G Suite For Dummies

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10 Ways to Enhance Privacy and Security with G Suite

The more you use the G Suite apps, the more information about you gets stored online. You can quickly end up with a big chunk of your professional and personal lives stored in the cloud, so it pays to take whatever steps are required to keep that data safe and control who can see it and when. In this list, you investigate ten ways to enhance the security and privacy of your Google account and your G Suite apps. Yep, it takes a bit of time to implement these measures, but the time you spend will prove to be an excellent investment.

Ensure your Wi-Fi network is locked up tight

The first step in securing G Suite actually doesn't have anything to do with G Suite directly. Instead, this step is all about securing the network that you use to access the Internet (and, hence, G Suite): your Wi-Fi network. If you access your G Suite stuff only through a big-time corporate network, then of course you can merrily skip over this section, because the nerds over in IT have it covered. However, if you, like most people, do some (or a lot of) G Suite work at home, you need to take action to batten down your Wi-Fi hatches. A secure Wi-Fi network is necessary because of a practice called wardriving, where a dark-side-of-the-Force hacker drives through various neighborhoods with a portable computer or another device set up to look for available wireless networks. If the miscreant finds an unsecured network, they use it for free Internet access (such a person is called a piggybacker) or to cause mischief with shared network resources. That can mean accessing G Suite applications that are running on a network computer. The problem is that wireless networks are inherently vulnerable because the wireless connection that enables you to access your G Suite apps from the kitchen or the living room can also enable an intruder from outside your home to access the network. Fortunately, you can secure your wireless network against these threats with a few tweaks and techniques, as spelled out in the following list.

Most of what follows here requires access to your Wi-Fi router’s administration or setup pages. See your router’s documentation to learn how to perform these tasks.

• Change the router’s administrator password. By far the most important configuration chore for any new Wi-Fi router is to change the default password (and username, if your router requires one). Note that I’m talking here about the administrative password, which is the password you use to log on to the router’s setup pages. This password has nothing to do with the password you use to log on to your Internet service provider (ISP) or to your wireless network. Changing the default administrative password is crucial because it’s fairly easy for a nearby malicious hacker to access your router’s login page and because all new routers use common (and, therefore, well-known) default passwords (such as “password”) and usernames (such as “admin”).
• Change the Wi-Fi network password. Make sure your Wi-Fi network is protected by a robust, hard-to-guess password to avoid unauthorized access.
• Beef up your Wi-Fi router’s encryption. To ensure that no nearby mischief-maker can intercept your network data (using a tool called a packet sniffer), you need to encrypt your wireless network. Some older routers either have no encryption turned on or use an outdated (read: not secure) encryption called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The current gold standard for encryption is Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2), so make sure your router uses this security type.
• Check your network name for identifying info. Make sure the name of your Wi-Fi network — known as its service set identifier (SSID) — doesn’t include any text that identifies you (for example, Joe Flaherty’s Network) or your location (123 Primrose Lane Wi-Fi).
• Update your router’s firmware. The internal program that runs the Wi-Fi router is called its Reputable router manufacturers release regular firmware updates to not only fix problems and provide new features but also plug security holes. Therefore, it’s crucial to always keep your router’s firmware up-to-date.

Secure your Google account with a strong password

Your experience with Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and all the other G Suite apps is only as secure as your Google account. Therefore, it’s vital to ensure that your account is locked down. Fortunately, that requires just two things: giving your account a strong password (as I describe in this section) and turning on Google's 2-step verification feature (which I discuss in the next section). Your Google account’s first line of defense is a strong password. After you have a bulletproof password figured out, follow these steps to change your existing Google password:

1. Access your Google account settings. Either of these methods is sure to work for you:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account.
   • Surf directly to myaccount.google.com and sign in to your account.
2. Click Security.
3. In the Signing In to Google section, click Password. Google, ever cautious, asks you to sign in again.
4. Enter your password and click Next. Google displays the Password page, shown.
5. Type your new, strong password in the New Password text box. Before proceeding, make sure the Password Strength indicator reads strong, as shown.
6. Reenter the same password in the Confirm New Password text box.
7. Click the Change Password button. Google applies the new password to your account.

Enable Google’s 2-Step Verification

A password made of steel is a necessary security feature, but, sadly, it’s not a sufficient security feature. Malicious users may still worm their way into your account with guile or brute force, so you need a second line of defense. That line is a feature that Google calls 2-step verification (which is a more comprehensible name than what the rest of the Internet most often uses for the same feature: two-factor authentication). The 2-step part means that getting access to your Google account requires two separate actions:

1. Sign in using your Google account credentials.
2. Verify that you’re authorized to access the account by entering a verification code that Google sends to you.

