All mails at one Inbox

All mails

Let’s admit that usually all of us have several email accounts or we enroll to numerous email accounts for different use. I am guilty; I have 3 email accounts,

· A Gmail account 1 for private usage,

· A Hotmail account for signups on various sites (Facebook, Pinetrest, newsletters etc.) and

· An Additional Gmail account 2 is the old one that I do not use any longer but still get emails on.

Now it’s a freakishly annoying task to go to each mailbox and check for the arrival of a new mail. What if all could be checked at one place? What if that once place is one of the inbox of these 3 accounts? Will it not be awesome that all your emails from different email accounts come to a single inbox without using any Third party software like Microsoft outlook? Microsoft outlook can be configured to collect mails from all your email accounts but then it will be accessible only on that local machine where MS outlook runs, you might still have to check all email accounts individually on your cell phone or a tab.

Let’s know the solution to this by demonstrating how I overcome this problem. I decided that the Gmail account 1 will always be my primary account and all the new emails from Gmail account 2 and Hotmail will flow into Gmail account 1.

· One advantage of doing this is that you can reply using the same email accounts from Gmail account 1 to the emails that are flowing in from another accounts, awesomeeeeee!!

· We also will be setting up a way that will allow to classify where an email has come from by just looking at the email subject in Gmail account 1

Step 1 – Setting up Gmail account 2 to forward any new incoming email to Gmail account 1

a. Click the gear icon, the top right.

b. Select Settings.

c. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

d. From the first drop-down menu in the "Forwarding" section, select 'Add a Forwarding Address.'

e. Enter the email address to which you'd like your messages forwarded, in my case its Gmail Account 1.

f. Google will send verification to that email address.

g. Open the forwarding email account and find the confirmation message.

h. Click the verification link in that email.

i. Back in Gmail account 2, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to...' option and select your forwarding address from the drop-down menu.

j. Select the action you'd like your messages to take from the drop-down menu. You can choose to keep Gmail's copy of the message in your inbox, or you can send it automatically to All Mail or Trash.

k. Click Save Changes.

Step 2 – Setting up Outlook (Hotmail) account to forward any new incoming email to Gmail account 1

a. Click the gear icon, the top right.

b. Select ‘More mail Settings’

c. Select ‘Email Forwarding’

d. Select the radio button for ‘Forward your mail to the following email accounts’

e. And add the email ID on which you want these mails to be forwarded to

f. You can choose to keep a copy of the message in outlook.com also

g. Press ‘Done’ button

Step 3 – Setup an identification method of the source of the email in primary gmail account.

a. Head back to your primary Gmail account, Gmail account 1

b. Click the gear icon, the top right.

c. Select Settings.

d. Select ‘Labels’

e. Select ‘Create New Label’

f. Create 2 new labels ‘Hotmail’ and ‘Gmail Old’ or anything you like,

Don’t worry about the nest label, you can leave it blank and click ‘Create’

g. Go to ‘Filters’ setting Page

h. Click on ‘Create a new Filter’

i. In ‘To’ text box, enter the Hotmail (Outlook) email ID and click ‘Create filter with this search’ at bottom

j. On next page, select ‘Apply the label’ and choose the label ‘Hotmail’ which we just created

k. Click on ‘Create Filter’

l. Repeat the process for Gmail account 1

Well there you go, all setup. Now you can check all emails from 3 different email accounts at one single inbox. Do let me know if it does not work as expected.

Phrase Express – A text expansion marvel

How many times do you write “Thanks and Regards” followed by your name?

How many times do you write “Happy Anniversary, may this day ……” on Facebook?

Well all those phrases that repeat in our day today life become quite a headache when you are unable to find an easier way to repeat them. Phrase express can do that for you AND much more.

Phrase express expands any text anywhere, be it MS Word, Facebook, Gmail or Skype. It is a powerful tool that can be used for more than text expansion. You can run define text macros and do all kind of artistic stuff.

Webpage: www.phraseexpress.com/index.html

Setup Phrase Express

1. Download and install Phrase express, it will look like this

2. Right Click on Phrase Express and create a new folder,

3. The reason to create a new folder (e.g. “Defined by me”) is to distinguish between the phrases that come bundled with Phrase express and phrases that will be created by you. All standard phrases (e.g. wont –> won’t) come pre-installed with phrase express and are present under “PhraseExpress” folder.

4. Once the folder is created, you are good to go. Start adding phrases now. Right click on the new folder and click on “New Phrase” which will open up another list that presents the varieties of phrases that you can create.

Unformatted text

• Efficient and memory resource friendly

• Phrases are stored without any formatting information and without bitmaps.

RTF ("Rich Text format")

• Recommended for formatted text without bitmaps
• Exact reproduction of text formatting
• Recommended for MS Office or Outlook

• Requires more file space

HTML format

• Recommended for text containing bitmaps.
• Recommended in particular for web page snippets.
• Very efficient storage of bitmaps in their native format.

• Requires more file space
• The text formatting appearance may vary depending on the target application.

