Google Apps Manual

Request for a new search parameter: has:label

2011-05-03T14:00:00.002+02:00

A "has:label" search parameter. Useful for checking mail with any kind of label. I would personally use it for archiving old mails and being sure none passed through (as long as the Enforced status I asked for is not implemented).

Alos discussed here

An "enforced status" checkbox for IMAP unsubscription

2011-05-03T13:55:00.004+02:00

Summary

An "enforced status" checkbox for IMAP unsubscription.
Similar in function to Enforced in GPO or !important in CSS).
An old mail in both
- an enforced unsubscribed IMAP mailbox and
- an regular subscribed mailbox
will not be downloaded, since enforced unsubscribe overrides "regular" susbscribe.

Scenario:

The easy part

I access Gmail with IMAP from a desktop client and the local database is getting huge (think this). In order to make it slimmer, I decide to backup old mails.

To do this, I use a filter to grap all old emails (before:2007/04/01) and affect them a label (archives) and apply the selection to existing mails (Apply the filter to x conversations below). I then activate theAdvanced IMAP feature in Labs then I uncheck the subscribe button for the archives label.

Still with me?

Now, all my old mails are in one folder/label (archives). Since I unsubscribed from this label, I should not see it locally (If I still want to access an old mail, I go to the web interface).

The tough part

Except that… These old mails have labels of their own, like grandma, birthdays and so on. And I don't want to unsubscribe from birthdays. I just want old mails out. If a mail is labelled both birthday and archives, it will be downloaded, by virtue of belonging to birthday, even if it also belongs to archives!

Proposal

With an enforce checkbox for every mailbox (once Advanced IMAP feature is on), Maild which belong to both a subscribed and an unsubscribed mailbox will be downloaded or not depending on the enforced status (of course, at least one of the mailbox must have an enforced status and at least one must not have it).

That way, I will still get new mails about birthdays on my desktop client, but I won't receive the old mail about birthday!

Please tell me if it is hard to understand.

Also discussed here and here.

Quick notes with subadresses and filters

2011-05-02T22:23:00.000+02:00

Gmail permits subadresses (a.k.a. "plus adresses" - RFC 5233).

By combining this and an adequate filter, I found any easy way to send myself not without having them lying around.

Here's the way:

Create a label "Notes". Give it beige color (like Post-it) with the color 243,231,179
Create a filter:
1. "to:(xxxxx+notes@gmail.com)" xxxxx is your gmail address
2. apply label "Notes"

At first, you'll have to type xxxxx+notes. If you are like me, you will soon only have to type notes and Gmail will understand.

Great time (and memory) saver!

Is Google building Forever Cars?

2011-04-28T23:27:00.002+02:00

This is a departure from the usual administration-related posts. But I wanted to write about an old feeling of mine (around 10 years old now).

In his major novel Ring around the Sun, Clifford D. Simak introduces Forever Cars. Forever Cars are higly advanced cars sold at a ridiculous price. They last very long, cost very few and plans are possible for those who can't purchase them. They are perfect and cheap.

What's the catch? Why would someone produce a highly advanced piece of tech and give it for (almost) free?

Remind you of someone? Hint: it starts with a G. With two "o" just after.

In Ring Around the Sun, Forever Cars are an example of "too good to be true" - their manufacturer's hidden agenda is to destroy the world economy. Several years ago, I wondered the same about Google. How could they give all of this for free (even by internet standards, they're cheap)? Yeah, I know. Ads. Still…

And, from time to time, even now that I am a Google Apps system administrator, I still wonder.

Is Google building Forever Cars?

Gmail Labs conflict: "Signature Tweaks" incompatible with "Quote Selected Text" lab

2011-04-28T16:11:00.001+02:00

Quote selected text (which, by the way, only works with keyboard shortcuts, not with the mouse), is incompatible with signature tweaks.

It seems I am the first one to document this. Feedback welcome!

Changing e-mail address for Google Apps user

2011-04-14T16:02:00.000+02:00

Now it is possible to change an existing Google Apps user email address (administrator included). I am not talking about nickname, but about real renaming (thus, it will also work for login). It works with standard edition too.

Kudos to Google Apps France for the finding.

New Font: Syncopate

2011-04-14T14:25:00.000+02:00

It’s been a while now,but anyway: a new font is available at Google Docs: Syncopate. Notice that only a small part of Google Fonts are available with Google Docs.

