Introduction
LLI Accounts are Gmail Accounts!
If you have an LLI account, such as [email protected], you are using Gmail to get messages sent to your LLI account. Of course, your LLI account also gives you access to many other Google apps, such as Drive, Meet, Docs, etc.
This article provides some tips for using your LLI Gmail account, including addressing the frequent complaint of “I don’t want to have to regularly check another email account for messages” or “I haven’t gotten any email messages to my LLI account. What is happening?”
Ever feel you have too many messages? You can organize them all in Gmail using labels. This article shows you how.
Get the Gmail App for Mobile Devices
These days, most of us get our email messages on our mobile device(s)—that is, a mobile phone or a tablet such as an iPad. It is convenient, accessible, and usually always with us. A quick glance at the app icon on your device shows you how many messages are waiting to be read—and you even can get sound notifications when a new message comes in.
Making this happen is simple:
- Download the Gmail app from either the Apple App Store or your Android store (I am an iPhone user, so I may get some of the terms wrong here, but I recently helped one of our members with an Android phone and it was the same process).
- Add an account the first time from your app using your LLI credentials (your user name is your LLI email address, such as [email protected] and your password is whatever password you set up for yourself when you got your LLI account). Sometimes, Google will ask to send you a verification code to your mobile device. You may have to enter your mobile phone number and then you will get a six-digit code via text message. As discussed last month, this code is to protect you from hackers.
- Add another account. If you already have a Gmail account on your phone, touch/click the little colored circle on the upper right that has your first initial in it. Just like with a browser, that little circle us used to help you manage your accounts. You can switch among accounts or choose to add another account.
Now, you can see at a glance all the unread messages in your inbox (see the image to the left, with 284 unread messages!). It is the familiar counter on your device.
If you don’t want to add another app to your device, you can use the standard Mail app that comes with your phone. Just add your LLI account to the mail app you are using.
Organize Your Messages
I like to organize my messages so I can retrieve some of them later. When all the messages are shown in my Inbox, I can’t seem to find what I want.
In Gmail, you can organize messages using “labels.” Labels are similar to folders in Outlook, but they simply categorize messages so you can move and view them to an appropriate list. The hardest part of this whole process is thinking “label” rather than “folder”!
On a Mobile Device
The images on the right shows what happens when you follow the directions below for adding labels. Start out by opening your Gmail app.
- Touch/click the menu icon in the upper left (sometimes called a burger because it looks like a burger.)This is the standard icon for a menu. This is shown as Image A to the right.
- The menu slides out from the left. You can see all your “folders” here and at the bottom of the screen shot are my own custom labels (e.g., Art Show and Communications).
- Close the menu (by touching/clicking outside the menu area) and then open one of your own messages.
- Click the three little dots at the top right of your screen. This is the universal icon for “More” as in more things you can do. It is shown in Image C to the right. Choose Move to.
- Choose a label for the opened message or add your own label by clicking/touching the plus sign.
Gmail on a Computer in a Browser
If you check your messages on a computer using a browser, you get the same organization of your messages. The only difference to you as a user is that the menu bar is on the left of your screen (see the image to the left for an example). You might have to click “More” at the bottom to see all your labels, but they are there.
To apply a label on a message on your computer, RIGHT click on a message in your inbox and choose “Move to.” Then, just choose the label you want.
Easy peasy and oh-so-helpful!
How do I Get an LLI G Suite Account?
If you are an LLI member, you can get your own LLI account by emailing Deborah Schwartz at [email protected]. You will get an invitation from Google to set up your account with a link to click. When you click the link, you will need to change your password to something you remember, at least eight characters long. It’s that easy!
Remember: G Suite is very secure. No one can see your files on MyDrive: not Google, not anyone at Bard, not me as Admin, etc. There is special security on G Suite for Education accounts (which we are) because of the sensitivity of school data. Only things deliberately shared (such as LLI Shared Drives, group email addresses, anyone who YOU share a file with) can see your files.
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