Words on a page

Many people use Gmail not only as a Web-based mail service, but as a hub for multiple email accounts. Doing this enables you to not only view email from other accounts in one place and from just about anywhere, but you can send messages using any of those accounts, too.

A problem crops up with email signatures. A number of people, myself included, have separate signatures for each email account. In my case, I use one for my technical writing firm and another for my freelance writing. The problem here is that Gmail only supports a single email signature. An email signature can help personalize a message, give the recipient other options for contacting you, and is a simple way of marketing yourself — all you need to do is include the address of your Web site, blog, Twitter feed, etc.

While there is a really nice extension for the Firefox Web browser that lets you insert any number of signatures into your messages, it does work with the latest versions of the browser. Or, you can use this extension that’s designed specifically for Gmail. But if you don’t use Firefox, then those extensions are a moot point.

You can get around this problem, though, using a nifty feature of Gmail called canned responses.

Canned what?

Canned responses. If you have any text that you include regularly in emails — like salutations, closings, or whatnot — you can add it to a message instead of having to type it over and over and over again. The folks at Google called canned responses email for the truly lazy.

To use canned responses, you need to enable them. In Gmail, click the Settings link in the top-right corner of the window. In the Settings window, click the Labs tab. Find Canned Responses in the rather long list of extra features and then click Enable. After that, click the Save Changes button and you’re ready to go.

Setting up your signatures

First, click Compose Mail to create a new email message. Type or paste the text of your signature into the message. If you’re wondering about what to include in your signature, here’s a sample of one of mine:

From there, highlight the signature and then click Canned Responses. From the list that drops down select New Canned Response and then give your signature a name.

When you want to insert a signature into your message, just put your cursor at the end of the message, click Canned Responses, and then click Insert (signature), where (signature) is the name of the email signature that you want to use.

Simple, but very effective.

Related posts:

1. Fixing broken numbered lists in Word
2. Putting your todo list on your (Windows) desktop
3. Using an electronic signature service

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am and is filed under Web, advice, tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.