Just like the new Facebook timeline, Gmail also recently forced their new theme on users and apparently many people are not happy with this decision. While Gmail earlier provided a simple way to revert back the Gmail interface, that option is no longer available. This has definitely not gone down too well with Gmail users.

So is there any way in which you could revert back to the old Gmail interface? Well, not officially, but you can still do it thanks to a Stylish script.

The Return of Old Gmail Stylish script is one which resembles the “Old Gmail” interface the most. Although the overall interface is not as neat (see screenshot above), it definitely is one of the best options if you despise the new Gmail interface. The script in question reverts back some of the Gmail styles to the older one and also reverts back the top navigation in Gmail.

You will also find several other Stylish scripts for Gmail, however, the one listed here seems to be the best alternative to get back the old Gmail interface. You can also try out several other themes for Gmail by using this Stylish search.

Please note that Firefox users will have to install the Stylish add-on before using the scripts. Google Chrome users can also install the Stylish extension or install the Stylish script as a Greasemonkey script and run it as an extension.

Gmail is one of the best email providers, however, unlike Yahoo and Hotmail, Gmail does not provide users with unlimited disk quota. Though 7.5GB of email space will take quite a lot of time to fill up, you might definitely fill it up at some point of time.

I have had a problem with two of my backup accounts where database updates are sent thrice a day filling up in a few months. So do you go an buy more Gmail space then? Well, you might want to do that, but what if you could just delete some emails which are taking up space in your account and live with it for another few days.

But finding and deleting large images can be quite a pain. In comes Find Big Mail, a service which will help you find large messages in your Gmail Inbox and label them accordingly. You can then quickly browse through all those emails and delete them  if required to free up space.

How Does Find Big Mail Work?

Find Big Mail requires you to provide access to your Gmail account in order to work. Once you have provided access to it, it will scan your email account and label emails based on attachment sizes. The good part about the service is that you do not require to provide it with your username and password and it works on all the browsers.

Once the service has finished scanning your emails, you will start seeing new labels in your Inbox based on sizes, you will also receive an email with charts which graphically tell you about the amount of space your emails are taking up.

The service is not instantaneous though and you will have to wait a while before it queues up your request and finishes analyzing your email. Again the analysis will depend on the number of emails you have and how large your account is.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Find Big Mail is a handy service if you want to quickly delete large emails from your Inbox but don’t have time to scan through them to find them. In addition to that, this service is definitely safe since it never has access to your password.

Quick the service a quick whirl and you won’t be disappointed. Another good thing about the service is that it will also work with your Google Apps account too.

Since this service is only for a one time use, you might want to disable it from accessing your data after it has finished the scan by visiting your Google Profile.

Ratings: 4/5 Excellent

One feature which I miss in Gmail is the ability to schedule emails so that they go out at a certain time. Scheduling emails is similar to scheduling tweets in Twitter but scheduling emails have a lot more advantages. One of them is that you get an opportunity to review and correct mistakes in your messages before they go out (which do happen at times).

Gmail does not allow you to schedule emails as of now, and they might not do that in near future. However, Gmail does offer users with an option to undo send a message for up to 20 seconds. Nevertheless, it would always be nice to have a feature which would allow you to schedule your email messages too.

In comes Boomerang, a Google Chrome and Firefox add-on which allows you to schedule email messages to go out after a certain period. As you can see from the screenshot above, Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to go out after a set time and even allows you to schedule an exact time for the message to go out.

Once you schedule the message, Boomerang will store the email headers on their servers and send it out at the specified time. Pretty neat solution for an online email service.

Boomerang’s usability does not just end with scheduling email messages in Gmail, it also allows you to de-clutter your Inbox by hiding certain emails and only displaying it after a certain time. For example, if you get an email from someone about something you have to do tomorrow, you might star that email or add it to your TODO list. However, Boomerang will allow you to hide the email message for now and show it in your Inbox at a specified time.

This can come in very handy when you receive a bill and have to pay it after few days, you can have Boomerang show that message in your Inbox after few days so that you remember to pay the bill on time.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Boomerang would cause several users to freak out about privacy since it has full access to your emails. However, the company makes it clear that they only store the email headers of a message on their servers so that they can identify it, and do not store the email body.

Other than that, Boomerang adds a very impressive feature to the already impressive Gmail and also helps you to de-clutter your Inbox and view important messages when you want to. Overall we would highly suggest our readers to try this out.