You can configure 2-step verification to receive the code via either a text message or an automated phone call. Here are the steps to follow to enable 2-step verification and tell Google how you want to receive your verification codes:

1. Access your Google account settings. Either of these methods works fine:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account.
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click the Security tab.
3. In the Signing In to Google section, click 2-Step Verification. Google displays an overview of the 2-step verification process.
4. 4. Click the Get Started button. Google prudently asks you to sign in again.
5. Enter your password and click Next. Google displays the Let's Set Up Your Phone page, shown.
6. Enter your phone number.
7. Click the Text Message radio button. If, for some reason, you don't want to (or can't) receive your verification code via text, click the Phone Call radio button instead.
8. Click Next. Google sends you a verification code via text message (or phone call, if you went that route).
9. Use the Enter the Code text box to type the code you received, and then click Next. If the code you get looks like G-123456, just enter the numbers into the text box. Google asks if you want to turn on 2-step verification.
10. Click Turn On. The 2-step verification feature is now active on your Google account.

Set Up Your Contact Verification Methods

There’s an old saying in the security industry: "When everyone is out to get you, being paranoid is just good thinking." Okay, well not everyone is out to get you (unless there's something you haven't told me), but there are enough malefactors and miscreants out there who are out to get you that "being paranoid" is just a synonym for "having common sense." So, in that vein, your next bulletproofing chore for your Google account is to set up some methods for Google to contact you either to verify that it's really and truly trying to sign in to your account or to notify you when it thinks it has spotted suspicious activity on your account. (Yes, this is the paranoid part.) Follow these steps to configure your account with a phone number and an email address that Google can use to verify you:

1. Access your Google account settings. Which of the following methods you use is up to you:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account.
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click Security.
3. In the section named Ways That We Can Verify That It's You, click Recovery Phone. Google tirelessly asks you to sign in again.
4. Enter your password and click Next. Google displays the Recovery Phone page.
5. Click the Add Recovery Phone button. The Add Phone Number dialog box appears.
6. Type your phone number and then click Next. Google lets you know that it will send a verification code to your phone.
7. Click the Get Code button. Google sends you a verification code via text message.
8. Use the Enter the Code text box to type the code you received, and then click Next. If the code you get looks like G-987654, just enter the numbers into the text box.
9. Click the Verify button. Google adds the recovery phone number to your account.
10. Click Back (the left-pointing arrow) to return to the Security page.
11. In the section named Ways That We Can Verify That It's You, click Recovery Email. Google yet again asks you to sign in.
12. Enter your password and click Next. Google displays the Recovery Email page.
13. Click Edit (the Pencil icon).
14. Enter the email address you want to use for verification purposes, and then click Done. Be sure to use an address other than your G Suite address (such as a personal email address). Google adds the recovery email to your account.

Hide Images in Gmail Messages

You can make your G Suite email address more private and secure by thwarting the external images that have been inserted into some of the email messages you receive. An external image is a picture file that resides on an Internet server computer instead of being embedded in the email message. A special code in the message tells the server to display the image when you open the message. This is usually benign, but the same code can also alert the sender of the message that your email address is working. If the sender is a spammer, this usually results in your receiving even more junk email. You can prevent this by disabling external images. Here are the steps to follow to configure Gmail not to display external images in the messages you receive:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. For the Images setting, click the Ask Before Displaying External Images radio button, as shown. To revert to always showing external images, click the Always Display External Images radio button instead.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page. Gmail asks you to confirm.
4. Click Continue.

Now, when you display a message that contains external images, you see the notification shown. You have three options:

• If the message is clearly (or even possibly) spam, leave the images hidden and thank yourself for being proactive about your security.
• If you're sure the message is safe, click Display Images Below to unhide the images.
• If you know the sender and trust them completely, click the Always Display Images from Address link, where Address is the address of the person or entity who sent the message. This tells Gmail to always display images in messages sent from this address.

Blocking Senders in Gmail

If you’ve tried out any of the G Suite collaboration features that I go on and on about in Part 3, here's hoping you've discovered that your peers and colleagues are a welcoming, supportive bunch. You might already have made quite a few new friends. However, within any group of people, no matter how amiable and helpful that group might be overall, there are always one or two bad seeds. It might be Boring Bill, who goes on and on about nothing, or Insufferable Sue, who boasts about even the most minor accomplishment. Or, it might be something more serious, such as someone who sends you vaguely (or even overtly) creepy or menacing messages. Whatever the reason, life's too short to deal with such nuisances, so you should follow these steps in Gmail to block that person from sending you more messages:

1. In Gmail, display a message from the person you want to block.
2. Click More (the three vertical dots to the right of the Reply icon).
3. Click Block "Name," where Name is the name of the social pariah you want to shun. Gmail asks you to confirm the block. g-suite-block-command Use the Block command to prevent some misfit from sending you messages.
4. Click Block. Gmail adds the person's address to the Blocked Senders list. Future messages from that person will go automatically to Gmail's Spam label.

If you have a change of heart (or the person promises to mend their ways), you can unblock the person by clicking the Settings menu, choosing the Settings command, selecting the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab, and then clicking the Unblock link beside the sender you want to put back into your good books. When Gmail asks if you're sure about this, click Unblock.

Choose Who Can See Your Personal Info

Your Google account contains quite a bit of sensitive data, including personal data such as your birthday and gender. Normally, combining sensitive data with the Internet is a privacy nightmare come true, but, fortunately, Google comes with a decent set of tools that enable you to choose what you share and with whom. For privacy purposes, Google divides your world into three sharing categories:

• Only You: The data can be seen by only you.
• Your Organization: The data can be seen by only you and by each person in your G Suite organization.
• Anyone: The data can be seen by everyone who cares to look.

