Using Chat in Gmail

Video Transcript

So now I'm going to talk about another really cool feature in Gmail which is the chat feature that's free and right here on your email page. So this is me right here and then all my friends that I'm able to chat with are down here and these are just some of my contacts. Because I haven't chatted before they're not available right now. But what I'll do is I'll invite them to chat just by scrolling over their name and then send the invite. And then I have this other email. I just set it to available over here. Now you can see I'm actually available to chat. So when I click chat at the very bottom of the web page it brings up the little chat box right here. And just like any other chat program you just type, hit return. And then over here you can see now I've got a new chat message and it beeped at me. And you can see the options right here. Going off the record? What happens is Gmail records all your chats into like a text format and they look kind of like an email. I'll show you those later. If you go off the record I will be recorded. If for any reason I wanted to block who I was chatting with I can go ahead and do that. Or I can do a group chat and then invite a person to the chat. Somebody else in my contact list. Some other things. There's a little emoticon section. Send the little emoticons, that kind of thing. And there's also a pop out which actually pops it out into a new window so you don't have to chat at the bottom of your email. You can pop it out like any other kind of instant messenger. So I can also pop it back in just like that. Now some of your other options over here, options right here, you can actually sign into your AIM account if you have that. You'll need your screen name and your password. But see, other Gmail options, you can sign out of the chat. Size of the chat list. This is how many contacts you see on the side here. I don't have too many contacts so it doesn't even really matter. And then you can choose who you show. The most popular or all contacts. And when I'm actually chatting with someone you'll see there's a little bubble right here. But if I close it, it's just a green which means they are available. Sometimes you'll see the other, like a red and that means they're not available. And I can actually set my status right here by clicking here. The green is available. Then they've got busy. Then the busy custom message. And when you do a custom message you can type whatever you want. Just like that. And if you want to clear your custom messages you can clear that down here. So that's basically how the chat works. And you can minimize it like that so it's not taking up too much space. You can also turn it off if you want over here and it'll go away. Like that. But when I turn it on I'm available unless I change my status. And when I was talking about how Gmail saves all your chats, you come up here to the left side, you can see your chat history. So I've had one chat with Bob. And then you can see this is the chat we just had. It gives a time and everything. If I'd gone off the record like I was talking about earlier it would not have saved it. One more thing about chat. You can access the chat settings if you go up to the Settings option up here and then click on chat. And then you have a few settings you can set for your chat. You can actually decide to turn off the chat history, which I show you over here, and not save it in your Gmail account by clicking right here. Or you can choose to save it. You have the chat list location so you can show the chat box above or below the labels box. You can actually choose how you want this set up. And then you have the auto add suggested contacts. And let's see, "Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I'm online." And then you can choose to do "Only allow people that I've explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I'm online." So if you want to just decide who you're going to chat with and who you're not going to chat with you may select this and then they'll have to invite you and you'll have to accept. Or you'll have to invite them and they will have to accept. So you can turn the sounds on and off. It's just a notification when a new chat arrives. And you can turn the emoticons on and off. And then there's another option, a sign into AIM again right here. So that's how you use the chat function in Gmail.

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