Though Boomerang is invite only, the link below might allow you to download the extension for Google Chrome and Firefox.

Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent)

Update: Download link no longer works, just head over to http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/ and use the invite code “techiebuzz” without the quotes to download the extension.

Download Boomerang [via TNW]

*See updates at bottom to find more ways to restore Gmail Interface

Recently Gmail rolled out a new interface for all it’s users, however, unlike earlier, they haven’t provided a prominent option for users to switch back to the Old Gmail interface.

The new interface includes an enhanced contact manager and some enhanced visual changes. However, change does not go down very well with many people, and unlike other email providers, Gmail does provide an easy way to switch back to the older interface.

In order to switch back to the old Gmail interface or completely get rid of the new Gmail interface, scroll down to the bottom of the Gmail webpage and click on the “older version” link to switch back to the old Gmail interface.

Yes, it was as simple as that. So if you had problems with the new Gmail interface click the link and you will be taken back to what you like. Have fun.

Update: Clicking on the older version link takes you back to a very old version without Gmail Labs support.

Though completely switching back to the old interface is not possible yet, you can use some Greasemonkey scripts to get back some of the old Gmail interface back. Please note that Greasemonkey scripts will work out of the box on Google Chrome and with the Greasemonkey add-on on Firefox.

If you are using Opera, Internet Explorer or Safari, read our earlier guide on how to run Greasemonkey scripts on Opera, IE and Safari.

Tools/Scripts to Get Old Gmail Interface Back

Remove Remove Left Menu – This userscript will remove the tasks link from the sidebar and only retain the Mail and Contacts link. it also compacts the left menu to use lesser space and removes unwanted CSS from it. Download the userscript.

More scripts will be added once we come across them.

Update 11/02/2011: Learn how to switch back to Old Gmail Interface in the newest update from Gmail.

Update: 04/20/2012: Check out a new way to restore Old Gmail Interface using a Stylish script.

Last month, we reported that Gmail was being unbearably slow for a small subset of users. The problem came to our notice after Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of Duck Duck Go, complained about Gmail’s sluggishness.

It seems that Gmail problems are raring their ugly head once again. One of our commenters pointed out that Gmail has been practically inaccessible to some users for the past three days. According to this thread on Google’s official support forum, Gmail perpetually displays the “loading” prompt and fails to open any mail. Here is a typical description of the problem offered by changk05:

Also for me started after July 4th weekend. The problem remains despite 4 different computers with different versions of IE, and a mac as well. Installing Chrome did not work. Can’t open messages. Can’t forward messages from list view. Can’t get into settings. Please fix.

Although most of the affected users started encountering these problems after the 4rth July weekend, some users have been experiencing difficulties for more than a week. Let’s hope that Google will fix the issue for everyone, and having a famous blog is not a per-requisite for getting support from Google.

Update: Google has finally responded to the mounting complaints. Here is the response offered by a Google employee:

I am sorry that you are all experiencing this issue. We are working very hard to solve the problem, and I will update you as soon as I can.

While some of the workarounds do not work for everyone, they are worthwhile troubleshooting steps. If you have not yet tried any of the following workarounds, I suggest giving them a try.

1. Clear your cache and cookies (you can find instructions on how to do this in the referenced article)
2. Use the basic HTML version of Gmail by clicking on the link at the bottom of Gmail
3. Use another browser.
If these do not help fix your problem, you can try some of the other suggestions in this thread. In the meantime, please know that we are continuing to work towards solving this issue.

We have also posted this problem on our Known Issues page, where you can report that you are experiencing the issue.

Remember the feature called Undo Send by Gmail which allowed you to avoid those OOPS moments which happen when you send emails to someone and realize that there was something missing, or even realize that you should not have sent that email in the first place?

Well, yes thanks to that I have revoked several emails in the past, however, the only problem with it was that Google only allowed you to undo send for 5 seconds.

But wait, did you visit your Gmail settings page recently? If you did, you will notice a new feature where you can change the cancellation period and set it up be up-to 20 seconds. This is definitely a great addition and will now allow for more graceful undo’s than the scrambling which happened when the Undo send was only limited to 5 seconds.

When Gmail burst onto the scene, it garnered universal acclaim for its speed. Over the years, Gmail has continued growing and innovating. However, this growth seems to have come at a cost.