Gmail’s Mail Fetcher and MobileMe

2011-04-14T12:18:00.000+02:00

Source: chat with MobileMe support

MobileMe is in IMAP by default. It is possible to switch to POP (and thus to be able to retrieve MobileMe mail with Gmail’s Mail Fetcher, which is POP-only) but with two important limitations :

It is an either/or proposal — contrary to most other mail services, one cannot have both IMAP and POP enabled at the same time. The very moment when POP is enabled, IMAP is disabled. So be sure to be ready (important if looking for syncing multiple devices or if you are acting on the behalf of a customer)
The switch must be made by MobileMe staff, which further requires real-time switching (with the customer’s devices nearby)

Note: I goes without saying that these both limitations are Apple’s, not Google’s.

How to suggest a feature request to Google… and be heard!

2011-04-14T03:04:00.003+02:00

Google has several and redundant ways to be contacted. I suspect even Google employees do not know well how to do it.

Below I list all the ways I know to contact Google. I sort of cross-post on all of them. I don't consider this spam because it is Google's fault first: If they were rigourous in their feedback policy, then I would be confident and post at the One and Only place™. Till then…

So here we go:

(Everything) Help forum. Google does read it. But no guarantee your particular thread is read (even automatically).
(Gmail, buzz, contacts) Gmail feature request. There is a I have another idea button at the bottom. Once again, not that updated, since there is still a request button for a request that had already been honoured (preventing auto-adding contacts)
(Gmail labs) Google Group Gmail Labs — Suggest a-labs feature
Google Product Ideas. No complete list, it seems Google is being overwhelmed with the feature request aspect of quality insurance…

A related address is Submit your own Gmail tips. Who knows, maybe you'll be published on Gmailblog. Unfortunately, you cannot read what other have proposed.

There are certainly (and unfortunately) others. I will update accordingly.

Google docs features

2011-04-13T02:08:00.003+02:00

This is probably incomplete. Input welcome!

However harsh I may appear by time, let me be clear: this is the most powerful web editor I know. I am very demanding (I am a certified Word specialist as well as a typography connoisseur) and well aware of Google Docs’s shortcoming, but still I am very impressed. There is still room to grow, but most people won't even use half of present-day features.

I won't do the same for Spreadsheet, as I don't know it well enough.

Basic features

Auto-saving
Cancel/redo
Limited formatting: non-customisable style, frustratingly basic templating, bold/italic/underline, strike-through, superscript and subscript, left/right/center/justify, nested listing (now with hybrid ordered/unordered), line-height (limited), paragraph spacing (limited)
Webfonts (limited choice, no advanced typography settings like swashes, alternate letters or ligatures; Word or Textedit lovers, be on your way.
Insert link, anchor, drawing, image, footnote, special characters (impressive), horizontal line (buggy with table of contents, though), visible page break, table of contents (awkwardly customisable), header, footnotes
Search/replace (limited: the only option is case-sensitiveness—way below Word)
Table (up to 20×20 cells quick creation, unlimited after)

Printing

Native printing. Nor more PDF in-between. Ctr+PCmd+P supported (which means you cannot print the HTML page of the Google Docs—you can only print the doc itself, but I don't see any use for this anyway)
Visible pagination (can print pages numbers too)
A4, Executive,…
Laandscape or portrait
Background color (won’t be printed, though)

Import/export

Import: Word (ODF too?), picture (OCR), unconverted Word (with a previewer; not that faithful)
Export: ODT, PDF, RTF, text, Word, HTML

Localisation

Language selection (for spellchecking and translation)
Translate document
Personal dictionary
Customisable character replacement ((c) => ©)

Collaboration

Going Wave!

Live commenting (impressive) with mail alerts and @mentions
Real-time collaboration
Advanced access control
Revisions

Layout

Ruler
Indent/outdent
Freefloating pictures

Others

Equation (not calculation; just writing; LaTeX alternative, MathML?)
Completely full screen possible (browser full screen + hide ruler + two time hide command + hide warning bar). WriteRoom beware!
Statistics (word counting, signs counting)

Regrets

Still no offline browsing :(

Multipage selection buggy on Google Contacts

2011-04-12T23:03:00.000+02:00

Copy-and-paste from my writing at Google Help forum.

Summary: if you want to do an operation on contacts scattered on multiple pages, you may run into problems — so move to 250 contacts per page (the maximum).