Google applies default privacy settings for data such as your birthday (Only You), your profile picture (Your Organization), and your name (Anyone). Use the following steps to customize these and other privacy settings.

1. Access your Google account settings. Pick your poison:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account.
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click Personal Info.
3. In the Choose What Others See section, click Go to About Me. Google opens the About Me page.
4. Click an item in your personal info.
5. Click who can see the info: Only You, Your Organization, or Anyone. Note that these options aren’t available for all your personal info.
6. Click Back (the left-pointing arrow).
7. Repeat Steps 4–6 for the rest of your personal info.

Manage Your Activity Controls

Google keep tracks of various activities while you're online, including where you go on the web, which G Suite apps you use, where you're located in the real world while you're online, and what you watch on YouTube. Google says this is for "better personalization across Google," whatever that really means. If you're not comfortable with Google tracking some or all of these activities, you can use your account's activity controls to decide what, if anything, Google saves about you. Here's what to do:

1. Access your Google account settings. Choose whichever option seems appealing at the moment:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account.
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click Data & Personalization. The Activity Controls section shows a summary of what Google is tracking about you.
3. If you don't want Google to monitor your web and G Suite app shenanigans, click Web & App Activity and then click to toggle the Web & App Activity switch to Off. Google asks if you're sure about this.
4. Click Pause. Google asks if you're really, really sure about this.
5. Say "Grrr" and click Pause.
6. Click Back (the left-pointing arrow).
7. Repeat Steps 3–6 for the Location History and YouTube History activities.

Manage Your Devices

Even with your Google account locked down behind a strong password, a nefarious user might still gain access to the account. The most common way that someone can gain access is if you use the same login credentials on another website and that site is hacked and its users’ login data stolen. That data is then usually sold or posted online, and before long some stranger logs in to your formerly secure Google account.

If you want to check whether your Google login credentials have been compromised, go to the Have I Been Pwned? site and then enter your Google login email address. (Pwned — it’s pronounced “owned” — is hacker-speak for having been defeated or controlled by someone else.)

You certainly don’t want any unauthorized reprobate to access your account, so you should do three things:

• Use a unique password for your Google account.
• Activate 2-step verification, as I describe earlier in this chapter.
• Periodically check your account to see whether a device you don’t recognize has logged in to the account.

For the last of these items, here are the steps to follow to look for unrecognized devices that are logged in to your Google account:

1. Access your Google account settings. You can do it either way:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account. or
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click Security.
3. In the Your Devices section, click Manage Devices. Google offers up the Where You're Signed In page, an example of which is shown.
4. If you don't recognize a device, click its More icon (the three vertical dots) and then click the Don't Recognize This Device? command. Google opens the Let's Secure Your Account dialog box, which sensibly tells you to change your password.
5. Click Change Password and then follow the prompts to configure your account with a new password.

Manage Third-Party Apps

It's fairly common to give non-Google apps and services access to G Suite apps such as Docs, Sheets, and Drive. That access is often convenient, but if you stop using a particular third-party app, or if you change your mind about offering that access, you should revoke the app's access to your Google account for security purposes. Here's how:

1. Access your Google account settings. Go with one of these methods:
   • Sign in to any G Suite app, click the Google Account button in the top right corner, and then click Manage Your Google Account. or
   • Surf directly to Google's My Account page and sign in to your account.
2. Click the Security tab.
3. In the Third-Party Apps with Account Access section, click Manage Third-Party Access. Google offers up the Apps with Access to Your Account page.
4. In the Third-Party Apps with Account Access section, click the app that has the access you want to revoke. Google displays the access you've given the app.
5. Click Remove Access. Google asks if you're sure about this.
6. Click OK. Google revokes the app's access to your account.

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10 Useful Gmail Settings

Gmail, one of the G Suite apps, offers a relatively simple interface on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you see that the app has a deeper side—the Settings page and its seemingly endless supply of options, configurations, and customizations. There is a lot of stuff in there. Yep, sure, lots of the settings should be labeled For Nerds Only. However, there's a veritable treasure trove of settings available that are actually useful in the real world and can help you be more productive, more efficient, healthier, wealthier, and wiser. (Well, maybe not those last three; but you never know!) Take a tour of ten eminently useful and practical Gmail settings related to the two main Gmail tasks: sending messages and reading messages. Prepare to be amazed!

5 splendiferous Send settings

Sending email seems like such a simple thing: You click Compose, insert an address or three, conjure up a snappy Subject line, write the message itself, and then click Send. What more could there be to say about such a straightforward procedure? Well, quite a bit, as it turns out. Gmail actually comes with quite a few settings that can make sending stuff even more useful. This section takes you through a half dozen (minus one) settings and features that you'll want to add to your sending toolkit.

Sending a message as plain text

You can use one of two message modes when you send an email:

• Rich text: This mode enables you to dress up your message text with fonts, colors, and styles such as bold and italics. This is Gmail's default format, and almost all messages these days use this format.
• Plain text: This mode doesn't offer any formatting for your text: no fonts, no type sizes, no italics.

