How to Personalize Your Gmail Account by Configuring Settings
Find and Using Gmail Settings
Google offers many ways to personalize a Gmail email account, starting with the Settings option located in the top right corner of the page on an open Gmail account. When you click on the Settings option, a Settings page will appear. There are eight setting tabs that can be used to personalize the Gmail account.
The first tab on the Settings page is for General settings. These include the language the email should appear in, how many emails should be shown per page, picture and signature options and several more. All options can be set to your preferences and will be saved until and unless the you choose to change them again.
The following settings can be found under the General settings tab:
Choose the language the emails will be read in. The default setting for this is English. This will determine how many emails will be seen at one time on each page. The default setting for this is 50.
Google offers keyboard shortcuts to a user’s Gmail account. The default setting for this is “Keyboard Shortcuts Off”. To use them, click on the radio button to the left of “Keyboard Shortcuts On”.
This setting allows you the opportunity to use a picture that email recipients see when you send them an email. To choose a picture for recipients to see, click Select a Picture. To learn more about this option, click the Learn more link located under the My Picture option.
You can choose to show pictures of any or all of their contacts. This option allows you to show only pictures the user has chosen for the contacts, or show all pictures, including the ones contacts have chosen for themselves. There is also a Learn more link here.
Many Gmail users have a title that they would like to have shown on any email that is sent. A title, tag, contact information or advertisements can be included in a Gmail signature. The No Signature setting is the default setting. To add a signature, click on the radio button next to the text box and enter the information that is pertinent that you want email recipients to see.
The Personal Level Indicators let the user decide two things; snippets and Vacation Responder. Snippets can be set to show small portions of an incoming email, allowing the user to decide if it is important. If the Snippets setting is not selected, only the subject of an email will be displayed. The Vacation Responder can be selected to send a message to anyone that sends an email to the Gmail account that the user is on vacation. This can be used for all emails or emails from someone in the contact list only.
There is also an Outgoing Message Encoding choice that will allow the Gmail user to choose how they would like their outgoing messages protected. To learn more, simply click on the Learn More link.
The General tab on the Settings page is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to personalizing a Gmail account. The other tabs on the Settings page will be covered at different times in the near future.
