A new post by Microsoft employee Dharmesh Mehta on the Inside Windows Live blog highlights core reasons why users might want to switch from Gmail to Hotmail, before explaining the actual steps that migrates their email account to the Hotmail email service.

• Hotmail & Facebook work well together. You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can’t do this from Gmail.
• You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments. Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive. You can’t do this in Gmail.
• Hotmail works great with Office. Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office.
• Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail. With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep.

These features alone won’t convince many users to move their email account to Hotmail. Combined with Google’s announcement however they could be enough to get some users to move their accounts.

It needs to be noted though that Gmail offers features that Hotmail does not offer. This includes IMAP support or two step authentication, both of which are not supported by Hotmail.

The guide to switch from Gmail to Hotmail lists three steps.

• Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.
• Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).
• Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:
  a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

  b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

  c. Click Add an email account.

  d. Provide your Gmail account details.

Step 2 and 3 address core issues that users who move mail accounts want resolved before they even start thinking about it. Access to all previous mail messages and the forwarding of messages that are send to the old account are covered in those two steps.

Are you considering moving your Gmail account to another provider?

Users who visit the Google Knol start page see a big announcement on that page stating that “Knol will be moving to Annotum on May 1, 2012″. Google Knol was a Wikipedia-like online service to which Google users contributed articles to. Knol, unlike other services, can be migrated to Annotum, a multi-user WordPress site. Knol users alternatively have the option to download their articles to their computer.

Google Knol will be available until May 1, 2012. The service will be taken offline at this point in time. Knol users can still download or migrate their articles until October 1, 2012 when those options expire as well. Users who migrate will benefit from automatic redirects of their articles.

For Google Wave, the options are nearly the same. Google Wave will become read only on January 31, 2012 which basically means that users will not be able to create or edit waves after this point. Users have until April 30, 2012 to download the Wave data as PDF documents to their computers. There is also an option to export wave to an Open Source project called Workaround that is based on the Apache Wave code base.

Google Gears is deprecated and will no longer be available as of December 2011. The open source project allowed users to make and use web applications offline.

Other services that are discontinued include the Search Timeline feature which displayed a search term’s popularity over time in the search results, Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal which was an effort on Google’s part to drive down the costs of renewable energy, Friend Connect which could be used to add social features to web sites and Bookmark lists, which allowed users to share bookmarks.

Larry Page is hell-bent to slim-down Google’s operations. Getting rid of services that are not overly popular and concentrating on services that are may be a way to please share holders and make the company more profitable. These service discontinuations on the other hand can have an effect on the overall trust that users have in Google. Why would someone want to use a Google service that is not as popular as Gmail, if there is a chance that Google’s CEO will announce a fourth wave of retirements in the coming months.

Firefox Share has been designed to give users a tool at hand to share links faster. The new Mozilla Labs add-on places an icon into the Firefox address bar upon installation.

This icon can be clicked to share the current website address.

The Mozilla Labs team has added three sharing options to this initial version of Firefox Share. Firefox users with the add-on installed can share a link on Twitter, Facebook or Google Mail.

Each service needs to be authorized first before they can be used to share links. A click on the sign in button opens a popup window where this is done.

The authorized service window displays the sharing options then on successive uses. Tabs that have been open before the initial authorization need to be reloaded before they can be shared.

The share overlay displays the user account and the web url in a form by default. It is possible to add text and even modify the web address before hitting the share button. Depending on the service, it is furthermore possible to change the message recipients (for instance from public to direct message on Twitter).

The announcement over at the Mozilla Labs website describes the add-on as a “descendant of F1″, Mozilla’s social add-on (you can read about Mozilla F1 here). Plans are to make it different from F1, for instance by adding many different providers to future versions of the extension.

Probably the best feature from a user perspective is that Firefox now communicates directly with the service providers and not through a Mozilla proxy. If you are a Firefox users you can download Firefox Share from the official Mozilla add-on repository. (via)

The video announcement highlights many upcoming Gmail design changes and features. This includes a new look and feel that looks very similar to the Google Plus interface, and other new features like Gmail’s ability to adapt automatically to the windows size in which it is displayed. Users who resize their Gmail window will notice that the relevant information, for instance the sender, subject and date of each email in the inbox, are always visible on screen.