What's the use of this plain-text mode? It's rare nowadays, but there are still some very old or very simple email programs that choke when faced with rich text. If you send a rich text email to someone and that person complains that your text is just a gumbo of incomprehensible symbols, you need to resend your message using plain-text mode. Here's how it's done:

1. Create, address, and compose your email.
2. Click More Options. More Options is the three vertical dots near the bottom right corner of the New Message window. (It's pointed out in the figure.)
3. From the menu that appears, click to select Plain Text Mode. Gmail adds a check mark to the left of the command, as shown. Gmail also removes all formatting from your message text.

   When you choose the Plain Text Mode command, Gmail strips out all your existing text formatting and throws it away. You might think that turning off plain-text mode would restore your previous formatting, but no, that's not happening. Therefore, if you have an elaborately formatted message, think twice before turning on the Plain Text Mode command.

4. Click Send. Gmail sends your plain-text message.

Setting the default reply behavior

As you learn a bit later in this chapter, when you open a message, Gmail offers a Reply button that you click to send a response to the person who sent the message. If the message was sent to two or more people and you want to send your response to everyone, you have to click the More button and then click Reply All. Lots of people find that they use Reply All more often than Reply, so that extra click of the More button becomes a bit of a bother. Fortunately, you can ask Gmail to switch things around and make Reply All the default button and make Reply the button you access by first clicking More. Here's how:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. For the Default Reply Behavior setting, click the Reply All radio button, as shown. To revert to having Reply as the default, click the Reply radio button instead.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Replying and archiving in one fell swoop

Archiving a message—moving the message to Gmail's All Mail folder—is a 2-step affair:

1. Click Reply to send a response to the sender of the message.
2. Click Archive to move the received message to the All Mail folder.

If you find yourself performing these two steps over and over, you can quickly talk Gmail into combining them into a single step:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. For the Send and Archive setting, click the Show "Send & Archive" Button in Reply radio button. To revert to the default behavior, click the Hide "Send & Archive" Button in Reply radio button instead.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Now when you click Reply or Reply All, the resulting message window, shown, includes both a Send button (the one on the right) and a Send & Archive button (the one on the left). If you click Send & Archive, Gmail sends the reply and automatically moves the original message to the All Mail folder. Sweet squared!

Setting the default text style

Earlier in this chapter, I talk about how you can format your message text with a different font, text size, color, and other attributes. If you find that you're continually making the same text formatting adjustments, you can save some wear-and-tear on your fingers by setting those adjustments in the Gmail equivalent of stone. Gmail offers a Default Text Style setting that includes the font, type size, and text color. Here are the steps to follow to change this setting to something that suits your typographical style:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. For the Default Text Style setting, use the Font, Size, and Text Color controls to format the text as preferred. Under these controls, the text This is what your body text will look like shows the result of your labor. If you make a mess of it, you can start from scratch by clicking the Remove Formatting icon (pointed out in the figure).
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Preventing Gmail from creating contacts automatically

One of Gmail's default settings is that when you send a new message to — or reply to a message from — someone not in your Contacts app, Gmail automatically adds that person's email address to the Other Contacts section of the Contacts app. Why would Gmail do this? Because, that way, the next time you start to enter that person's email address in the To, CC, or BCC field, Gmail displays the address so that you can select it rather than type the whole thing. This is called auto-completing the address. That's a laudable reason, for sure, but it does mean that you'll end up with tons of potentially useless addresses in the Contacts app. Sure, those addresses are tucked away in the Other Contacts section, but if you really don't want all those addresses accumulating, you can turn off address auto-completing by following these steps:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. Scroll down to the Create Contacts for Auto-Complete setting and then click the I'll Add Contacts Myself radio button, as shown.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

5 stupendous Read settings

Reading messages in Gmail seems like another just-this-side-of-trivial task. After all, to read a message, you click it and then peruse the text, in either the message window or the reading pane. Done and done, right? Not so fast. Gmail has lots of settings you can use to customize the reading experience to suit your style. The rest of this chapter takes you through five of the most useful.

Turning off Conversation view

By default, Gmail organizes messages by conversation, which refers to an original message and all of its replies, replies to replies, and so on. That's a sensible setup because it makes it easy to see the trend of the conversation and locate a particular reply. Conversations also keep your inbox neat, because the entire conversation resides within a single "message" in the inbox. Still, many people don't like organizing messages by conversations because all the messages are "hidden" within the original message. These people prefer to see all their messages out in the open. If you fall into this camp, you can follow these steps to turn off Gmail's default Conversation view:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. Scroll down to the Conversation View setting and then click the Conversation View Off radio button, as shown.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Adding importance markers

Gmail monitors how you use the app and the messages you receive as a way of figuring out which messages are important and which aren't. If Gmail's analysis tells it that a message is important, Gmail automatically adds the Important label to the message, which means that you can view the message outside of the noise of your inbox by selecting the Important label on the main menu. That's mighty handy, but there's a fly in this soup: The only way to know whether Gmail has declared a message to be important is to view the contents of the Important label. That is, Gmail offers no indication in the inbox about which messages are important and which aren't. If that seems just plain wrong to you, here's how to fix it:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. Click the Inbox tab.
3. For the Importance Markers settings, click the Show Markers radio button, as shown.