Explanation from Phrase express user manual www.phraseexpress.com/docs9/09/manual.htm#edit

5. First let’s learn the unformatted one and once you master that; you can play around with the limitless depth of Phrase express world. Select “Unformatted Phrase”

a. Description: - is the title of the text expansion which will help you distinguish between different phrases you will define overtime.

b. Phrase Content:- is the expanded text or the end result that you are looking for.

c. Now there are 2 ways to get the phrase expansion,

a. Assign a combination of Hotkeys (as I have shown in the above screenshot; shift + ctrl + D)

b. Or, my favorite, define an auto text. An auto text will trigger the text expansion. But be very cautious that you do not define a auto text that is a common part of words; e.g. “add”, so if you write “saddened”; it will try to replace the “add” in it with the text. I declare “my_add”.

d. Auto text again have 4 types of triggers,

a. Execute immediately, my favorite, executed as soon as “my_add” will be written.

b. Execute after default delimiter, text will be expanded after space, enter key etc.

c. Execute after manual confirmation, as soon as auto text is identified a confirmation box is popped up,

Once you confirm (Press Tab) it, the text that is displayed in tooltip will be substituted by the auto text.

e. I will not cover “Expert mode” yet but that is something you can explore on your own once you are good with “Easy Mode”

Phrase express can be used for many innovative text expansion tricks. Following are few examples,

1. You can have an auto expansion for anniversary messages which keep coming everyday if you have lots of friends.

2. If you do not remember your phone number or card number then you can add your number as expansion text with auto text “mynum”, you can do this for cubicle ID, machine ID, Card numbers etc.

3. You can also make text expand as your passwords.

4. Autotext for a signature image or logo, so that you need not copy paste it every time.

Other useful things that are part of phrase express is that,

1. You can restrict every phrase to particular application, if you do not want a particular phrase to be executed on Facebook; you can do it.

2. Phrase express keep learning as you type and it suggests you automatic expansions (Not the defined ones) that you might have written previously or write quite often.

3. Not to mention that it corrects a good amount of regular spelling mistakes.

Phrase express is much more powerful tool that can be explored. For more understanding visit their user manual, www.phraseexpress.com/docs9/09/manual.htm#edit

Never forget birthdays and Anniversaries, Anymore

I am sure that it happens with everyone that we try hard to remember the birthdays and anniversaries but no matter what we attempt; we eventually unable to summon it up at the precise moment. I recall that I used to have a software that used to show whose birthday it is that day as soon as I switch my desktop on. It had a batch file that used to run before windows start. It was neat and I never forgot any birthday but that was me. We are so busy these days that I have seen people leaving themselves note, writing on sleeves and even asking friends to remind but nothing really work 100%

People might argue that now a days everyone is on Facebook and we get to know when someone’s birthday is, yes its true but,

• Does it tell anniversaries ?
• Is your granny on Facebook ?
• Does it tell you it in advance so that you can actually plan for a big party for your loved ones ? I don’t think so.

The method I am going to describe below come close to 100% mark, it just needs initial time investment and then upgrades whenever required.

What do you need – A Google account (Gmail), A cellphone and little time and patience.

Step – 1

Collect all important Info

Collect birthdays and anniversaries of all those people who you care about and do not want to forget their important dates next time.

Step – 2

Setup the device to get alerts

1. Go to http://calendar.google.com/

2. Click the gear button on top right corner,

3. Go to Settings.

4. Go to Mobile Setup Page,

5. Select your country,

6. Enter mobile number,

7. Select your carrier from the drop-down menu (This might not work for all Carriers)

8. Click Send verification code.

9. You will get text on your phone with a code

10. Enter the code you received in the Verification code field on the webpage.

11. Click the Finish setup button

12. Click Save

Step – 3

Setup the reminder

1. Click on the Create button on top left

2. Following screen will be loaded

 

3. Now add the Title for the event, maybe “Birthday: Brother” Or “Anniversary: Parents”

4. Set the date and Time (Time is when your event is active and you will get reminders based on this time)

5. Select Repeat

6. Following Pop-up box will open,

7. For anniversaries and Birthdays you need to set following values,

a. Repeats: Yearly

b. Repeat Every: 1

c. Click Done

8. Now Come to Reminders and set reminders to get Email and SMS according to your preference,

    a. You can set maximum of 5 reminders

    b. There are three types,

i. SMS – You will get a reminder text on cell

ii. Email - Reminder email on Gmail account

iii. Pop-up – Pop-up reminder on desktop (Only when Gmail/Calendar running in background on Chrome)

    c. You can set any value in the 2^nd column boxes. You can set reminders a week or 2 in advance so that you can plan for that surprise party for the Birthday or Anniversary which you were missing out on previous occasions.

    d. And next column gives you options on Unit of time

i. Minutes

ii. Hours

iii. Days

iv. Weeks

You can play around with these options and create yourself loads of innovative reminders like,

# Fertilizer the plants (Every month on first Sunday)

# Get Car Serviced (6 Months once)

# Take Backup (Every Fortnight)

9. Press Save and you are Done,

Now you will never forget any important date

Please let me know if you have any questions.