Make garbled messages readable, speed up Gmail and stop it logging you out
Emails contain gibberish
Unreadable message text is usually the result of mismatched language-encoding settings. Your sender’s encoding settings are different to those of your browser. Gmail is usually good at rectifying this automatically, but it can miss the odd one – and that’s when you see gibberish.
If this happens, click the little down arrow at the top-right of the email (next to the Reply arrow) and choose ‘Message text garbled?’. This may fix it automatically.
If the message remains unintelligible, click the arrow again but this time choose ‘Show original’. Scroll through, looking for mentions of ‘encoding’ or ‘charset’. Make a note of what you find alongside them – such as ‘UTF-8’ or ‘Chinese Simplified’ – then temporarily change your browser settings to match.
To do this in Chrome, click the menu icon (three lines), then point to ‘More tools’ followed by Encoding. In Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox, open the View menu then click Encoding (IE) or Character Encoding (Firefox).
Some Gmail features don’t work
If Gmail features such as spell-checking and keyboard shortcuts aren’t working then you might have switched into HTML mode, which is a stripped-down version of Gmail designed to work in older web browsers. This could have been intentional or accidental (if Gmail detects that it’s running slowly it sometimes displays a clickable link that switches you over). The solution is to switch back to standard mode by scrolling down to the bottom of the inbox and clicking the ‘standard’ link.
Gmail is very slow or won’t load
First, check to see if the Gmail service is working by visiting Google’s Apps Status Dashboard (www.google.co.uk/appsstatus). If Gmail has a green dot next to it, the service is working fine. If it’s orange or red, there are problems at Google’s end: click one of the coloured dots on the calendar for more information. Also try temporarily disabling your antivirus software, because in some configurations security tools can interfere with Gmail. Google recommends that pop-up blockers be disabled and cookies be enabled for Gmail. Finally, switching to HTML mode will offer an instant speed boost, albeit at the expense of some features – find out more about this at www.snipca.com/17224.
Your account is locked
Sometimes, Gmail will tell you that your account is locked. What’s worse, this is probably not your fault. If Google detects what it considers to be ‘abnormal’ activity it’ll lock you out of your account for up to 24 hours. The commonest cause is a high-volume receipt of ‘undeliverable messages’, which happens when a spammer spoofs your email address to send emails using your email address as the ‘sender’. There’s nothing you can do to prevent this. In case someone really is using your account to spam from, Gmail locks it, and you just have to wait until the timer resets. Account-locking can also occur when you have too many Gmail windows open at once, so avoid having more than a handful open at any given time.
Gmail keeps reloading or logging you out
This happens if you attempt to log into a second Gmail account using a new tab in the same browser. First, clear your browser’s cache. In Chrome, click the menu icon, point to ‘More tools’ and then click ‘Clear browsing data’. In IE, open the Tools menu, click ‘Internet options’, select the General tab and then click Delete in the ‘Browsing history’ section. In Firefox, click the menu button, History and then Clear Recent History. When you next sign into a second Gmail account, sign in with your main account first, then click your username or photo at the top right followed by ‘Add account’, then just log in as normal.
You see an ‘Oops’ error message
Seeing an ‘Oops… Gmail encountered a problem’ error message usually indicates a temporary hiccup, and refreshing your browser tab page may clear it. If not, clear your browser cache (see previous tip) and, if the problem persists, disable installed browser extensions. In Chrome, click the menu icon followed by ‘More tools’, then Extensions. In Internet Explorer, click the cog icon followed by ‘Manage add-ons’. In Firefox, click the menu icon and then ‘Add-ons’. In all cases we’d recommend disabling all extensions, before re-enabling one at a time to identify the culprit. Then, either leave the offender disabled, or look for an updated version.