The options button at the top right leads to additional display density options. The default comfortable setting uses big margins and whitespace areas between posts which users can reduce by switching to the cozy or compact display density options.

Another new feature is the slider that allows users to increase or decrease the label or chat area on the left sidebar.

Google has uploaded new high resolution themes that users can switch to.

Conversations have been redesigned to improve readability. You will also notice that profile pictures have been added if available.

Google has updated search as well. If you are a Gmail user you know that search consists of just a single form that you can use to search.

The new search comes with filters that include from, to and subjects as well as words, attachments and date filters.

Filters can now also be created right from the search box. You can see the video with all the changes discussed in this news article below.

There is no official word yet on the availability of the new features but it is likely that they will be rolled out soon.

I’m not really affected by the changes as I’m using Thunderbird as my main email client. If you are a Gmail web interface user, what’s your take on the changes announced in the video? (via)

While that may not be a problem if you are the only account user, it can be one if the email account is shared. This can be the case if it is a company or family account. Plus you need to be aware that even if you are the only account user, this may not be the case for your chat partner’s account.

Google users have two options to modify the chat history settings. The first option is to completely disable Google Chat history. This basically means that chats will not be recorded, so that they cannot be searched or accessed after the session closes.

Gmail users find the option to never save chat history here. You can also open your Gmail homepage manually, click on the Settings icon on the right of your profile photo, select Mail Settings from the context menu and switch there to the Chat tab.

Locate My Chat History there. To disable chat history select Never save chat history, to enable it again select Save chat history instead.

• Save chat history. – Your chats will be saved under “Chats” in your Google Mail account, and you can search for them later. You can always go “off the record.”
• Never save chat history. – Your chats will never be saved or searchable in your Google Mail account.

Sometimes though you may only want to block the chat history of a particular contact, or to delete previous chat recordings.

To find all chat sessions that Google has recorded enter in:chat into the Search Mail field on Google Mail. This displays a list of all chat sessions with options to delete them.

The second option that you have is to go off the record during chats. Click on the down arrow icon on the right side of the chat header and select Go off the record from the context menu. You will get a message stating that you are now off the record. Chats with the particular users are no longer saved in your Gmail account or the the chat partner’s account (but may be if either one uses a desktop or third party app).

And that’s all there is to is. This guide explained how to enable or disable the Google chat history completely or on a per-contact level. (via)

That’s where the Firefox (and Google Chrome and Safari) add-on Rapportive comes into play. Rapportive integrates into the Gmail interface naturally. The extension displays a new sidebar on the right side of any email that you open on the Google Mail website.

The sidebar displays the contact’s name and email address, location, a profile picture if available, the contact’s occupation, recent social media usage (Twitter) and options to connect on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. Another interesting feature added by Rapportive is a note taking module that is displayed in the sidebar. You can jot down notes which are displayed whenever an email of that contact is opened in the Gmail interface.

You see who you are communicating with, and have options to add the person to your social circles. This works best if Rapportive was able to find the user on one of the social networking sites it uses to display the contact information. This does mean that you won’t get any useful information, that is information that go beyond the user’s email address, if Rapportive cannot find or link the user on one of those sites.

Users can hover over any email address in Gmail, for instance in emails with multiple recipients, to see their information on the screen as well.

Rapportive does not need access to your Gmail’s login credentials. The company gets limited access to your Gmail inbox on the other hand, and users with sensitive information may want to pass on this one because of it.

What I really like about Rapportive is the ability to “see” who you are communicating with. You get instant access to information about your Gmail contacts that you would otherwise only have access to if you’d run searches on sites like Google, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Firefox, Chrome and Safari users can download Rapportive from the official website.

If you look at Google these days, you might have read that the company started pushing out offline modes for some of their products. The crux? Offline modes are only available for Chrome versions. Not for Firefox, not Internet Explorer, and definitely not for Opera.

You may remember that Gmail offline access was available before for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. This was made possible by Google Gears, which has been discontinued earlier this year. Some of the Gears features have made their way into the Chrome web browser though.

Gmail users who want offline access to their emails and data need to install the Offline Google Mail extension from the Chrome Web Store.

