Chapter 1 Sending and Receiving Messages
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Searching for Messages
The inbox can quickly fi ll up with messages. Finding the e-mail to which
you need to respond may require a search. There are several ways to search for
messages in Gmail. The search box at the top of the Gmail window can be used
to perform a quick search. This quick search allows users to enter a sender’s
name, an e-mail address, or a word to be found in a subject line or in the message
text. Users can also conduct an advanced search using the search wizard.
Messages Versus Conversations
Most e-mail services list incoming messages individually, regardless if the
e-mail is new or a response. Gmail works differently. All e-mail messages are
grouped together into conversations. A conversation is a collection of messages
with the same subject line. If you begin with a new e-mail, every response to
that message is grouped into a single entry in the inbox. So, what may appear to
be a single e-mail could in fact be a conversation containing several e-mails.
Conversations can help organize the inbox because all responses to an
e-mail are on one line in the inbox rather than searching for pieces of the
conversation. Another benefi t of conversations is that actions taken on a
conversation affect all of its contents. As a result, you can move or delete all
of the messages in a conversation with a single action.
Gmail displays who has responded to a conversation and the number of
messages within the conversation, as seen in Figure 1-3. The senders are also
visible. A number is displayed in parentheses to the right of the sender name.
Goodheart-Willcox Publisher
Figure 1-3. Google groups all e-mail messages with the same subject line into a
single entry in the inbox, which is then called a conversation.
Number
indicates the
number of
messages in the
conversation
Bold text indicates that messages
from these senders are unread
Gmail
conversation
Names of the
senders of
messages in the
conversation