   If you think it's creepy that Gmail is analyzing your messages for importance, I hear you. Fortunately, you can turn off this snooping behavior. On the Inbox tab, click the Don't Use My Past Actions to Predict Which Message Are Important radio button, and then click Save Changes.

4. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Setting the maximum page size

Gmail's labels can end up with a ton of messages in them. Gmail handles long message lists by dividing the list into separate pages, with up to 50 messages (or conversations, if you're still using Conversation view) per page. Depending on how you work, 50 will seem like either a ridiculously large number or a ludicrously small number. Either way, the number isn't set in stone and you can follow these steps to set a different maximum page size:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page with the General tab displayed.
2. For the Maximum Page Size setting, use the Show X Conversations Per Page drop-down list to select how many messages (or conversations) you want per page, as shown.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Managing notifications

By default, Gmail doesn't display a notification on your computer's desktop when a new message comes in. That's probably just as well because many studies have shown that the notification of a newly received message (and its accompanying "ping") is a big distraction and, therefore, a major productivity killer. That said, you might want to risk the distraction anyway and give Gmail permission to display desktop notifications. It's also possible to configure Gmail to show a notification only for messages labeled as Important, so consider that a compromise worthy of consideration. Here are the steps to follow to give Gmail permission to display desktop notifications and to configure those notifications:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. In the Desktop Notifications setting, click the Click Here to Enable Desktop Notifications for Company Mail (where Company is the name of your business). Your web browser asks if you want to allow mail.google.com to show notifications, as shown.
3. Click Allow.
4. Select the desktop notification option you prefer:
   • New Mail Notifications On: Click this radio button to see a desktop notification for all incoming messages.
   • Important Mail Notifications On: Click this radio button (as shown) to see a desktop notification only for incoming messages that Gmail labels as Important.
5. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

Indicating messages sent only to you

If you receive a ton of mail from mailing lists and similar group messages, it's handy to differentiate between messages you receive via the list or group and messages addressed to you directly. (Differentiating messages in this way has the added benefit of improving spam detection, because many junk messages are sent as bulk mailings.) For the messages you receive, there are actually three addressing levels to differentiate here:

• Messages sent to a single address that represents a mailing list or group
• Messages sent to multiple individual addresses, including yours
• Messages sent only to your address

It's not universally true, but from your perspective, the preceding list can be treated as an indicator of increasing message relevance. That is, messages sent to a mailing list or group are more likely to be not all that relevant; messages you receive that were sent to multiple people are likely to be more relevant; and messages sent only to you are likely to be the most relevant. Gmail has a feature called personal level indicators that reflects this relevance hierarchy:

• Messages sent to a single address that represents a mailing list or group get no indicator.
• Messages sent to multiple individual addresses, including yours, get an arrow (›) indicator.
• Messages sent only to your address get a double arrow (») indicator.

If this sounds like a sensible arrangement, follow these steps to start using personal level indicators:

1. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens the Settings page, with the General tab displayed.
2. Scroll down to the Personal Level Indicators setting and click the Show Indicators radio button, as shown.
3. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Settings page.

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10 Tips for Working from Home with G Suite Apps

In this article, I take you through ten G Suite tips and techniques that can help the working-from-home work effectively from home. As I was writing this in the spring and summer of 2020, the entire world was coming to a virtual halt in order to stop — or at least slow down — the spread of the novel coronavirus that emerged in late 2019. Literally overnight, those of us who were used to spending our working days in bustling offices located in faraway skyscrapers were now forced to stay home, quarantined from our colleagues and bosses. Being at home means watching Netflix all day, right? Fat chance! No, our work still cried out to get done, and those colleagues and bosses still clamored for our attention. Those same executives who nixed any calls for allowing employees to work from home in the Before Time insisted that now everyone was a work-from-home employee. Ah, but working from home isn't as easy as it sounds. Distractions abound, work is no longer bookended by commutes to and from the office, and it's just harder to get things done when the people you rely on or collaborate with are hunkered down in their own homes. Fortunately, G Suite has your back here.

Set your working hours

One of the biggest problems with working from home is that the working part of your day doesn't have a set beginning and end. At least when you work at the office, the morning commute acts as a transition into your working day, and the commute home is a signal to your mind and body that the working part of the day is done. (Yes, I know that our modern workdays are really 24/7, but humor me here.) At home, where your "commute" is, at best, a walk down a hallway or up a flight of stairs, you don't get that same sense of separation between your work life and the rest of your life. Even worse, your colleagues and managers also have that same lack of work-life boundaries, so they end up sending you requests for meetings and chats that happen pretty much any time of day or night. It's madness! You can fight back and inject a little sanity into your work-from-home life by setting your working hours, which are the days of the week you work and the times on those days that you've set aside for work. Any go-getter without a personal life who tries to invite you to a meeting at some insane time of the morning or evening gets notified that the event occurs outside of your working hours, as shown. You set your working hours using the Calendar app:

1. Navigate to calendar.google.com.
2. Choose Settings Menu→Settings from the menu bar.
3. On the new page that appears, choose Working Hours from the navigation menu on the left.
4. Select the Enable Working Hours check box.
5. Deselect the icon for each day of the week that you don't work.
6. Using the controls for the first day of your workweek, set the start and end times of your workday.
7. Select Copy Time to All to use the same hours on each of your other workdays. If you work different hours each day, skip Step 7 and set the start and end times for each workday.