With it they can read and respond to mail, search and archive emails without network access. Gmail Offline ” will automatically synchronize messages and queued actions anytime Chrome is running and an Internet connection is available”.

To start Offline Gmail after installing, open a new tab in Chrome; In the new tab pane you will see a Gmail Offline Icon. Click on the icon, and Offline Gmail will load.

For Google Docs, it is even easier. Just click on the settings icon next to your profile picture on the Google Docs website and select “Set up Docs offline” from the context menu.

A new popup window opens up on the screen where you need to allow offline docs access. You still need to install the Docs Chrome web app in the process, but everything is handled directly from within Google Docs.

While not announced officially yet, Google will offer offline access for Google Calendar as well in the future.

Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality. To get started using Google Calendar or Google Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access.

The question remains: Do you think that Google should offer offline support for other web browsers as well? Let me know in the comments.

The good news is that it’s actually possible to migrate all your email, contacts and calendar between multiple email providers using a service provided by TrueSwitch.  What’s more, if you’re switching to Gmail, Hotmail or one of the other ‘partner’ providers for the company the service is completely free.

To use it all you need to do is enter your usernames and passwords for the two relevant accounts and wait up to 24 hours for the system to transfer everything from your old account to your new one.  What’s more, because it merely copies the email, calendar and contacts, you can also use it to completely back up an email account!

When you go to the main website, which isn’t the most usable one I’ve ever encountered, if you are switching your email to one of the providers listed on the right side of the page, listed under the “Free when you switch to our partners” link, just click the icon relevant to the email provider you are switching to.  You will then be taken to the relevant form on their website where you enter the details of the two accounts, and tell TrueSwitch what data it is that you want to transfer.

Additionally you can then set the service to continue forwarding email from your old account to your new one for up to 60 days.  This is extremely useful if you’re moving your whole account from one company to another.

But what do you then do if your old email is sitting in an Outlook PST file or Outlook Express.  Well with the latter you’ll first need to import your email into Outlook.  Then you need to make sure you have the latest version of the Outlook Connector software installed if you’re using Hotmail, or that you set up your Gmail or other account with Outlook using IMAP.

Do you know that when you’re in Outlook and looking at your email folder tree, you can simply drag and drop email from an Outlook PST file into your Hotmail connector folder, or an IMAP folder.  The emails will be moved from the PST file into the connector file and the next time you synchronise your email they will all be uploaded to the cloud to become part of your Hotmail or Gmail account.

It really couldn’t be simpler to get all of your email, from any ISP and no matter how old, into a single email service.  I’ve used it to aggregate email from two separate ISPs that I downloaded since 2001 into Outlook using a POP server, and my old now defunct Gmail account into my current Hotmail account.

I then used the TrueSwitch service to back up that entire Hotmail account, now the repository of all of my sent and received email from multiple services since 2001, into my Gmail account.  I’ve done this because the recent Hotmail outage earlier this year that deleted some people’s emails for good, including some of mine, made me a bit jumpy.

There have been other services and software packages over the years that have also been able to migrate your email, calendar and contacts between providers, but none that I’ve found are quite as powerful or as flexible.

Pokki is app based, which means that users install the main client and then the apps that they want to use. Apps include popular choices like Gmail, Facebook or eBay, but also apps that are more on the geeky side of things. This includes an awesome headlines app that is displaying RSS feed contents, a Google Search bar app to start a search on Google directly from the taskbar or a file uploader.

You install Pokki by selecting one of the featured applications from the Pokki website. This installs the application and the main client on the operating system. The icons are placed directly between the start menu button and the first icons of the taskbar. This takes some getting used to time as it moves all the icons to the right (I have several tabs pinned on the taskbar).

Individual applications are then launched with a single click on their icon. The interface opens up fluently. The headlines app for instance displays a selection of default and custom RSS feeds in its interface. Options are provided to add custom RSS feed links to the application which are then displayed on the left side. Options are then available to display news from all RSS feeds in chronological order or news from one specific RSS feed.

