Using the New Gmail Compose

Gmail has a new compose window for writing and responding to messages. Instead of taking over your whole screen to write a message, a small window opens up at the bottom of your screen. This makes it easier to refer to items in your inbox, and even lets you scroll through your other messages. All […]
Last updated: September 3, 2014

Gmail has a new compose window for writing and responding to messages. Instead of taking over your whole screen to write a message, a small window opens up at the bottom of your screen. This makes it easier to refer to items in your inbox, and even lets you scroll through your other messages. All while keeping the compose window open and available.

And this new compose window has a few tricks. For example, say you’re already started a message and remember that you want to reply to another message. You can easily start a new conversation without saving a draft or closing your first message. Or say you’re correlating a few things at once. No problem, you can have two messages or more open at one time. Gmail will keep as many windows open as possible, depending on the size of your screen. If you need more room, you can minimize message windows, or even pop them out into their own window. And for the most part, everything you use to write messages is available from this new compose window. When you start typing in an address, Gmail will give you a list of options from your contacts, just like before. You can add carbon copy and blind carbon copy recipients as before, and when you’re done adding everyone, the new compose window tucks the email list away, so you can concentrate on your message. As you’re writing your message you can use the formatting buttons to change your font or text alignment.

If you’re accustomed to using keyboard shortcuts, the new compose window uses some of the same shortcuts as google docs. That includes the regulars like bold, italic, and underline, but even has a few handy ones like bulleted and numbered lists. Attaching files is also easy with the new compose window. For files you can either click the attach files button and navigate to the file, or just drag and drop the file into the body of the message. By default if you drag an image into the body of an email, the image is inserted into the message.

Of course some features are not complete in the new compose window. For example you will notice the emoticons and calendar invitations aren’t available yet. But they’ll be released soon. If you find you need these features or just want to go back to the previous version of the compose window, you can click the down arrow here, to switch back to old compose. So let us know what you think, or visit the Gmail support center at support.google.com/mail

Thanks for reading using the new Gmail compose!

SixFive is a Google Apps authorised reseller. If you’d like some assistance in migrating to an email, calendar and document platform that is easy to use and will remove some headaches from your business, drop us a line, we’d be only too happy to assist you.

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Duncan Isaksen-Loxton

Educated as a web developer, with over 20 years of internet based work and experience, Duncan is a Google Workspace Certified Collaboration Engineer and a WordPress expert.
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