For members of your team to get notified when they try to rope you into an event that's outside your working hours, you must share your calendar with the team.

Show your availability

Setting your standard working hours, as I describe in the previous section, is a great start for setting boundaries between your work life and your home life. However, sometimes you have to step out of the home office for a few hours or even a few days. In such cases, you need to let people know you're unavailable. G Suite offers two methods you can use:

• Set up a vacation responder in Gmail.
• Create an Out of Office "event" in Calendar.

The latter of these is a special type of event that blocks out a specified chunk of time on one or more days. When someone tries to invite you to a meeting or another event during those hours, Calendar automatically declines the invitation. To schedule an Out of Office event, Calendar offers a couple of ways to get started:

• For a single-day Out of Office event, navigate to the date, switch to Day view, and then click inside the time zone area. Alternatively, switch to Month view, navigate to the month of the event, and then click the date of the event.
• For a multiday Out of Office event, navigate to the dates, switch to Week view, and then click-and-drag across the time zone area for each day of the event. Alternatively, switch to Month view and then click-and-drag across each day of the event.

Calendar creates a new event and you follow these steps to complete the Out of Office event:

1. Select the Out of Office tab. Calendar switches to the interface shown.
2. If the Out of Office start and/or end times are incorrect, click each time and then either edit it to the correct time or choose the time you want from the list.
3. If you don't want Calendar to decline invitations for you, deselect the Automatically Decline New and Existing Meetings check box.
4. If you scoffed at Step 3 (good for you!), use the Message text box to specify the message that Calendar sends back to the meeting organizers.
5. Select Save. If you left the Automatically Decline New and Existing Meetings check box selected, Calendar asks you to confirm that you want the app to decline meetings on your behalf.
6. Select Save & Decline. Calendar adds the Out of Office event to the Events area.

Tell chat to chill for a while

One of the unique challenges of working from home is that you often have to perform other tasks around the house during work hours: Empty the dishwasher, fill the dishwasher, put in a load of laundry, wax the dog, and so on. If your coworkers are a chatty bunch, you probably don't want a fistful of chat notifications to come rolling in while you're taking care of the homestead. To silence chat notifications for a while, follow these steps:

1. Head on over to chat.google.com to open Chat.
2. Select the Notifications menu, which appears to the right of the Chat logo. Chat displays the Mute Notifications list, as shown.
3. Select the amount of time you want blissful silence. Chat activates Do Not Disturb for the amount of time you selected and changes your status from Active to Do Not Disturb (the moon logo), as shown.

Keep up the face-to-face communication

When you're at home and everyone you deal with every day is "out there" somewhere, it can be easy to fall into the trap of responding to requests, questions, and discussions using text-based communication channels such as email, messaging, and chat. Those methods are convenient and quick, but they do come with a significant downside: When you're out of sight, you're out of mind. That is, communicating with coworkers only via the written word can quickly erode your relationships and can make all your communications feel increasingly impersonal and formal. How do you prevent your work relationships from going south in this way? Easy: Connect via video as often as you can (or as often as you're comfortable). There's no substitute for face-to-face conversation as a way of staying in the loop, keeping relationships friendly and cordial, and responding empathetically (because you can read facial expressions and hear tone of voice). Fortunately, G Suite makes a video get-together a no-brainer, thanks to Google Meet's easy video meeting setups.

Know which communications tools to use

G Suite gives you lots of ways to reach out to your coworkers, but not every communications tool is right for every task. After all, you wouldn't use a hammer to peel an orange. (At least, I think you wouldn't.) Here are the main G Suite communications apps, along with some suggestions about when it's appropriate to use each one:

• Chat: Useful for short conversations, time-sensitive updates, urgent messages, and quick feedback.
• Video call: Useful for conversations that consist of sensitive topics, constructive criticism, or any other matter where facial expressions are important.
• Groups: Useful for most day-to-day communications, question-and-answer sessions, status updates, and so on.
• Meet: Useful for longer discussions, larger groups, or ad hoc meetings to discuss issues too complex for Groups posts.
• Gmail: Useful for longer, more thoughtful, and less time-sensitive messages and replies.

Add time zones in your Calendar

If you have colleagues, customers, or suppliers who work in a different time zone, it’s often important to know the correct time in that zone. For example, you probably won't have much luck calling someone at work at 9 A.M. your time if that person lives in a time zone that’s three hours behind you. Similarly, if you know that a business colleague leaves work at 5 P.M. and that person works in a time zone that’s seven hours ahead of you, you know that any calls you place to that person must occur before 10 A.M. your time. If you need to be sure about the current time in another time zone, you can customize Calendar's display to show not only your current time but also one or more world clocks, each of which displays the current time in another time zone. Follow these steps to add one or more world clocks to Calendar:

1. Cajole your web browser into displaying calendar.google.com.
2. Choose Settings Menu→Settings.
3. In the World Clock section, select the Show World Clock check box.
4. Click the Add Time Zone button. Calendar adds a Time Zone list.
5. Use the Time Zone list to select a time zone you want to display in your world clock.
6. To add more world clocks, repeat Steps 4 and 5 as needed. Calendar saves your settings automatically.