Information like the unread email or news count are displayed on the icons if applicable. A total of 21 different applications can be installed right now. Instructions are provided on the program website on how to build custom applications using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Pokki’s concept is rather unique and interesting. The developers need to push out new applications to increase the reach of their application. That, and support for Vista and XP seem to be the two important things that need to be addressed. The apps could use tooltips that describe what they do as well.

Don’t get me wrong though. Pokki as it stands is a great program for the Windows operating system. At least a few of the available apps should be useful for the majority of Windows users.

Google yesterday announced the availability of a new Labs application called Preview Pane which adds that missing feature to Gmail.

The Gmail layout does not change automatically after Preview Pane has been enabled. A tooltip on the inbox page guides the user to a button that adds another column or row to the window. Below is a screenshot of the vertical split mode of the new preview pane feature.

The preview pane column is added to the right of the Gmail inbox. The area is fully resizable, which is done with a click on the divider between the inbox and the preview pane.

A click on the down arrow icon next to the preview pane’s button opens a menu with options to switch from horizontal previews to vertical previews.

The selection boils down to personal preferences and the resolution of the monitor. Vertical preview mode has the look and feel of desktop email programs.

Email previews are displayed whenever an email gets selected in the inbox or another mail folder.

But the preview pane adds more than just previewing of emails in the Gmail inbox. It can also be used to quickly reply to the selected email. All controls are available right on that screen.

Gmail users can also hide the preview pane again by selecting the No Split option from the down arrow.

Preview Pane adds a feature to Gmail that has been missing since day one. While it won’t entice me to use the Gmail web interface more often, it can surely make a difference for users who work with that interface on a daily basis. (via).

Google has now announced on the official Google blog that they have started to roll out the feature to users from other countries as well. The new feature will be available to 38 new languages, including countries such as Germany, France, The United Kingdom or Canada.

Call Phones from Gmail supports mobile phone and landline calls to over 150 destinations. The service does not charge for connection fees, users pay only for the time they talk and for nothing else.

The rates page can be used to display the international calling rates in a supported currency. Gmail users pay for instance $0.02 per minute to place landline calls to the U.K, France or Germany and $0.10 per minute to call mobile phones in those countries.

The Call Phones From Gmail feature is rolled out in the next days to all supported countries. A green phone icon in the chat area indicates that the feature is available for the account. A click on the phone displays the following informational screen.

The service is plugin driven, which means that users need to install a plugin before they can start using the service. The plugin is alternatively available on the Call phones from Gmail website as well. The voice and video chat plugin supports Windows, Mac and Linux computer systems.

A call menu is displayed in the lower right corner of the screen once the plugin has been installed.

It displays the current calling credit and a dial pad. The pad accepts keyboard and mouse input. A calling history is available, a click on the clock icon in the main row displays it. A click on the credit displays options to add credit and to display rates or the calling history.

Google notes that calls “to the U.S. or Canada placed within those countries will continue to be free at least for the rest of 2011. Calls to the U.S. or Canada placed from outside these countries will be charged $0.01 per minute”.

Additional information are available at the official Google blog.

Now though Microsoft are hitting out at Google with the introduction of the Gmail man, an annoying postman who reads everyone’s emails before delivering them to search for key words he can use to deliver adverts to them.  The video is an advertisement itself for Microsoft’s new Office 365 product.

It was spotted online by ZD Net blogger Mary-Jo Foley who asked Microsoft is the video was from them, as it includes touches like the company name “Contoso” which is the company’s favourite fake company name, and one I’ve had to use myself with Microsoft Press.  She received a firm “no comment”.

Now I happen to like Microsoft much more than I like Google, though that’s down to really disliking Google more than anything else.  I have to say though that this video is a cheap shot across Google’s bow.  I can’t understand for starters why anybody would compare Gmail to Office 365.  There’s no mention of Google Docs in the video.  It’s entirely about Gmail and advertising.  The video is trying very hard to discredit Google’s reputation for honesty.  I have to say it fails badly.

The producers of this video have used every outdated stereotype in the book, from the annoying man you just want to hate, to the little girl portraying the high moral ground.  The whole video is pretty wretched stuff.

The most important part though is that while it is based on truth, it’s twisting it considerably and stretching credibility too far.

