Unthread Your Gmail (or Not)

One of the most hotly debated features in Gmail has been the threading of messages. Unlike more traditional email clients like Thunderbird or Outlook that order incoming email messages chronologically, Gmail displays messages as conversations or threads which group related messages and topics together. But now, users have the option of toggling off the conversation view to see email as individual messages in chronological order.


To Turn Off Gmail’s Conversation (Threaded) View:

1. Go to the main Settings page
2. Look for the “Conversation View” section
3. Select the option "Conversation view off" to turn it off
4. Save your changes.

If you want to toggle back to Conversation View, you can always go back to Settings and make the switch.

Image from http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ysAuSNZolhE/TKNic5tvYqI/AAAAAAAAAUU/QTFmqh7UdwQ/threaded.png

For more details, see the following official posts from Google:

• Threaded email or not, now it’s your users’ choice in Gmail
• Turn off Gmail’s conversation view

Gmail: Only send a vacation response to people in your domain

When using a Gmail vacation response, you can now choose to send the vacation response only to individuals in the plu.edu domain. Go to "Settings" -> "General" -> "Vacation responder" and check the option for "Only send a response to people in Pacific Lutheran University". 

See the official Google blog at: Google Apps update alerts: Gmail: Only send a vacation response to people in your domain

Gmail - Priority Inbox

Over the course of the next week, the Gmail Priority Inbox feature will be rolled out on the PLU Gmail domain. On the upper right hand corner of your Gmail window you'll see a "New! Priority Inbox" link. Click for instructions on how to proceed. Or watch the video below for a quick introduction.

For more infomation, see the Official Google Blog Article at http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html.

For help with Gmail Priority Inbox visit  http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=29809.

Fraudulent Emails

From time to time you are likely to receive email messages asking for your PLU email account password. These messages claim to have been sent from a PLU tech support address, but they are in fact fraudulent attempts (often called phishing scams) to obtain your login information. 

PLU will NEVER ask you to reveal your password or other such personal information via email! Never share your password with anyone, ever.  If you have questions about the authenticity of emails, contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@plu.edu or 253-535-7525. 

For information, check out the Cyber Safety page which contains links to examples of these kinds of fraudulent emails. 

Collaborative highlighting in Google Docs documents

New collaboration functionality has been rolled out in Google Docs. Highlighting of text by each document collaborator is now visible to all collaborators.

For details, see the Google Docs Blog post at http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/collaborative-highlighting-in-documents.html for details.

New "find a time" feature in Google Calendar

Google Calendar now has a new "Find a Time" feature for creating a calendar event with one or more people. To access this feature, click the "Find a Time" tab in the upper left corner of the Event window.

See Find a time feature - Google Calendar Help for more details and a quick tour. Or view the Google Apps blog announcement. 

Convert files in the Google documents list to a Google Docs format

If you have uploaded files into your Google docs document list, you can now convert these files into Google Docs format by right-clicking on the document. In addition, both image files and .pdf files can be converted to text via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

See the link below for more information and a list of file types that can be converted.

Source: Convert files in the documents list to a Google Docs format - Official Google Docs Blog