Comments on: 5 little Gmail annoyances Google needs to fix

Gmail may be great, but it's annoying sometimes too. Find out some of those attributes that Don Reisinger thinks Google should address.

Don, you have multiple signatures with Canned Responses, a recently added Labs feature. The idea behind this is to have a list of "prefabricated mail bodies", available in the Compose windows. Because you can modify these mail bodies inserted by Gmail as you wish, as long as you take care of selecting your canned response (signature) before writing any text, your 5th annoyance is gone...

[lukulius]

It sounds like you don't like Gmail at all. You're basically against all its features which make it what it is. I suggest you use Yahoo or MSN, instead of trying to change Gmail and make it like them.

[t8]

"but I don't like that Google scans my e-mail to deliver more relevant ads."

Oh sure, here have the best web email in the world for free and at cost to us?

I don't think so.

Come on get real. Would you work for CNet for free? Is it annoying for CNet to have to pay you?

Good products get better when they are making money. That is reality, get use to it.

[mzaher82]

Gmail scans email just like an anti virus does.

[hmdz105]

You article is full of emotionally backed complaints. While you don't like relevant ads, how do you trust Google administrators in not reading your e-mails. Come on, if Admins can read your mails, so can their ad bots, and why do you ever worry? Google spends those ad revenues for making your Gmail much better each day, something Yahoo and AOL forget to do for a long time.

And for the Labels, I think you are not a pro Gmail user. Labels are much more like "tags" + "folders" and not each one exactly. You have to work a while with them to realize how they differ from folders, and how they help filtering messages. Can you put an email into multiple folders in Yahoo? NO, and that is where Gmail shines.

DELETE ME? what is wrong with you guys? you have loads of space, and why would you ever want to delete a small message. I know we usually regret for that trash mail the we have deleted long ago, wishing it was available just for another look....

And your only point here is drag n drop which i really back and also tell you that Google will also need an "UNDO" button if it ever manages to add drag-n-drop to Gmail.

http://herrlucifer.blogspot.com

[rsmolkin]

Labels are better then folders, because you can add multiple labels to one e-mail. Originally I had some trouble adapting myself, because we were trained to think FOLDERs by Microsoft, but now that I understand how labels work, they are way more intuitive.

But what makes Gmail incredible for me is the addition of GTD Inbox in Firefox. Check it out http://www.gtdinbox.com/ Not only can you have folders and hierarchies, you can also keep track of projects, tasks and contacts better.

[runswithscissorsXX]

the lack of folders is definitely complaint number one for me. i understand some people love labels, but why not give the *option* to use folders, at least? best of both worlds? why is it such an unreasonable idea?

You're not freaking paying attention.
Listen carefully: Folders ARE labels.
If you're too baffled by the idea of using multiple labels per email, then just use one per email. Viola, it's magic - you're using folders! Quit your whining.

[Chockster]

The Hash key has worked fine as the gmail delete key for me. It's documented at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=6594

Hello Don,
Love to read your articles.
You may want to check out EverDesk Optima (www.everdesk.com) - it uses absolutely different approach to working with emails and documents, and addresses a lot of issues described here in a much better and efficient way.

[rrdharan]

The reason you can't delete messages using delete is the browsers' fault, not Gmail's:
http://unixpapa.com/js/key.html

I think they could make the Delete key work in Firefox, but my guess is that for the sake of UI consistency they want the same keyboard shortcut set to work in all browsers.

[polvero]

Haha!

1) A bot scans it, a person doesn't read it. there's a huge difference.

2) You've got this all wrong. Labels are just like folders, but better. And you know how to use labels, but you're just not admiting you do. Have you tried them yet?

3) "Why should gmail be any different" ? so we should all be the same?

4) Hit "shft + ?" ? and you'll see gmail has more keyboard shortcuts than any other email client.... including deleting ;) (which 'd'). also, clicking delete does work when you're on an email. you're probably seeing things...

5) that's a feature request

[iamj4de]

Those of you who keep asking about the equivalence of nested folders: Why do you even need it?

I give you an example: how I organize my mp3 songs. I want to divide them in time periods, so naturally I have 5 folders: 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s... But then I also want to categorize them by their style. So inside each of the above folders, I need to create a subfolder for jazz, pop, rock, country, etc... Wait, I also need to divide them into languages, because I listen not only to English songs, but also French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese songs. So now inside each of this subfolder, I need to create 5 more sub-sub folders.

I suppose this is what you guys want for your emails? Really? You want a structure so cumbersome, so unorganized and so inconvenient to keep your files? Now if my file system had something similar to Label, I could have simply labeled the songs according to their release date, their style and their language. Freaking simple! And a simple search would give me all the songs with every combination of search criteria! Instead of using the stupid nested folder structure that you keep asking for.

[cabrillo24]

What really annoys me about gmail is a lack of App for the iphone. I know Google has gone on the record for stating they won't be developing an app in the near future on the iphone, due to the fact they'd have to create one for other mobile platforms, but I miss my ability to use labels, search, archive etc. on the iphone utilizing its mail application.

[GslMusic]

And...who's the "bright" google "engineer" that decided ten years ago that just about all google products would implement inconsistent units of measure i.e. hide the year, month or day from the date display depending on how "recent" the email is, which for readability reasons is extremely annoying. Just display a consistent date format i.e. 08/30/2009 etc. for ALL inbox emails instead of 1:30PM, Aug 30, Jul 7, etc. What the ----- do they think they are accomplishing with this "smart" day/date/time display. Inconsistent units of measure lead to human error and are annoying. Again, google is too liberal and their "engineers" are too inexperienced to understand usability, human factors, and known reliability standards let alone implement user options to respect such historical standards. Stop using 2-digit year representation!