Compare this to Apple’s “I’m a PC” advertisements after Windows 7 launched which were genuinely funny, had some excellent writers and, factually, simply couldn’t be argued with.  They were in response to Microsoft’s own “I’m a PC” ads and Microsoft’s attempts to get back at Apple failed abysmally.

In all the Gmail man is utterly forgettable as a video, if you watch it you’ll probably just come away disliking Microsoft a little bit more.  Perhaps they should have got Google to read the notes first to get keywords they could use in the script?  ;)  You can watch the Gmail man video here:

Google seems to believe that it is time for all users to review their mail forwarding and delegation settings on Gmail. From today on a message will be displayed asking the user to review the filters set for the Gmail email address.

Users who do not have filters setup won’t get the message, obviously.

The message reads: Your filters are forwarding some of your email to [email address]. Options are to review the settings and a link to information about the notification.

Users who do not get the notification message just yet can verify their filtering settings manually instead. A click on the settings button at the top and the selection of Mail Settings opens the preferences.

A click on Filters opens the filtered mail listing. You can review all filters that are currently configured right there. These filters can be modified or deleted if need be.

You furthermore should click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP to see if the configuration there is correct. Check if mail is forwarded and whether POP or IMAP access are enabled. You may want to disable forwarding or external mail access if you do not need it.

Lastly, you need to click on Accounts and Import to make sure that no one has been granted access to your account who should not have it.

I personally have not seen the filtering notification yet, even though filters are configured in the account. The announcement at the official Google Mail blog suggests that the message will appear for about a week before it will stop appearing. (via)

On a nicer note, it may be useful to know the location of a prospective client for business purposes so you may prepare a proposal significant to their demographic. This can be a benign and useful process as well as one to defend. The process is the same. You choose what to do with it. This gets technical, so prepare for some work.

Here is how to take the steps for Google, Outlook, and Yahoo.

Gmail

Log in to your Gmail account. Open the e-mail that for which you are seeking the origin.

Click the down arrow to the right of the reply ink and choose “Show original”.

Now this moves on to the technical part. Seek out the text lines that start with “Received From.” You can press Ctrl+F to search the phrase automatically. Note that there are many paths that the e-mail is received from. The true original location will be found furthest to the bottom of the text. It is advantageous to see all IP addresses involved. Here we find the original IP address and host name of the sender. Make sure you always select the last Received From entry in the listing.

Yahoo Mail

Open the email that you want to analyze. Scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see the toolbar at the bottom. Locate the Actions menu and click on it.

Select View Full Header to see all email header information.

Hotmail

Sign in to Hotmail and open the email. Locate the down arrow on the right side next to the Reply link. Click on the arrow and select View message source.

Locating the IP

The next step is to find the location of the IP address.

This is done by using a simple location lookup on the IP address. There are online programs that you can locate IP address information through, such as What Is My IP Address and these give broad map of the territory in which the IP address is located.

There are plenty of online services that allow you to look up IP address locations. When it comes to finding IP address locations for security purposes, it is important to find a reliable service. There are other services available. It is suggested that you use one, either free or with premium features at a small cost. This will make the discovery of the IP address location easy and minimize expenditure of time. It is a broad subject to go into when it comes to doing the search yourself. For practical purposes, third-party finders are affordable and accurate. Know where your e-mails are coming from. Mysteries mean risks. Otherwise, use the Ctrl+F option.

However, many people still don’t know that if you want to pull your email into third-party email software, it has to be capable of using secure connections. This means SSL (Secure Socket Layer), and TLS (Transport Layer Security). Both of these protocols use encryption, and are built in automatically to most up-to-date email software. Instead of using ports 25 and 110 to sends and receive, you’ll be using ports 465 and 995, and Gmail won’t work without it.

So what happens when you are asked to set up an email system to talk to Google Mail, which doesn’t allow those ports, and is so old it doesn’t know the first thing about encryption protocols? Well, one answer could be a little program called Stunnel. This little gem sits on your computer and converts standard emails into a format suitable for Google Mail. It can handle incoming and outgoing mail, and is robust enough to use on a network where many people are sending emails at the same time. It also uses very little system memory, and rarely crashes.

