gmail – St. Ignatius College Prep Tech Blog

Images not loading in Gmail canned responses

Do you use images in canned responses in Gmail? Did you notice your images suddenly showing up as blank boxes (both in the composition and in the actual sent message)?

Well, there's a fix for that. Use the new Gmail instead of the old Gmail:

Your images should now load (you do not need to re-create your old canned responses).

Chrome Gmail unread messages not appearing in bold

We had a user whose unread emails were appearing as bold in Safari (with an ugly font) and not bold at all in Chrome (font looked okay), and we did some digging and found the solution was to enable the Arial Bold font in Font Book on the user's Mac, and it was all good.

Our best guess is that Safari couldn't find the font it wanted so substituted an ugly font but kept it bold, and Chrome couldn't find the font it wanted so substituted a decent-looking font but not bold.

Configuring Sendmail for Gmail on a WAMP server

If you have a WAMP server and want to send email via PHP's mail() function, a quick way to do so is with fake sendmail for Windows.

Create a directory on your WAMP server for C:\usr\lib and put both the sendmail.exe and sendmail.ini files in there.

Edit the sendmail.ini file as below (filling in your Gmail credentials):

smtp_server=smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port=465
smtp_ssl=auto
auth_username=yourusername@gmail.com
auth_password=yourpasswordforgmail

Click on the WAMP tray icon, select PHP and then php.ini

Make sure the [mail function] portion looks like this:

; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/smtp
;SMTP = localhost
; http://php.net/smtp-port
;smtp_port = 25

; For Win32 only.
; http://php.net/sendmail-from
;sendmail_from = you@yourdomain

; For Unix only. You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i").
; http://php.net/sendmail-path
sendmail_path = "C:\usr\lib\sendmail.exe -t"

Keep in mind if you don't use the WAMP tray icon, you want to edit the C:\wamp\bin\apache\apacheX.X.X\bin\php.ini file and not the C:\wamp\bin\php\phpX.X.X\php.ini file.

Once you're done, you'll need to restart the WAMP services for your php.ini edits to take effect.

You can then send a test email using this code:

<?php
// Define email parameters
$to=yourtestrecipient@yourtestdomain.com;
$subject='Test subject heading';
$message='Test body of an email';
$headers='From: yourtestsender@yourtestdomain.com' . "\r\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\r\n";

// Send email
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
?>

Setting up SSMTP on Ubuntu with Gmail

The procedure for setting up SSMTP on Ubuntu is fairly well documented on the Ubuntu wiki, but the only amendment I'd make would be to change the hostname to localhost.

On Ubuntu wiki but fails to send emails:

hostname=MyEmailAddress@gmail.com

Amendment that works:

hostname=localhost

Setting a signature line for your SI e-mail – Microsoft Outlook edition

To set up your SI signature in Microsoft Outlook, do the following:

Click on File and select Options.

From the left side, select Mail.

Then, on the right side, select Signatures.

Make sure you're on the E-mail Signature tab. And, if you're creating a new signature (as opposed to editing an existing one), click New, give a name for the signature you're creating, and then click OK.

Once your signature is created (or if you're simply editing a previously existing signature), you can just click into the Edit signature large text box and start editing.

The Communications Office is asking us to standardize on one that looks like this:

Mr./Ms. YourNameHere
YourTitleHere
St. Ignatius College Preparatory
2001 37th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94116
(415) 731-7500 ext. YourExtensionHere
YourEmailHere
http://www.siprep.org

Finally, you need to select your account (if you have multiple email accounts in your Outlook client) and then select which signature will populate for New messages and for Replies/forwards.

If you use Apple Mail for your e-mail, there are instructions here.
If you use Gmail's web interface for your e-mail, there are instructions here.

Setting a signature line for your SI e-mail – Apple Mail edition

If you’d like to set a signature for your SI e-mail and you use Apple’s Mail to view and read your e-mail, open Mail and choose Preferences from the Mail menu.

Click Signatures at the top of the window.

Click the + sign at the bottom of the middle column and give your new signature a name. You’ll note that I have a few… this is because I use different signature lines for students and parents (“Work – Official”), for employees of the school and vendors (“Work – with Cell”), and for when I’m goofing around (“SillyOne”). If you have more than one, you can choose which one you use… and it’s much easier if you give it a name so you can tell them apart.

Now, in the column on the right, type in what you’d like shown for this signature. You can use different fonts, colors… even pictures (copy and paste) in your signature… the Communications Office is asking us to standardize on one that looks like this:

Mr./Ms. YourNameHere
YourTitleHere
St. Ignatius College Preparatory
2001 37th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94116
(415) 731-7500 ext. YourExtensionHere
YourEmailHere
http://www.siprep.org

If you’d prefer, you can copy and paste the one above into the right column… You can embellish it as long as you keep in mind that your signature will look different on different computers. I stick with the standard font and color to avoid any weirdness on the other end.

Once you have the signature looking good, you must assign it to your account in the left column by dragging the name of the signature over on top of the particular account in which you’d like to use that particular signature. My work signatures don’t go on my personal accounts (and vice versa), but this gives you the ability to have separate signatures for different accounts.

You can set your signature to go on e-mails automatically by clicking on the account on the left column, then choosing a signature from the “Default Signature” pop-up menu at the bottom of the window.

Once you’re done, close the Signatures window and create a new e-mail. You’ll notice you have a new option on the right side of your messages based on the names you assigned to your signatures:

If you use Gmail’s web interface for your e-mail, there are instructions here.
If you use Outlook for your e-mail, there are instructions here.

Setting a signature line for your SI e-mail – Gmail edition

To get set up a signature on your SI e-mail if you use the Gmail web site to view and read your e-mail, click the small gear in the upper right corner of the main Gmail page, then choose Settings:

In Settings, you’ll need to scroll down a bit to find the Signature area:

In the edit box, type in what you’d like displayed at the bottom of your e-mail messages… I’ve enclosed some text here that you can copy and paste, then edit to match your information.

Mr./Ms. YourNameHere
YourTitleHere
St. Ignatius College Preparatory
2001 37th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94116
415.731.7500 ext. YourExtensionHere
YourEmailHere
http://www.siprep.org

The checkbox under the edit box puts your signature above any quoted text that you might be responding to… good idea to check it so that your signature is not lost at the very bottom of a long thread of e-mails.

Once you’ve got it looking the way you’d like, scroll down again to the very bottom of the Settings page and click the “Save Changes” button to enable the new signature.

If you use Apple Mail for your e-mail, there are instructions here.
If you use Outlook for your e-mail, there are instructions here.

iPad Gmail Mail “password missing” error

This randomly happened after we set up a slew of iPads with the same email account (Gmail on Mail), and sending messages put the outgoing message into the Outbox with an error that the password is missing, with the options to Cancel or go to Settings. Going to Settings, though, offers no option to input a password.

You can see here other users frustrated with this problem:
GMAIL Accounts unusable after 8.3 update!

Some workarounds offered are to use the Gmail app or to add Gmail as an Exchange account (if you're using Google Apps and not a regular home Gmail account).

The workaround we employed was to double-click the home button, swipe away the Mail application, and then launch it up again. After a minute or so, there would be an error about the missing password again. This time, though, the prompt for Settings would take you to a screen to enter the password.

Very odd issue.