{"id":236,"date":"2009-08-29T05:22:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-29T12:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chuckchat.com\/gmail\/?p=236"},"modified":"2010-04-04T05:21:22","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T12:21:22","slug":"contact-chooser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"Contact Chooser"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"contact-chooser\"Try GotoAssist free for 30 days
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Have you found yourself trying to send a message to someone and you cannot remember their last name? John? John? What was John\u2019s last name? OK, John\u2019s not your closest friend and you don\u2019t send him email all the time. In fact, you don\u2019t even know if you added him to your Gmail contacts, you may have only sent a message to his email address and never used his full name. You start typing j-o-h-n in the To: field and auto-complete comes up with the people who have John in their name and you don\u2019t find the person you are looking for. Was he even in the hundreds of contacts you have listed?<\/p>\n

Now I have to admit, there are times when I would love to just browse my contacts list, or type a few characters, or even just poke around the contact groups I setup to get a better idea where John might be hiding. The latest update to Gmail answers this question. Google has placed a link on the \u201cTo\u201d, \u201cCc\u201d, and \u201cBcc\u201d labels that bring up a contact chooser (see the image.) This works similar to the buttons next to the fields in Microsoft Outlook, only better.<\/p>\n

If you type in text in the area marked \u201cSearch my contacts\u201d, Gmail will start filtering out your people. In my case, I typed \u201ctomasi\u201d and got several of my family members. Now I can just click and choose them. I can also narrow down the search to my groups by using the drop down list just below.<\/p>\n

This is a nice addition to the auto-complete feature if you\u2019re really not sure how to spell someone\u2019s name or want to quickly select all the Tomasis at once.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s today\u2019s quick tip. Listener John wrote in about the Goto Label feature. He says:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my computers is a netbook, so the space saving tips catch my ear.
\nThe “G” “L” combination to go to a label sounded like a great feature, but there is no drop down reminder. So I have to remember the name of the label.
\nMy solution – kind of clunky – was to rename my labels so they all start with \u201cL-\u201c
\nNow when I enter “G” “L” and then “L”, I see a list of my labels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks for the tip John. I generally use a dozen or so labels frequently; then there are some obscure ones that may go unused for months and I don\u2019t recall their names or functions. Your suggestion seems to address that nicely. If you\u2019ve got an tip about Gmail, send it along. I\u2019d love to hear from you.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all for this time\u2026 Comments, suggestions, or questions can be sent to gpodcast@gmail.com or check the website for full information and archives of all previous Gmail tips at chuckchat.com\/gmail. I have no affiliation with Google other than as a satisfied Gmail user. Thanks to you for listening, and don\u2019t forget to write.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.chuckchat.com\/gmail\/media\/Gmail-Contact-Chooser.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Try GotoAssist free for 30 days Have you found yourself trying to send a message to someone and you cannot remember their last name? John? John? What was John\u2019s last name? OK, John\u2019s not your closest friend and you don\u2019t send him email all the time. In fact, you don\u2019t even know if you added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,3,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-composing","category-gmail-podcast","category-01-white-belt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chuckchat.com\/gmail\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}