The following figure shows Calendar with a couple of world clocks on the go. Knowing the current time elsewhere is great, but it's not a big help when it comes to setting up events and meetings. Fortunately, Calendar can help by displaying a second time zone in Day view and Week view. Here's how to set this up:

1. Ask your web browser to please take you to calendar.google.com.
2. Choose Settings Menu→Settings.
3. In the Time Zone section, select the Display Secondary Time Zone check box.
4. Use the Label text box to the right of the Primary Time Zone list to enter a short name for your main time zone. While you're at it, double-check that the Primary Time Zone list is set to your time zone.
5. Use the Secondary Time Zone list to select the other time zone you want to display.
6. Use the Label text box to the right of the Secondary Time Zone list to enter a short name for the second time zone.

The following figure shows the Time Zone section with a secondary time zone all set up and ready to go. The following figure shows how the two time zones appear in Calendar (in Week view, in this case). Calendar saves your settings automatically.

Configure Calendar for speedy meetings

The biggest problem with working from home is not only that you have multiple hats to wear — besides your work hat, you might also have a spouse hat, a parent hat, a cook hat, a taking-out-the-garbage hat, and many more — but you also often need to switch from one hat to another throughout the day. That's life in the big city, but you can give yourself a bit more time to change hats by configuring Calendar to schedule slightly shorter meetings by default. Using the Speedy Meetings settings, Calendar automatically schedules meetings as follows:

• When you create a 30-minute meeting, Calendar schedules the meeting for just 25 minutes. For example, if you create a "30-minute" meeting to start at 3:00pm, Calendar schedules the meeting to end at 3:25pm.
• When you create any meeting longer than 30 minutes, Calendar sets the end time for 10 minutes less than what you selected. (For example, if you select a 60-minute meeting, Calendar schedules it for only 50 minutes.)

I ask you: Who doesn't like shorter meetings? If you're loving the sound of all this, follow these steps to configure Calendar to automatically schedule shorter meetings:

1. Make your web browser go to calendar.google.com.
2. Choose Settings Menu→Settings.
3. In the Event Settings section, select the Speedy Meetings check box. Calendar saves the new setting automatically.

Read email from another account

When you're working from home, you might have to monitor email messages from one or more accounts besides your Gmail account. Normally, monitoring another email account means configuring an email client or accessing a website where that account is configured. However, you can avoid all that hassle by configuring Gmail to check for messages from that account. If Gmail finds any messages on the other server, it helpfully imports them into your Gmail Inbox for leisurely reading. To set up Gmail to check mail from another account, here's a rundown of the information you should have at your fingertips:

• The account email address.
• The username and password for the email account. (Note that in most cases the username is the account email address.)
• The address used by the email provider's incoming mail server. This address often takes the form mail.provider.com or pop.provider.com, where provider is the name of the email provider. Gmail calls this address the POP server, where POP is short for Post Office Protocol.

A mail server is a computer that your ISP uses to store and send your email messages.

• Whether your email provider requires a secure connection to check for and retrieve mail. Secure connections are handled via a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
• Whether the email provider requires you to use a special port number for incoming mail. You can think of a port as a communications channel, and Gmail and your provider must be tuned to the same channel for things to work. If you don't have any info on this, your provider probably uses the standard port number: 110 if you don't use SSL; 995 if you do use SSL.

With all that info at your fingertips, follow these steps to add the other account to Gmail:

1. Head on over to mail.google.com.
2. Choose Settings→Settings. Gmail opens its settings.
3. Select the Accounts tab.
4. In the Check Email from Other Accounts section, select Add an Email Account. Gmail opens the Add an Email Account window.
5. Enter the account address in the Email Address text box and then click Next. Gmail asks you to enter the settings for the account. Note that Gmail makes a few guesses about the info, most of which should be accurate, or close to it.
6. In the Username text box, enter the account username (usually, the email address).
7. In the Password text box, enter the account password.
8. In the Pop Server text box, enter the address of the server that your provider uses for incoming mail.
9. In the Port list, select the port number your provider uses for incoming mail. Again, this is 110 if your provider doesn't require SSL (see Step 11 in this list); if your provider does want you to use SSL, select 995 in the Port list.
10. If you want Gmail to leave a copy of any imported message on the original server, select the Leave a Copy of Retrieved Message on the Server check box. If you still want to access the account's messages using another email client, selecting the Leave a Copy of Retrieved Message on the Server check box is a good idea. If you'll access the messages only in Gmail, leave the check box deselected so that after Gmail retrieves your messages, it deletes the messages from the original server.
11. If your email provider requires that incoming mail connections be secure, select the Always Use a Secure Connection (SSL) When Retrieving Mail check box.
12. It's a good idea to label the account's messages in some way, so select the Label Incoming Messages check box. By default, Gmail labels the messages using the account's email address. If you prefer to use a different label, use the drop-down list to select New Label, enter the label in the dialog box that appears, and then click OK.
13. If you want Gmail to bypass the Inbox and send the account's incoming messages straight to the label you specified in Step 12 (or to the All Mail label, if you skipped Step 12), select the Archive Incoming Messages check box. The figure shows a filled-in version of the Add an Email Account window.
14. Click the Add Account button. Gmail adds the account and then asks whether you also want to be able to send email from the account. Alas, this functionality isn't available through G Suite work accounts.
15. Click the No radio button and then click Next. Gmail now regularly checks your account for messages.