Say you have 75 contacts. You configured Gmail to have only 50 contacts per page. Consequently, your contacts will be splitted in two pages (1-50 on page 1 and 51-75 on page 2).

Now, you want to export 4 contacts. 3 of them are on page 1, the fourth one is on page 2. You can check the fourth boxes; Google Contacts (or is Chrome? Or is it OS X?) remembers which boxes you checked for every page, which is good… and bad, because it will spread confusion, read further.

The problem arises when you want to export these contacts. Click on export and select “Selected Contacts”. If you were on page 1 when you asked for exportation, the counter will tell you there is 3 contacts to export. If you were on page 2, it will tell you there is 1 contact to export. This is because, even if Google Contacts/Chrome/OS X is able to remember the checked boxes, the script for actually counting the selected contacts is not able to remember.

Unfortunately, this is not just a display bug. It will export the contacts on the page, not the whole selection!

Worse, the same bug happens with group creation. If the contacts you want to select are on different pages, Google Contacts will only add the contacts on the active page into the group. So, if you want to add contacts from different pages to one group, you have to select all contacts on one page, add them to the group, move to the next page and start the process again.

Now, there are two questions here:
- What is responsible for the “remember checked boxes across pages”, interface-level, behaviour? Chrome or OS X (so, unrelated to Google Contacts) or Google Contacts itself? In other words, is this behaviour an artifact or a part of the problem?
- The script-level lack of memory at the across pages has to be fixed.

Two interfaces for contacts

2011-04-12T16:21:00.011+02:00

There are two contacts interfaces, with different features:

the “embedded one”, which is default for Google personal, is the most powerful and is the one I recommend.
Address is: https://mail.google.com/mail/#contacts
the “dedicated one”, which is default for Google Apps and has less features (no exporting of individual address). Until recently (12th of April 2011?), it was the only one available for Google Apps (one reason why I wrote that Google Apps standard may be less interesting than Google Apps personal). Fortunately, you can now switch to the one above, the “embedded one” (you can access the dedicated interface with Gmail regular too, but why bother?).
Address is: https://www.google.com/contacts/?tab=mC

Be sure to use the first one. It is more powerful and is keyboard shortcut-compatible (provided you activated the shortcut in settings, you can compose a new mail by hitting c with the embedded interface, something you cannot do with the dedicated interface. Plus, it is simpler for Gmail user, because this is what they know the best. Really, there is only two good thing to consider:

Its three-panel layout
Newly-created contacts default to the selected group. In Gmail regular, newly created contact default to My Contacts, which make it hard to properly organize contacts.

Again: don’t use the dedicated interface.

I asked for a merge at Google Help forum, where Google employees wander and sometimes honour requests.

Maximum attachment size in Gmail

2011-04-09T14:35:00.000+02:00

Maximum attachment size in Gmail is 25 Mb. I don’t know if included image (with the right lab feature) images count towards this limit (I guess it does). This size limit may actually be lower for two reasons (out of inserted images):

Technical reasons
The recipient doesn’t accept attachments that big

(source)

List of Google employees posting on the Help forum

2011-04-09T14:28:00.009+02:00

By checking where they posted, you have better chances to get authoritative answers. This list is destined to grow.

Teresa C., Google Docs Community Manager
Michelle
Cody W., Chat Guide
Bin, Google mobile tech support
Jules H.
Brandon L., Staff Software Engineer

Employee leaving: remove access to all documents in Google Docs

2011-04-09T14:19:00.002+02:00

If you use Google Apps, you should share document at domain level (or better yet at OU level if you use Google Apps Premier or Education). Then deactivating the user would prevent access in a breeze.

I yo do not use Google Apps but only a collection of Google personal accounts (that’s my case and I don’t like Google Apps that much, but again, I do not manage thousands of users), then you can use this trick to find all the documents the employee used to have access to.

to:ex-employee@gmail.com

The beauty of this second solution is that it also proves useful for Google Apps: an external contractor may need occasional access to internal documents. With this search operator, the contractor can be unauthorized too (deactivating account would not have work since the contractor was not an employee firsthand).

works Kudos to Google employee Teresa C. who alse pointed to search operators for Google Docs.

Fixed-with font for text/plain email in Gmail

2011-04-09T13:57:00.002+02:00

There used to be a lab for fixed-with font for text/plain in Gmail, but it had been removed. This is really a shame.

