Using Gmail offers a great deal of perks, some I’ve spoken about already.   I have taken advantage of Gmail Labs settings on my account to help make emailing  a little easier.

I currently use the following Gmail Labs settings:

• Signature tweaks:  Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the “–” line that appears before signatures.  I find it very annoying when the text of the previous email is above my signature.  It makes my response feel incomplete!
• Quote selected text:  Quote the text you have selected when you reply to a message. This works best if you use keyboard shortcuts.  A great way to make communication more specific without having to take time to go back and edit in what you want to respond to.
• Navbar drag and drop:  Allows you to reorder the items (such as moving my most used shortcut boxes up to the top so I don’t have to scroll down to find them) in your navbar using drag and drop.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector:  Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so.  I’m really excited about this one.  I don’t like to overwhelm people with email–tediousness doesn’t=good ministry.  I often forget to attach things and then have to send them again!  It is especially awful when you send out a mass email and 20 people remind you that you forgot the attacment!
• Mark as Read Button: Tired of spending all that effort to click on the more actions menu every time you want to mark messages as read without reading them? Now just enable this lab and that is just a button click away!
  
• Google Docs gadget:  Adds a box in the left column which displays your Google Docs. Shows recent docs, starred docs, and has fast search.  Another great way to cut down on unnecessary clicks to get to what I need.

So there you go.  More than you needed to know about my email habits.