If Gmail is agonizingly slow for you, you aren’t the only one. In the words of Gabriel Weinberg, founder of Duck Duck Go, “It can take 20sec to switch labels, and even longer to search for something. But here’s the worst part–it takes just as long to send a simple message!?!”.

Fortunately for Weinberg, his blog post got noticed by a Googler. Not only did Google fix his problem, but also acknowledged that several other users may be affected by the same issue. Here is a snippet from Google’s response:

The team is still looking into your account slowness, but it initially appears that the problem is isolated to a small subset of Gmail users…They are still investigating the root cause of the slowness but in the meantime have moved your account to a different set of servers, which should help.

This isn’t the first time that Google has acknowledged this problem. Google had admitted that Gmail was sluggish and had promised to fix it back in March. While it’s nice that they reached out to Weinberg, one has to wonder what is taking Google so long. Meanwhile, if you are experiencing sluggishness, you can try some measures like deleting data from Gmail (email, labels, contacts etc.) and disabling Gmail Labs.

Google Buzz was launched today, and people have already begun complaining about the lack of options to disable Buzz from sending you email updates. If you are a Google Buzz user, here is how you can hide updates from Google Buzz from showing up in your Gmail Inbox.

Google has a reserved label for Google Buzz updates called "buzz", in order to hide email updates from Google Buzz, you will have to create a filter using "label:buzz" and then archive all the emails automatically. To create the filter, follow the steps given below.

Step 1: Create a filter in Gmail, and use the and enter "label:buzz" in the "Has the words" text box. Ignore the alert that is shown by Google and click the Ok button to continue to the next step.

Step 2: On the next screen, select the checkbox next to "Skip the Inbox (Archive it)". You might also want to select the checkbox next to "Also apply filter to xx conversation below." to archive the current Google Buzz updates.

Step 3: Click on Create Filter and you are all done, new updates from Google Buzz will be automatically archived the next time.

If you want to search for new Google Buzz updates in Gmail, you can search for "label:buzz" and all the Google Buzz updates will be displayed to you.

[via Life Hacker]

Update: An easier way to do this is to go to Settings -> Labels in Gmail and unselect "Buzz" under the system labels.

I am a heavy Gmail user, and prefer to use the keyboard shortcuts to save some time while dealing with emails. One of my favorite tricks is to quickly archive labeled emails in Gmail. In addition to that I also use several other quick keyboard shortcuts to achieve things that would save me more than a few seconds. Here are few of the keyboard shortcut commands, which will be helpful to you.

Quickly Archive Labeled Email in Gmail

To achieve this trick you will have to enable the Go to labelfeature in Gmail Labs. You will find instructions for doing it on this post. Here is the key combination you will require to use to quickly archive emails from a certain label.

Press g + land type the label name, then press Shift + 8" together (*) and press ato select all email, finally press eto archive the selected email.

Archive Label Email Command: g + l > type label name > * + a > e

Quickly Mark All Unread Emails as Read or Archive Them

Using these commands you can select all the unread emails on a page and mark them as read or archive them

Mark as Read Command: * + u > Shift + i

Archive Command: * + u > e

Quickly Mark All Read Emails as Unread or Archive Them

Using these commands you can select all the read emails on a page and mark them as unread or archive them

Mark as Unread Command: * + r > Shift + u

Archive Command: * + r > e

Some additional readings:

• Automatically Apply Labels to Incoming Email
• Automatically Archive Incoming Emails
• Visit all related Gmail Tips.

Image Credit: ubuntista.it

Quite sometime back we had told you how to remove duplicate contacts in Windows Live Hotmail and removing duplicate contacts in Yahoo Mail, back then Gmail did not have the ability to remove duplicate contacts.

However, there was an announcement at the Gmail Blog today, where they introduced a new feature to delete duplicate contacts from your Gmail contacts list.

Removing Duplicate Contacts in Gmail

To remove duplicate contacts from Gmail, follow the steps given below.

Step 1: Login to Gmail and click on the contacts link in the sidebar. You can also load the standalone Gmail contacts page.

Step 2: Click on the Find duplicate buttons in the right hand pane.

Step 3: Once you click on the button, Gmail will scan your contacts for duplicates and display it to you. You can choose the contacts and decide to merge them into a single one, thus cleaning up the duplicate contacts from your Gmail account.

This can come in pretty handy if you use your Gmail contacts as the base contacts and sync it with Outlook or your mobile phone.