You can complain here: Default font for plain text message

Meanwhile, you can also install a Chrome extension: Fixed width text in Gmail™. You can then change the particular fixed-with font in Chrome preference (direct link for Chrome users), but beware: it will apply to every website, not Gmail only.
Coupled with extension synchronization, this is a passable solution. It will still not work for mobile access. It is not worth a native lab, but that’s all we have…

In order to optimize the chance of being reading, I also opened an issue at Gmail’s help forum. Maybe Sara Goetz will read me.

Coding Horror: HTML in Gmail

2011-04-09T13:21:00.005+02:00

I am OK with badly written HTML on a daily basis if I have to. But a signature is something one has time crafting properly. And so, I would like to be able to create a clean HTML signature. Plus, experience told me that even the signature is not that clean when copied and pasted from a mail. Pure HTML is so much better.

I WANT to be able to instert my HTML signature in code way, not WYSIWYG way!

Not convinced? See for yourself:

First the result:

David Latapie

Informatique
Email : david.latapie@adnfrance.org
Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris

Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: http://adnfrance.org

Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !

Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.

Then the clean code:


<div><img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/LOGO-ADN-sig.jpg" height="55" width="96"></div></div>
<address> style="font-style:normal";<strong>David Latapie<br />
Informatique
Email : <a href="mailto:david.latapie@adnfrance.org" style="color:#36F">david.latapie@adnfrance.org</a>
Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris<br />
Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: <a href="http://adnfrance.org/" style="color:#36F" target="_blank">http://adnfrance.org</a><br />
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf" target="_blank" style="color:#C3C">Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !</a><br />
<br />
Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.</strong>

Then (beware), Gmail’s horrible code:

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/LOGO-ADN-sig.jpg" height="55" width="96"></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></div></b></span></span></div>
</b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">

<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal;"><b><div style="display: inline ! important;">David Latapie</div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div>
</b></span></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></span></div></b></span></div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Informatique</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Email : <a href="mailto:david.latapie@adnfrance.org" style="color: rgb(17, 37, 8);" target="_blank"><font color="#3366FF">david.latapie@adnfrance.org</font></a></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold;">Agence du don en nature — 35, avenue d’Eylau 75116 Paris</div><div style="font-weight: bold;">Standard : 01 76 21 10 50 | web: <a href="http://adnfrance.org/" target="_blank"><font color="#3366FF">http://adnfrance.org</font></a></div>
<div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: arial; border-collapse: separate; font-weight: normal;"><b><div><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-weight: normal;"><div><div style="display: inline ! important;">
<b><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf" target="_blank"><font color="#CC33CC">Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !</font></a></b></div></div></span></div></b></span></div>

<div style="font-weight: bold;"><br></div></span></span></div></span></div></div><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-weight: bold;"><div style="display: inline ! important;">Pensez à l'environnement : n'imprimez ce courriel que si nécessaire.</div>

Still with me? Please Google, do something! It is not just a matter of aesthetics or bandwith: It also made it very hard or even impossible to manage HTML signature for all employees in my company!

Gmail’s Autoresponder doesn’t support HTML Signature

2011-04-09T12:39:00.005+02:00

Autoresponder sends mail in plain text, regardless of the format set up in settings. As a consequence, HTML signature appears badly.

Consider this (rendered result):

*Stéphanie Goujon
Déléguée Générale
web: http://www.adnfrance.org

**
Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI
!<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20188079/ADNImpact/ADNImpact-2011-03.pdf">

Instead of this (expected result):

Stéphanie Goujon
web: http://www.adnfrance.org

Vous n'avez pas lu notre dernière newsletter ? Cliquez ICI !

Google Motion, the body as an input device, Google’s way

2011-04-01T14:36:00.001+02:00

Microsoft’s Kinect brought bodily interface to gaming.
Google’s Motion will hopefully do the same for working à la Minority Report

(announcement)

It’s an April’s Fool, but I would not be surprised they are working on the real thing!

Google Contacts’ CSV syntax

2011-03-31T00:07:00.006+02:00

Google gives only sparse information about Google contacts’ syntax (I need it for converting various Outlook files). And I did not find any reliable information on the web about its syntax.

So, I braced myself and “reversed-engineered” it. Below is the result. Since Blogger doesn’t allow inline overflow, you suggest you take a look at the spreadsheet version.