Setting up Stunnel is a easy. You simply run thorough the install process which will take all of about 20 seconds, and then edit a small text file which configures the program to use whichever email service you are using. Of course we are talking about Google Mail here, but this program could be used to interface with any email system using secure socket layers.

You can set up port mappings easily, so if your software will only receive emails from port 110, it will automatically translate that to port 995 for you, and the same with outgoing mail. It will also handle IMAP email as well.

You can install Stunnel on any computer running Windows. In a network environment you can install a copy on a server, and point all your workstations to it. Stunnel seems to allow multiple connections with no fuss whatsoever. I’ve seen a single instance of Stunnel handling email for up to 200 workstations. Of course if you have more, there are no reasons why you couldn’t install more than one instance of Stunnel to handle the extra traffic. It also installs itself as a service on server operating systems, which enables it to be started automatically. It can also be installed on individual machines, such as laptops.

This program finds favor with quite a few people. It’s simple and does exactly what it says it does. It’s also flexible enough to fit in with almost any network.

Google recently announced changes to their email service Gmail that would aid users in determining the real sender of an email message.

Google actually has added a series of improvements to Gmail. Emails from a sender who is not already in a Gmail user’s contacts are now shown prominently in the header. This change makes it easier to identify the sender directly without having to look at all email headers.

But the changes do not stop here. It sometimes happens that someone sends an email for another user or from another website, for instance by using a web form. This is now also reflected in the email header directly. Gmail users now see the name of the sender as well as the sender’s email address and a via link.

Probably the biggest change from an anti-phishing point of view is a new warning that appears if Gmail believes that the email could have been sent by someone else. Gmail shows a “This message may not have been sent by” warning underneath the sender with links to learn more and to report a phishing email.

All three additions are visible directly when an email has been opened on the Gmail website. The new information improve security for all Gmail users, provided that those users pay attention to the notifications and additional information.

Especially the first two additions can be overlooked easily due to their gray font color on white background. The phishing warning on the other hand uses a yellow background so that it can be easily spotted by everyone. (via)

According to the official Gmail Blog, Google will drop support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3. Dropping support does not mean that users will be blocked from using Google services, but it does mean that Google may develop and implement features that no longer work in those browsers.

To put it in plain words: When Google develops new features and services, the company will not test them using the browsers they dropped support for.

Support will be dropped on August 1, and Google notes that “may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites” from that day on, and that users may notice eventually that “these apps may stop working entirely”.

From August 1 on, Google will only support modern browsers. For them, that is Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, and only the two newest versions of each browser will be supported. When Firefox 5 comes out, support will be dropped for Firefox 3.6, with Firefox 6 support for Firefox 4 will be dropped and so on.

Most features will continue to work in dropped browser versions for a long time to come. Chance is, users will be able to use those browsers indefinitely. Only features that require new technologies like HTML5 may not work in those browsers, drag and drop file uploading or desktop notifications come to mind.

No mentioning of Opera anywhere in the announcement, it is as usual ignored by Google.

What’s your take on this? Is this the right step to force users to update their browsers more frequently?

Users may get error messages like “Attachment failed” or “Attachment failed. This may be due to a proxy or firewall” when they try to upload attachments to Gmail.

This guide is a collection of fixes and suggestions that may help resolve attachment failed type of messages in Gmail. Attachment failures have different causes, which means that there is no single fix available that resolves all the issues.

I suggest you try each method on its own by returning to the compose mail window and trying to add the attachment. If it works congratulations, you have resolved the attachment failed message. If it does not try the next option in line.

Attachment Failed Basic Help

You may want to try the following tips first before you try the advanced tips in the next section.

Adobe Flash

Make sure you are running the latest version of Adobe Flash. The default attachment uploader is using Flash for the uploading of files. Old Flash versions may no longer be supported by the uploader or return error messages.

Visit this page to check your Flash version and compare it with the latest version of Flash posted on the same page.

Web Browser

• Make sure you have the latest version of your web browser installed. Depending on your browser you can either check for updates directly in the browser, or need to visit the developer website to see if you are running the latest version.
• You may also want to consider switching browsers to see if that resolves the issue.
• Make sure your browser is not in offline mode, especially so if you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
• Try disabling the web browser proxy if one is configured.

