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This time we take a look at what you need to do if to get access to one of your loved one’s Gmail after they are deceased.

This item has been in the news and fortunately for us, Google has a standard procedure.

You will need to provide Google with the following information in written format. You can send it via fax or postal mail. That information is provided below.

1) Your full name and contact information. Please include a verifiable email address.

2) The Gmail address of the person who passed away.

3) The entire message from the account you are requesting access to. This includes not only the message body, but the full message header. The full header can be obtained by opening the message in Gmail and click on ‘More options,’ then click ‘Show original.’ Copy everything from ‘Delivered- To:’ through the ‘References:’ line.

To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/)

4. You will also need to provide a copy of the death certificate of the deceased.
5. and a copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.
6. If you are the parent of the individual, include a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.

The postal address to send this to is:

Google Inc.
Attention: Gmail User Support
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Or the Fax number in the US is:

650-644-0358

It takes approximately 30 days for the information to be processed, but if the access is needed sooner, “it is Google’s policy to only provide information pursuant to a valid third party court order or other appropriate legal process.”

Listener Steve Holden pointed out that while reading messages, he noticed that the Gmail web interface has a link on the right side of the screen to add the event to your Google calendar when a date appears in the body of the message. I tried doing little experimenting to see if I could trigger the link, but was unsuccessful. Once Steve sent me a sample, I found out the format.

If you have a line of text in your message, then on the next line a date followed by a semicolon and a time, the link will appear. Gmail is pretty good about recognizing a wide format of dates. I have used month/day/year digits as well as spelling out the month then digits a comma and a year. As long as the date and time are on their own line and a semicolon separates them, the link will appear. I will include some examples in the show notes on the web site.

My Special Event
April 3, 2007; 5:00PM

Pay Taxes (US)
4/15/2007; 8:00AM

Why is this useful you ask? For the same reason Gmail presents a link when it recognizes package tracking IDs or a Google Map link when it recognizes an address – to be more helpful and save you time. When sending an email to a gmail user, you can include a date and time for an event and have it easily added to the calendar.

Quick Tip: If you have shortcut keys enabled, you can use the “#” key to delete messages. From the conversation index, begin by checking the messages, or using the “x” key, then clicking “#”. If you need more information on how to enable shortcut keys, have a listen to the podcast from January 2005.

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Gmail now has a way to get email from other accounts with a feature called Mail Fetcher. This differs slightly from the existing technology available in the “Send Mail As” feature described in an earlier podcast. Send Mail As is a “push” technology meaning that your mail is pushed from the original source (say your ISP mailbox) to Gmail. The Mail Fetcher is a pull technology, meaning that Gmail will pull information from your Internet Server Provider, or ISP, mailbox.

While this may seem like semantics at first, the underlying technologies differ quite a bit and the use for one over the other is up to you.

Mail Fetcher is configured from same screen as Send Mail As. Begin by logging in to your Gmail account and clicking on “Settings” in the upper right corner of the screen.

Next click on the “Accounts” link.

Find the section labeled “get mail from other accounts”. Normally there won’t be anything configured yet so click on the link “Add another mail account”. At this point, you can add up to five accounts.

Now enter the email address of the account you plan to pull the information from. For example if I want all my mail that normally goes to chuck@chuckchat.com to arrive in my chuck.tomasi@gmail.com, I would enter chuck@chuckchat.com since that is where it will first be delivered according to the mail routing rules setup on the internet name servers. Sorry if this is a little too technical.

Now, click “Next Step”

You will then be prompted for credentials regarding the other account. you should have your login and password handy. It will also prompt you for the POP server. This is the system which provides access to your mail on that server. If you don’t have that information available you may need to contact your ISP or mail hosting provider. If you are unsure of the port, leave it as the default.

Further options are available to leave a copy of the retrieved message on the server. You may want to check this, but if your other mail host is like mine, the mailbox size limit is not anywhere near as generous as Gmail and it will fill up quickly.

You can also choose to use a secure, or encrypted connection, but make sure your other mail host supports this first.

The third option is to allow the automatic application of a Gmail label of your choosing to the messages from that provider. This may help to identify the originating source of the email or just provide you with a visual record.

Like the filters, you can have this message complete skip the mailbox and go straight to the archive. This is handy if you have an account you use for purely marketing and spam collection, but don’t want it to get filled up.

Once your options are chosen, click “Add Account”.

The final question asks if you would like to be able to send mail as that other account. this is similar to the Send Mail As and allow the recipient of a message to think it came from the other account transparently.

The main difference between Send Mail As and Mail Fetcher is that the former requires you to send a test message, enable forwarding on the first mail account, and allow email to be received by Gmail. Mail Fetcher requires you to enter your credentials and then pulls the mail directly from the other server.

Gmail’s mail fetcher also keeps a history of attempts and fetches from the other account. Once you have setup the account, the same Accounts screen under settings has a link for each account labeled “View History”. The fetches will be done at regular intervals, but you can force Gmail to retrieve email from our other account manually by clicking “Check mail now” for the respective account on the same screen.

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