Changing your gmail username or email address

By creating a new account and pulling over your content

While you can't change your gmail email address, you can transfer much of the content manually to a new address.

 It is not possible to change your username in gmail. The username is chosen at the time the account is created and is the permanent identifier of the account.

But if you need to use a different username, it is possible. You simply need to create a new account and move your content over from the old account. Here's how.

Step 1: Create a new account

You should sign out from your existing account and then choose Create an account from the gmail login screen.

Step 2: Grab your mail from the old account

Login to the new account you just created, go to the settings link in the top right, and choose the Accounts and Import tab. Gmail doesn't let you use its standard import feature to transfer from one account to another, so you'll need to use the Check mail using POP3 entry. Enter the following configuration:

Username: Your old gmail email address

Password: Password for your old gmail account

POP server: pop.gmail.com

Port: 995

Always use secure connection: checked

Label incoming messages: checked

This will pull over all your old mail and will continue to pull over new mail received at the old account until you disable it. It will not, however, save any label information. You will need to relabel your emails (or simply rely on gmail's search features to find messages). 

If you absolutely need the old label structure, the only solution is to use an IMAP client to connect to both the old and new account and copy over folders/labels. But this solution can be tricky, because you can only copy over a certain (unspecified) amount of mail at a time. The non-Google program Gmail Backup might be able to assist with this process, but I can't vouch for its effectiveness.

Step 3: Export and import your contacts

Login to the old account and follow the instructions on the Export Gmail contacts page. Remember the location of the saved file.

Login to the new account and follow the instructions on the Importing CSV files page using the file you just saved.

Step 4: Export and import your filters

If you have many filters on the old account, you can use the Filter import/export feature of gmail labs to bring them to your new account.

Step 5: Non-Gmail Google account contents

If you have other content in your Google account that you want to transfer (calendars, documents, photos, etc), you'll have to do this separately. The Data Liberation Front website has detailed information on how to export and import data from pretty-much every Google product.

That's it!

You should carefully examine the settings on your new account to see if there is anything you need to replicate from the old account.

It is best to keep the old account around so that you can keep receiving mail to the old address. You can consider activating the vacation responder to alert people who send to the old address that your address has changed. But if you really need to delete the old account, you can follow the instructions on the Canceling your Gmail address page, while logged into your old account. Remember that if you delete an account, you can never get it back or reuse the address.

Original created by Joshua S on Knol.  

Read receipts in Gmail

How can I know if my recipient has opened/read the email that I sent?

By far the easiest and most reliable way to know if your recipient has read a message is to ask them in the message to send you a brief reply.
While Google Apps (for business and government) supports read receipts, Gmail's web interface does not support automatic read receipts or message disposition notifications (MDNs).

But I really want an automatic notification.

Some mail clients allow you to set a special header that requests an automatic receipt notification from the receiving mail client. While you can't do this in Gmail's web interface, you can use a desktop mail client that supports this feature (such as Mozilla Thunderbird or MS Outlook) to send your mail via Gmail's SMTP servers.
There are also variety of web-based services that can be used with any email address to send tracked mails. You should think very carefully before using such services, because they often use shady techniques to track emails. For example, they frequently use techniques otherwise employed only by spammers. Your recipients may consider such techniques to be an attempt to violate their privacy.

What's the problem with read receipts?

There are essentially two problems with read receipts in general:
They are unreliable: For a read receipt to work, the receiving client must support it and be configured to use it. Many clients (including most webmail services) will simply ignore any read receipt request. For this reason, not receiving a read receipt doesn't mean that the mail was not read. In addition, some systems may reply to read receipts without the user having truly opened the message. So receiving a read receipt doesn't necessarily mean the mail was read. In other words, read receipts tell you almost nothing. Even the sneakier techniques used by mail tracking services are far less than perfectly reliable.
They may be considered a violation of privacy: Your recipient may not want you to know exactly when they opened your email. For this reason, most modern email clients won't send a read receipt without the explicit confirmation of the recipient.

I don't care about that. I still think Gmail should have read receipts.

Feel free to use the Suggestion Form to let them know.

Original Created by Joshua S on Knol

Deleting messages in Gmail

Because of some fundamental differences between the way Gmail works and the way other email providers work, it is important to understand a few key points before deleting any messages in Gmail.

Contents

• Deleting Messages
• Deleting Can Be Dangerous
• Oops. I deleted a message by accident!
• Deleting from the "Sent Mail" Folder
• Gmail Help Center

Deleting Messages

Gmail is different than other email services. Among the differences, Gmail was one of the first email services to give so much storage space that you can keep essentially all your email without having to worry about running out of room. To go along with that, Gmail's interface is designed to make "archiving" (saving your mail outside the inbox) easy and generally discourages the deleting of messages. In fact, early versions of gmail didn't even have a delete button. (The delete feature was hidden in a menu.)
When you no longer need a message in your inbox, don't delete. Either "archive" it or "report spam" for unsolicited email.

Deleting Can Be Dangerous

While there are many reasons to prefer archiving to deleting in Gmail (see the Gmail blog for examples), there may still be times you wish to delete messages. When you do so, you should be careful. There are two important things you should know before you delete anything in gmail:

• The delete button will remove an entire conversation, not a single message. If you wish to delete a single message, you must use the menu on the upper right corner of the message display, next to the "Reply" button.
• Deleting a message in one view will remove it from all views. Gmail stores only a single copy of any message. Even though you may be able to see the same message under the inbox, multiple labels, the "Sent Mail" link and the "All Mail" link, there is in fact only a single message. If you delete it from any one of these places, it will be gone from all of them. If you wish to remove a message from a single view, either "archive" it (to remove it from the inbox) or use the menu at the top of the screen to remove a label.

Oops. I deleted a message by accident!

Don't worry. Just go to the "Trash" link, select the message and choose "Move to Inbox". You have 30 days after deleting a message to rescue it.
You should avoid using the "Empty Trash now" link or "Delete Forever" button, since you are sure to discover an important message you need to retrieve immediately after. Once the trash has been emptied (or after 30 days), deleted messages are gone for good and cannot be recovered.

Deleting from the "Sent Mail" Folder

"Sent Mail" is not a folder. You should think of it simply as a quick way of searching for all the messages that you have sent. Messages can't be removed from this view and if you delete conversations from here, they will be deleted everywhere in your account.
If you prefer to have a "Sent Mail" view that you can modify according to your needs, consider adding a filter that applies a label to all emails from your email address. Then you can manage this label as you like by adding it to or removing it from conversations.

Gmail Help Center

More information about deleting is available from the Gmail Help Center .

Gmail Scams Spam

Gmail Customer Care Spam/Scam

Gmail Customer Care spam

---

If you received an email that is From Gmail Customer Care
That may look simmer to this email below.

Dear Account User
This Email is from Gmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every
Gmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions
due to the anonymous registration of Gmail  accounts so we are
shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to
be deleted.We are sending you this email to so that you can verify and
let us know if you still want to use this account.If you are still
interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your
User name,password,date of birth and your country information would be
needed to verify your account.
Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused
Gmail Accounts, Gmail  would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You
will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information
below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be
suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
* Username:
* Password:
* Date of Birth:
* Country Or Territory:
After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not
be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention
to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences. Warning!!!
Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks
of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.


You should always be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. If you receive this type of message, especially from a source claiming to be Google or Gmail, please DO NOT provide the information requested.

Messages asking for personal information
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=8253&topic=12786

This has been Posted Many Times  other topics on this click here