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Tips for getting in touch with colleagues
See if someone is available now
When you have an urgent question, you might not want to wait for a meeting or an email reply. Instead, check if someone’s online right now in Google Chat, then send them a message to get a faster response.
Check someone's availability in Chat or Gmail
| Status icon | Status text | Status meaning |
 |
Active | Gmail or Google Chat is open. |
 |
Do not disturb |
Google Chat notifications are muted. *For workspace accounts this is visible at the domain level only |
 |
Away |
|
 |
Idle | You've been inactive in Gmail or Google Chat for the last 5 minutes. |
Start a video call from Gmail
If an email thread is getting long or confusing, it may be easier to talk face-to-face. You can start a new video call while in Gmail, and invite whoever you'd like to attend. Or you can join a video call that's already on your calendar.
Important: You can call someone directly from Chat or Gmail in Chrome. If you make a call to a non-Chrome user, they can receive and join the call but they won't hear a ring.
You can start a voice or video meeting from Chat or Gmail. When the other person receives the call, they’ll hear a ring.
- In Chat, open a direct message.
- At the top, click Start video call
. The call opens in a small window.
- To end the call, click End call
.
Tip: If you want to adjust the call window:
- To move the call to a new tab, click Move to a tab
.
- To move, click and hold the window.
Share and collaborate using spaces in Chat
Never miss a minute of brainstorming in your next meeting. Collaborate with your team in a chat space. Conversations are organized into different conversation threads in spaces, so you and your team can discuss multiple subjects at the same time. Converse with co-workers, share files and other online resources, and work together on team projects.
To help your organization discuss specific topics or share ideas of interest, create a space. For example, you might create a space dedicated to a specific team, a common area of interest, or to make organizational announcements.
With your work or school account, you can create a restricted or discoverable space:
- Restricted space—To join the space, a user or group in an organization must be invited or added to the space by an existing space member.
- Discoverable space—Can be joined by any user with a shared link.
Schedule a meeting with email recipients right from your inbox
If your email conversation is getting too involved, a meeting can be a more effective way to complete the discussion. With Gmail, you can schedule a meeting right from your inbox. The event automatically contains the email subject as its title, messages from the email as a description, and the people in the email thread as attendees.
- In Gmail, compose an email.
- Click More
Set up a time to meet
- Add details to your new event and click Save.
Schedule an email to send later
Working with team members in different time zones? Going on vacation but still want to send an update to someone when you’re away? With Gmail, you can compose your email and schedule it to send at a specific date and time.
- On your computer, go to Gmail
.
- At the top left, click
Compose.
- Create your email.
- At the bottom left next to "Send," click the Down arrow
.
- Click Schedule send.
Note: You can have up to 100 scheduled emails.
Save time—message large groups using one email address
If you’re frequently emailing the same people about a project or topic, save yourself time by using Groups to create a group. Use the group’s email address to send information or share files with everyone at once. Now, it’s faster and easier to keep all the right people up to date.
Create a group email address
- Sign in to Google Groups.
- At the top, click Create group.
- Enter information and choose settings for the group. Here are some suggested settings:
- Who can view conversations: Only members of the team (if you want to keep project communications private.
- Group members: Email address of each person on the project team
- Group managers: Email address of any team member who might need to add others to the team later.
- Directly add members: Turn this option On so you can control who joins the group.
- Click Create group.
Have better email conversations
Write replies using Gemini
Looking for help writing clear and professional emails? Try Gemini for Google Workspace. Gemini in Gmail can help you draft new emails or refine existing ones.
Gemini can draft a new email or a reply.
- To get suggested replies:
- On your computer, open an email thread.
- Click Ask Gemini
.
- At the bottom of the side panel, click Suggest a reply.
- To draft a new email, ask Gemini to create the draft.
- Examples:
- “Write an announcement email for the launch of Project Clover.”
- “Create a thank you note to a colleague for their work on Project Clover.”
- Examples:
Correct spelling and grammar in Gmail
Want to improve your email content? With Gmail, you can use the autocorrect tool and have your email corrected as you enter text. You can also see spelling mistakes underlined in red and grammar mistakes in blue.
Turn the grammar, spelling, and autocorrect tools on or off
- On your computer, open Google Gmail.
- Click Settings
Settings.
- At the top, click General.
- Turn the following tools on or off:
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Autocorrect
Undo. Use the tools
- In Gmail, click Compose.
- Start entering your text.
- As you enter text, if you have errors, you will see the following changes:
- A blue line appears under incorrect grammar.
- A red line appears under misspelled words.
- You might notice some errors getting autocorrected. A dashed line will temporarily appear under the corrected text.
- (Optional) To accept or ignore a spelling or grammar change, click the underlined text or use the arrow keys to navigate to it and press Tab. Press Enter or click the suggestion to accept the change or click Ignore
.
- (Optional) To undo an autocorrection, click the underlined text or use the arrow keys to navigate to it and press Tab. In the bubble that appears under the text, click Undo
or press Enter.
- When you’re ready to send your email, click Send.
About machine learning
Spelling and grammar suggestions are powered by machine learning. As language understanding models use billions of common phrases and sentences to automatically learn about the world, they can also reflect human cognitive biases. Being aware of this is a good start, and the conversation around how to handle it is ongoing. Google is committed to making products that work well for everyone, and are actively researching unintended bias and mitigation strategies.
Use smarter subjects in your email
Gmail groups together email with the same subject in conversation threads. Make your subject a specific headline for your message so that the right messages are linked together and easier to find. Consider including action words in your subject so it’s clear what you want people to do. If the topic changes later, just change the subject accordingly. That way, you won’t have any unrelated messages linked together in your inbox.
Change an email's subject
- Next to Type of response
, click the Down arrow
Edit subject.
- Enter a new subject.
Reply inline to email
Easily reply to excerpts from long emails. Using Quotes in Gmail, you can point recipients to the parts of their message your response applies to.
Reply to an email using Quotes
- Open Gmail, and copy the part of the email you want to reply to.
- Click Reply
.
- Click Formatting options
.
This adds a gray bar, marking where you quote the original message. - Next to the gray bar, paste the original message text.
- Press Enter and enter your response below the original message.
Your response has no gray bar, so it stands out from the original text. - Click Send.
Attach discussion items to email
Want to further explain something you can’t get across in an email? Add attachments to your messages. With Gmail, you can attach files up to 25 MB in size. To add files up to 30 GB, such as videos and design files, insert Drive files instead of attachments.
Attach a file to an email
Send a Google Drive attachment
- On your computer, open Gmail.
- At the top left, click Compose.
- At the bottom of the message, click Insert files using Drive
.
- Select the files you want to attach.
- At the bottom of the page, decide how you want to send the file:
- Drive link: This works for any files stored in Drive, including files created using Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms.
- Attachment: This only works for files that weren't created using Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms.
- Click Insert.
