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"from" addresses and then to set up email forwarding at each of those accounts. The process went smoothly.

Migrating Emails

The next step was to get my email out of Outlook. Unfortunately, Gmail does not offer an import option for your offline emails, so I had to forward each email, by hand, to myself at Gmail. I was surprised at how little time this took, expecting it to be an all day chore.

Labeling

Once the emails were in my email box, I easily labeled and archived them within just a few minutes. Gmail's interface is excellent for organizing your work and allows you to attach multiple labels to each email, definitely a step above Outlooks folder organizing system.

Features

So once all that was done, I started poking around to see what other options were available on Gmail. I was blown away. No less than 38 options and features under the "Lab" section that you can add to your account! I added the following nifty features to mine:

Tasks
Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
Mouse Gestures
Canned Responses (reply templates)
Quote Selected Text
Forgotten Attachment Manager (yes!)
Vacation Time
Custom Label Colors
Send & Archive
Title Tweaks
Google Calendar Gadget

Themes

And the cherry on top of the sundae: themes. You can choose among 32 themes and even customize your own colors if you want. I chose the bus stop theme because waiting reminds me to be patient (boy do I need that reminder!).

If you are still suffering under the yolk of Outlook and are looking for a better way, putting all your accounts under the Gmail umbrella is most definitely worth your time.

Learn more about this author, Jessica Bosari.
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