Handle Microsoft Office documents

Because you're a full-fledged G Suite user, there's a good chance your organization has decided to go all in with Docs, Sheets, and Slides for productivity apps. That makes exchanging files with your colleagues easier, but when you're working from home, you might have to deal with people who haven't gone all-Google and still use Microsoft's Office productivity stalwarts: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Fortunately, G Suite understands this and is happy to work with Office documents. Here are the three main techniques you need to know:

• Opening Office documents: G Suite gives you a few different ways to open Office documents in their corresponding Google apps:
  • In a Google app, choose File→Open from the menu bar, select the Office document, and then click Open. This opens a preview of the Office document, and you then select Open with Google App (where App is Docs, Sheets, or Slides, depending on the file type).

• • If you receive an Office document as an email attachment, select the attachment's Edit with Google App icon (where App is Docs, Sheets, or Slides, depending on the file type).
• If the Office document is in Drive, select the document, click the More Options icon (the three vertical dots), choose Open With from the menu that appears, and then select the Google app that works with the file type.

Whichever method you use, the Office document appears in the Google app. To remind you that this is an Office file and not a native Google file, you see the Office document's file extension beside the document name. For example, this figure shows a Word document open in Docs, so you see the .DOCX file extension.

• Converting an Office document to Google format: If you only ever use Google apps but you have a bunch of Office documents lying around, you should convert those files to their Google-equivalent formats to make it easier to work with the files. To convert an Office document, first open it in the corresponding Google app: Docs for a Word document; Sheets for an Excel spreadsheet; or Slides for a PowerPoint presentation. Choose File-->Save As Google App (where App is Docs, Sheets, or Slides, depending on the file type) from the menu bar.
• Sharing a Google file as an Office file: If you've created a file using a Google app but you want to email that file to an Office user, you're out of luck, right? Nope. You can actually attach the Google file as an Office file, which enables your recipient to view and work with the file — no problem. To share a file in this way, open the file in its native Google app, and then choose File--> Email as an Attachment from the menu bar. In the Email As Attachment dialog box, use the Attach As list to select the Office format (such as Microsoft Excel for a Sheets spreadsheet file). Fill in the To, Subject, and Message fields in the usual email way and then click Send.

Set up your video conference space

Conducting video meetings at the office is easy enough because you almost always have the right equipment, the right space, and the right environment. Holding video meetings at home, on the other hand, is quite a bit trickier. I close this chapter with a few tips borne out of hard-won experience with home-based video meetings. First, here are some things to consider, equipment-wise:

• To minimize the disturbance for others in your household, consider wearing headphones or earbuds. This not only prevents meeting noises from leaking to other rooms in your house but also has the added benefits of giving you the best audio experience and preventing potential echoes.
• You'll almost certainly be taking notes during the meeting, so to avoid subjecting your meeting buddies to the noise of your typing, be sure to mute your microphone when you're not talking.
• What's that? You often type while you talk? Wow, good on you! In that case, however, you should think about using an external microphone instead of your computer's built-in mic, to minimize the typing noises.
• Okay, so now that you're in the market for an external microphone, you should get a wireless mic or headset, right? Not so fast. Wireless mics are convenient and easier to manage in the heat of the call, but the sound quality is often not that great. For the best audio, go for a wired headset or mic.
• Make sure Meet is using the microphone and camera that you prefer.

Now get a load of these tips for setting up your home environment:

• The room you use should have good lighting — preferably, natural light from a nearby window.
• Don't sit with the light behind you, which turns your head and upper body into a silhouette. Try to position yourself so that the light is in front of you.
• Don't rely on your camera feed to judge your lighting and position. Cajole a colleague or friend into running a test call to see how things really look.
• Ideally, the wall or space behind you should be blank or, at least, nondistracting.
• Make sure that whatever section of the room people can see is neat and tidy. This is a business call, after all.
• Ideally, the space you use should have little to no ambient noise. Do not — I repeat — do not play music or talk radio during the meeting.
• If you can't avoid noise, or if noise is always a potential danger (parents with children under 10 nod their heads knowingly), be sure to mute your microphone when you're not speaking.

Finally, here are some ideas for eking out the best video performance:

• Connect your computer to your Internet router directly with an Ethernet cable, if possible.
• If you need to use Wi-Fi, try to sit as close as possible to the wireless access point.
• For the best Wi-Fi performance, use a 5 GHz network, if you have one.
• Politely ask the other members of your family to hold off on heavy-duty Internet activities (such as streaming video or online gaming) for the duration of the meeting. Be prepared to buy everyone pizza as compensation.