Name                 ,Given Name,Additional Name,Family Name   ,Yomi Name,Given Name Yomi,Additional Name Yomi,Family Name Yomi,Name Prefix   ,Name Suffix   ,Initiales,Nickname  ,Short Name,Maiden Name,Birthday  ,Gender,Location,Billing Information,Directory Server,Mileage,Occupation,Hobby,Sensitivity,Priority,Subject,Notes,Group Membership             ,E-mail 1 - Type,E-mail 1 - Value       ,E-mail 2 - Type,E-mail 2 - Value,Phone 1 - Type ,Phone 1 - Value,Phone 2 - Type    ,Phone 2 - Value                   ,Phone 3 - Type    ,Phone 3 - Value   ,Phone 4 - Type         ,Phone 4 - Value    ,Address 1 - Type,Address 1 - Formatted              ,Address 1 - Street,Address 1 - City,Address 1 - PO Box,Address 1 - Region,Address 1 - Postal Code,Address 1 - Country,Address 1 - Extended Address ,Organization 1 - Type,Organization 1 - Name,Organization 1 - Yomi Name,Organization 1 - Title,Organization 1 - Department,Organization 1 - Symbol,Organization 1 - Location,Organization 1 - Job Description,Website 1 - Type,Website 1 - Value  ,Custom Field 1 - Type,Custom Field 1 - Value
Sir Wile E. Coyote Sr,Wile      ,Ethelbert      ,Coyote        ,         ,               ,                    ,                ,Sir           ,Sr            ,W.E.C.   ,The Coyote,Coyote    ,           ,1949-09-16,M     ,          ,                 ,                ,       ,          ,     ,           ,        ,       ,Notes,* My Contacts ::: Other group,Home           ,mail@perso.org         ,* Work         ,mail@pro.com    ,Home           ,01 22 22 22 22 ,Mobile            ,06 55 55 55 55                    ,Work              ,01 55 55 55 55    ,Work Fax               ,01 55 55 55 56     ,Work            ,Route 66 - Sonoran Desert - Arizona,Route 66          ,Sonoran Desert  ,                  ,Arizona           ,                  ,U.S.A                   ,Shout “BEEP-BEEP” to find him,                     ,ACME inc.            ,                          ,Honorary member       ,User experience            ,                       ,Delaware                 ,Involuntary beta-tester         ,Work            ,http://www.acme.com

And tada!

(please note the lack of picture is voluntary: a CSV cannot embed a picture of if it can, I don’t know how to do it. Also, the Etherlbert middle name does not appear on the vCard, but it is here—I checked)

Please share and correct.

Case study: making a huge IMAP account work again with Mail.app

2011-03-30T02:41:00.001+02:00

Problem: A 40 Gb Gmail account, accessed via IMAP with Mail.app. The machine has it harder and harder to still work. Old mails do not need to be instantly accessible.
Solution: Assign old mail a historic label (you can use a filter like before:2010/01/01). Activate Advanced IMAP feature lab in Gmail. In the Label tab, uncheck visible in IMAP for the historic label. The machine works again, the new mails are instantly available and for the old ones, web interface at the rescue!
Notes: Mail.app is notorious for not allowing IMAP unsubscription (except on Exchange). Fortunately, IMAP subscription is a server-side feature. So, if enabled at Gmail-level, all mail clients will comply. Even stoopid Mail.app.

I still have to check how Mail.app behaves with an already cached folder. Does it empty the cache accordingly (this is what is expected)?

Shared contacts in Google Apps: I finally understood

2011-03-30T00:03:00.000+02:00

I keep reading that Google Apps allows shared contacts and that it does not allow shared contacts? Why two opposite statements?

Because its sharing is not what most people expect when talking about sharing.

What you can share is the list of users in your domain. Not the list of partners/clients/prospects. And this is what most people (me included) expect.

Shared contacts, but not shared addressbook. And this is deeply annoying. This is the number one feature request for Google Apps (closed, read-only survey, sorry). Hopefully, someone at Google will investigate upon this.

Import Outlook Contacts to Google Contacts

2011-03-28T22:53:00.002+02:00

There is a lot of instructions on the Web, but none truly worked for me (either incomplete or blatantly wrong). Here’s how I did it:

What you’ll need

A spreadsheet (I used Excel 2011 out of lazyness; I should have tried Google Spreadsheet).
A Grep-capable text editor (EditPadPro on Windows (Notepad++ is not that great), Coda on Mac (TextWrangler should be OK too; it is just pretty old interface-wise)).

