Mike Southby

For some time now I have been using Google Apps as my main mail provider, I’d been a long time Microsoft Exchange user until I made the switch from Windows Mobile devices to Android.  It made sense to change my mail provision so that I could use Android in the manner it was designed i.e. with  Google Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks.

Generally, I have been happy with the service (especially when you consider the Standard Edition is free and isn’t a noticeably inferior product to the Premium Edition) although I do acknowledge it has a few quirks, not to mention horrendous support from Google should you require assistance.  Of course aside from push email support via my Android handset, the Google Apps service also includes plain and simple IMAP support; it’s here that I encountered one of the quirks.

Ever since configuring the account on my machine, whenever sending an email using Outlook two copies of the mail appear shortly after in my Gmail sent items folder (although only one copy is actually sent to the recipient).  Now this may not seem such a big deal but it has a couple of issues; firstly over time it will fill up my quota a lot quicker, perhaps not a major issue for most people but if let’s say you are sending a 1Mb file attachment, you’re going to be using 2Mb of space.  Secondly, perhaps more importantly is that when you use the Gmail web client instead of Outlook, it’s going to really mess up your conversation thread as there will be 2 copies which can be a little confusing.

So how do you solve getting two copies of sent mails while using IMAP in Outlook?

It’s important first to understand why the two copies appear and not just accept that they do.  When you send an email through Outlook, Outlook saves a copy of the sent mail and transmits it to the server (in this case smtp.gmail.com).  When the email is sent from the server to its destination, Google save another copy of the sent mail automatically which is then of course – as you’re using an IMAP connection – synced back to your machine hence the two copies.

Of course Google should be smart enough to know that the mail is being sent from a dedicated client such as Outlook and check to see if a copy has already been saved before saving it again, but alas not.  So the solution is to change where Outlook saves its local copy of the sent mail; it’s not an ideal situation but it does stop your Gmail folder from becoming full of duplicates!

To make the change, go to Tools>Account Settings>Email and select the email account in question and then Change.  This will open a window titled Change Email Account.  Click the More Settings option at the bottom.

Click the Folders tab which will enable you to choose where to store a copy of all outgoing messages (remembering that Google is going to automatically store one for you in your Gmail sent items) and change the default choice to Save sent mail in the Outlook Sent Items Folder, this will save the duplicated copy in a local unused folder instead which of course can be cleaned up when required; or you can also choose not to have Outlook save a copy of sent mail at all (again remembering that Google will automatically place a copy in your sent items).

It’s been 5 seemingly long years, but now finally it looks as though us UK users are going to be joining the rest of the emailing world by being able to convert our email addresses to use the gmail.com domain instead of the much longer and somewhat fake sounding googlemail.com domain for our email addresses.  Google have finally settled a five year trademark dispute with Independent International Investment Research over the use of the Gmail name which started back in 2004.

Google software engineer Greg Bullock has written in the company blog that the changes will start rolling out over the next week, allowing users a choice of changing to gmail.com or keeping the existing googlemail.com

“Since ‘gmail’ is 50% fewer characters than ‘googlemail’, we estimate this name change will save approximately 60 million keystrokes a day.  At about 217 micro joules per keystroke, that’s about the energy of 20 bonbons saved every day!”

I wonder how many users will make the change given that it will potentially mean having to have stationary reprinted etc. but still, i think it’ll be a welcome change as gmail.com sounds so much nicer regardless of how many bonbons it saves!

Throughout various different ROMs and various different firmware releases, the one thing that has always annoyed me is the inability to rename icons which you place on the home screen.  The most annoying thing is that not even the most rudimentary of icons actually fit in the allocated space; being a ‘Google’ phone and based on the integration with Google services I think it stands to reason that a lot of people as well as me with have the Google Mail shortcut on their home screens, and I’m sure you’ll all agree that it annoys the hell out of you when it only displays ‘Google mai’.

Just as on my laptop, I hate clutter;  I have a set way of organising my icons but I’d really like the ability to rename so in this case, if Google Mail doesn’t fit I’d like Gmail thanks.

Finally, I found a way.

It’s really simple actually and doesn’t involve any messing with code or reverse engineering.  Simply head across to the android market and download ‘Any Cut’ (which incidentally is FREE, even better).  Once installed to create the GMail icon all you need to do is the following (the same method applies to ANY other shortcut too):

• Long press on the existing Google Mail icon and drag it to the bottom of the screen to delete
• Long press in the blank space and choose Shortcut followed by Any Cut
• Choose Activity
• Scroll down and select Google Mail
• Type the name of the shortcut as you would like it to appear, I choose Gmail
• Hit OK

Follow this process for any application or service and it’ll allow you to have your home screen exactly how YOU want it instead of simply accepting the way it is by default.

Enjoy!