Attachment Uploader

Gmail has an option to switch from the advanced uploader to a basic attachment uploader. This is done with a click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen and the selection of Mail Settings. Locate Attachments under the General tab and switch from Advanced attachment features to Basic attachment features there.

Different Computer

Maybe you have access to a second computer, preferably at a different location. You can try to upload attachments on that computer to see if you experience the attachment failed issue there as well.

If you do not you know that it is not account related, but network or computer related. You may then want to check your firewall and security software settings to make sure that they do not interfere during attachment transfers to Gmail.

Advanced Tips Fixing Attachment Failed Messages

Desktop email

Using Gmail over the web is only one option for users. You can alternative download and install a desktop email client like Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook. Configuration is not difficulty, see Setting Up Email Accounts In Thunderbird 3 for help on that.

Disabling HTTPS

Please note that it is usually not recommended to disable HTTPS. You may want to give it a try though if you have tried all other options.

You can disable it under the General tabs of your Gmail settings. Locate Browser Connection near the top and switch from Always use HTTPS to Don’t Always use HTTPs.

Contact Google

While there is no way of telling that Google will respond to your report, it may be better than giving up right away on resolving the issue.

Head over to the Gmail support contact form and send Google an email, telling them exactly what happens, and what you have tried so far.

Closing Words

There are lots of workarounds available to resolve attachment uploading problems on Gmail. If nothing helps, you may want to consider using a different email service after you have tested that attachment uploading works there.

Have you ever had problems uploading attachments to Gmail? If so, did you resolve those issues?

When I tried to send the email however, I received an error message. It stated: Error. File.exe is an executable file. For security reasons, Google Mail does not allow you to send this type of file.

A click on OK displayed the compose message screen again, with the file still being attached to the email.

What I needed was a workaround. Sure, I could for instance upload the executable file to a file hosting website like Mediafire, and copy and paste the share file url in the email instead. That’s a possibility and not a bad one.

Then again, I prefer a more straightforward approach. I first tried zipping the file to see if that was enough to bypass the file filter on Gmail. It was not. The very same message was displayed and the email failed to send.

Next thing I tried was to zip the executable file and apply a password to the file to see if that would bypass the executable file filter which it did not as well. Both options did not yield the desired result. Gmail was still blocking the email from being send. I did some experiments with different encryption formats, and found out that 7-zip files that contain executable files can be send, while more common extensions like zip or gz are blocked.

Lastly I decided to change the file extension of the executable, from exe to txt. And lo and behold, the email went through the filters. Changing the file extension of the attachment can be problematic in itself, especially so if you are not the recipient of the email. You need to provide instructions, preferably in the message, that the file extension needs to be changed before the file can be run on the target computer.

So, if you want to send an executable as an attachment from your Gmail account, you either need to rename the file extension to bypass the filter, upload the file elsewhere and link to it in the mail body, or use a compression format like 7z. The latter being the most comfortable option if the recipient uses a tool that supports the unpacking of those files.

Is there an option that I have overlooked? Let me know in the comments.

Background Send is a new Google Mail feature that removes that restriction from Google’s web mail interface. Once activated, you can continue working with Gmail while the emails are send in the background.

That may not make a huge difference for users who send an email occasionally, but for users who send hundreds of emails it may be a difference like day and night.

You need to enable the Background Send feature in the Labs section of the Mail preferences. You can get there with a click on your name in the upper right corner and the selection of Mail Settings.

Switch to the Labs tab there and scroll down on that page until you find the Background Send listing.

Let Google Mail send your mail while you move on to more important things. Just be sure to stay logged in until it’s all sent!

Don’t forget to save the change before you leave that page. It becomes available immediately allowing you to navigate away from the Compose Mail screen after you have hit the send button.

Background Send has no effect on the composition part of things. It is for instance not possible to do something else in the Gmail interface while uploading a big file attachment.

Please note that you may not log out of the Gmail account during the sending of emails in the background. The mail will fail to send if you do. Gmail displays a “There was a problem sending your message” notification if problems did occur during sending. Options are provided to fix the issue right now or at a later time.

Send Background is especially handy for users who send out lots of emails throughout the day. (via Gmail Blog)