Section 105. About Browsing and Reading Gmail from Google Talk

105. About Browsing and Reading Gmail from Google Talk

BEFORE YOU BEGIN	SEE ALSO
Read Mail and Attachments	Get Mail Notifications with Gmail Notifier

If you're a Gmail user, you'll appreciate Google Talk's integration with that email program. As described in Send and Receive Instant Messages, it's easy to send mail to someone directly from inside Google Talk.

But Google Talk features another useful feature as wellit notifies you whenever you have mail in your Gmail account, and then enables you to read the mail.

Tip

If you don't use Google Talk or if you use it only sometimes, you can still get Gmail notifications. The free Google Gmail Notifier program monitors your Gmail account and alerts you when you have new mail, in the same way that Google Talk does. To get it, go to http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper.

You don't need to do anything special to tell Google Talk to check your Gmail account; it does it automatically.

When you receive new mail in Gmail, you receive a notification just above the Google Talk icon in the system tray. The notification shows you the first sentence or so of the message. If you have multiple messages, you can browse through them by clicking the arrows at the bottom of the notification window.

A notification from Google Talk that mail is waiting in Gmail.

To read any message, highlight the envelope in the upper-left corner of the notification. The envelope icon turns red. Click it, and your browser brings you to the message, from inside Gmail.

If at any time you want Google Talk to immediately check for Gmail, right-click the Google Talk icon (the speech bubble) in the system tray and choose Check Mail Now from the context menu. If you want to turn off future notification, right-click the Google Talk icon in the system tray and choose Disable All Notifications.