Preparation

First, save your Outlook contact as a CSV file (I’ll assume you either know or will find out). Then open it up in your text editor. And let the fun begin.

Before any exhaustive editing, we have to make this CSV file readable. This start by configuring the text editor properly, by having soft wrap off and line numbering on.

Then, we will start working on the file itself. We want to make sure one entry is exactly equal to one (hard) line. Why do we have to check? Because postal addresses line usually come with carriage returns. This is all well and good when reading an actual business card, but when editing a CSV file, this is just plain tough. Even worse, it will make your spreadsheet program (see later) going crazy with the file. Plus, Google will know when to have the carriage return back after import. So, remove any extraneous carriage return. In the end, one entry should equal one hard line. Double-check this, it may be pretty tough to check on a long CSV file (180 addresses for me).

Filtering

OK, now we have a passable CSV file to work on. Time for the real thing. Two are of particular importance and should not be oversighted:

Remove the first column (name) because it is unusable and its informations are available elsewhere; the first column is just a concatenation of other columns with no added value (well, it is possible to add some specific value, but most people won’t do it and that’s good for us they don’t).
Rename the column Name Prefix into Title. I have yet to see someone correctly inputing Mr. here; most people use this field for job’s title. If it doesn’t show up in Outlook, it does a lot in Google Contacts. Trust me, you don't want job’s titles in lieu of name prefixes. Associate manager for Europe Bertrand duGué is simply unreadable. Bertrand duGué (Associate manager for Europe) is much, much better! If you don’t believe me, trust your boss to tell you!

These are the two most important things to consider for mere importing. The rest will be about optimising.

Optimisation

Did you notice how people don’t know how to write? Looks like their caps-lock is locked. Full caps reigns supreme…

Here comes the spreadsheet. Its main advantages are formulæ (I’m sure Grep gurus may go without a spreadsheet, but I can’t) and… tadam! proper column display (it’s hard to figure out columns of text only with semi-colons as separators).

Add columns at the right of each one you want to sanitize and use the =PROPERCASE(A1) function (change A1 accordingly, of course); yes, I know, PROPERCASE is not perfect; that’s what manual editing if for. As for the e-mail field, I used the =LOWERCASE(A1) formula instead.

While we’re a it, we can also mass change various typos (like the ones PROPERCASE generated). Some spreadsheet programs may allow regular expressions during this process. Excel doesn't, so I just switched back to my text editor. I made sure all mails and phones where moved from other to work, I removed the parenthesis around the leading phone digits (this code works for French formatting: \(([0-9]{2})\)) and did some other things (mostly manual there). Anyway, this is your chance for batch editing.

Conclusion

Scrap the name column and rename Name prefix as Title. If you do that, your import should work well (at least with an Outlook 2007 CSV export). The rest is just taking advantage of being in a editing process. Your customer would probably not care for the rest as long as the first two part are done well.

Of course, it won’t work the first time. You’ll have to do it several times until it becomes second nature. This may look like an easy thing, but it took me five hours to have it work. Hopefully, now that you have this tutorial, you’ll import your file much faster, right?

Clipboard in the cloud — Chrome webclipboard extension

2011-03-28T17:09:00.002+02:00

The webclipboard is a tool for:

Better copy-and-paste in Google Office (striked-through text do keep the strike when copied with the webclipboard whilst they do not with traditional copy-and-paste)
Multiple clipboards (useful for those who often copy and paste one or more thing — not my case)
Multiple computers clipboards (since the clipboard is in the cloud, not on you computer)

The webclipboard is not transparent. It must be invoked by right-clicking and selecting webclipboard — this may lessen its appeal. I suggest, for a better trans-computer experience, to combine it with Chrome sync.

The Chrome webclipboard extension allows using all these features even out of Google Office. Since it doesn't override the usual copy-and-paste (including keyboard shortcuts), no danger.

More information: help and security.

Gmail and label colours

2011-03-28T15:02:00.000+02:00

Checked today: when applying a colour to a label and its sub-label, colour only apply to already-existing sub-labels. If you create a new label later on, it won't have any colour, you will have to update it manually.

Depending on cases and people, it may be a feature or a limitation (for me, it is a limitation).