

Gmail will display a warning when your message exceeds its limits.

If your file exceeds the limit, you must use Google Drive. Google will automatically save the file to Drive and include a link in the email, instead of bundling the file with the email. Anyone with the link will be able to view, download, and save the files you share.

Schedule Send

You can choose to schedule the time the email is sent. Click the down arrow next to Send, click Schedule send, then pick a day and time.

Confidential mode

Confidential mode means recipients will not have the option to forward email contents, copy/paste, download, nor print. You must set an expiration date after which the message will no longer be available to the recipient. You can direct Gmail to require a passcode to view the email sent to the recipient via text message.

To start Confidential mode, click at the bottom of the draft email.

Viewing your sent mail

Your sent messages are in the Sent Mail folder. You can find Sent Mail in the left-hand list of labels.