Creating Google Account

Google Account Creation

Before we start using Google applications (apps in short), we need to first create a Google account.
We first activate the browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome or
Mozilla Firefox) and access to the URL http://www.google.com

Click on the Sign In button

Click on Create account link to create the Google account. We have to key in First name, Last name,
username (which will be eventually your login ID), password twice and click on NEXT.

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Creating Google Account

In this page, we could provide the phone number, recovery email address (this is used as an
alternative email and it can be used for account password recovery process), birthday, gender and
click NEXT

If you have entered your mobile number, you will see the next window requesting for verification.
You can skip this step by clicking on the Not now link.

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Creating Google Account

We can take our time to read the Privacy and Terms of service when using the Google account. I
have extracted it to GooglePrivacyAndTermsOfService.pdf for your future reference.

Scroll down the privacy textbox and click on I AGREE button to complete the user account creation
process.

Congratulation that we have successfully created the Google account and Google will automatically
log us into the newly created account. Observe that when we mouse over the user icon, the ID that
we have used to create the account is now displayed.

To view the account information, click on the user icon and select My Account button.

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Creating Google Account

We can view, control, protect and secure our account in a single page that is displayed after clicking
on My Account button.

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Creating Google Account

To log out from the Google account, click on the user icon and select Sign out button.

To login your Google account, access the URL http://google.com and click on Sign In button

Observe that the username has been entered for you since the last use (if you are using another
computer, you simply need to enter the username) and you need to enter the password and click
NEXT button.

You have successfully by placing you mouse over the user icon, it will display the account that you
have used to login.

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 Google Search

Google Search
In this information age, searching for immediate solutions to the problems that we encounter is
paramount. Google has made the searching that are based on the keywords quick and efficient.

To search for information, we can simply enter the keywords of interest into the search box.

We observe that the search results based on the keyword Cloud Computing has returned us
3,300,00 results within 0.47 seconds. All the search results are based on approximate match with
Cloud Computing.

Besides clicking onto the suggested hyperlinks that match our search keywords, we can view the
images, news, videos and books related to the search terms.

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 Google Search

Taking a closer look at the returned search results, we observed that some results contain “Ad”.

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 Google Search

This means that the company has placed a Google Ads (https://www.google.com/ads/) that can help
them to list their business in front of us, advertising their product in the display, video, search, and
mobile space.

Whenever the user clicks on the ad, the company has to pay Google based on the bid Cost Per Click
(CPC). Generally the average CPC in Google AdWords is between $1 and $2 on the search network.
The average CPC on the Display Network is under $1.

We can further refine our search keyword:

1. If we want Google search engine to match exactly our search term, we can enclose the
search term with double quotes. Observe that the return search results (2,240,000 search
results) would be smaller as compared to previous search (3,300,000 search results).

2. We can use an asterisk (*) within quotes to specify unknown or variable words. Google will
prompt us the most popular search terms by populating them into the search term drop
down box. And the search returns 57,000,000 pages for the keyword “Cloud Computing*”

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Google Search

3. We can use the minus sign to eliminate results containing certain words. For example, we do
not want to include intel in the Cloud Computing search. We will then enter “Cloud
Computing –intel” in the search box. Observe that the returned results will not contain intel
(except if the company has placed an advertisement matching our search term).

If we were to perform a simple analysis, we will know that Google has returned 430,000
(3,300,000 – 2,870,000) searches based on Intel with cloud computing.

4. We can use “site:” function as a Google search that searches only a particular website that
we are interested. If we want to see a list of websites nyp.edu.sg every time mentioned
Google, we can enter the search term as “Google site:nyp.edu.sg”.

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Google Search

5. If we want to compare and contrast two possible options, we can use “vs” in our search
term. For example, we want to compare the on premise versus cloud. We can enter the
search term as “on premise vs cloud” and Google will return us resources that will perform
this comparison.

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Google Search

6. We can use “DEFINE:” to learn the meaning of words, English slang might be included. For
example, we can type in “define: cloud computing” to discover the definition of cloud
computing.

We can also type in “define: macho” (macho is English slang) and Google to provide the
slang definition accordingly.

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 Google Mail

Google Mail
Gmail stores our email safely in the cloud. This means that we can retrieve emails from any
computer or device using any web browser. Towards the end of this course, we will show you how
you could configure your mobile devices to synchronize the emails.

We can quickly read, draft, reply, organize and find important email. In this section, we will explore
some basic email features provided by Google in this course.

1. Reading email

We will need to login to our gmail using https://www.google.com/gmail/. Observe that

when we first sign up to gmail, we will receive a welcome and privacy policy and privacy
control email. It is recommended to read the privacy policy and privacy control email. All
unread email are in bold.

To read the email, simply click on the email that we want to read.

To return to the inbox interface, we need to click on the Back to Inbox button. Now
we observe that the email that we have read will not be bold. This will help us to determine
which emails we have read.

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Google Mail

2. Delete email

There are two ways to delete an email: from the Inbox interface or from the message
interface. To delete the email(s) from the Inbox interface, select all the email that we want
to delete and click on Delete button.

When we are in the message interface and to delete the current email, click on the Delete
button.

The current message will be deleted and will return to Inbox interface.

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Google Mail

We can click on Undo link to undelete the email. Alternatively we can access the deleted
email from the Trash folder. Note that the deleted email will only remain in the Trash folder
for 30 days. After which, undelete is not possible.

In the likewise manner, if we were to manually delete emails from the Trash folder (select
the emails and click on Delete forever button), we cannot recover these deleted emails.

3. Create and send email

To create a new email, click on the Compose button located at the left hand side of the

email interface.

In the new message interface, we need to

• add the recipients’ email addresses into the To, Cc or Bcc list
• enter the email subject in the Subject section
• key in the email message in the body section

Additionally we can format the message, attach a MIME attachment, insert MIME
attachment from our Google Drive, insert a photo, insert a hyperlink and insert emoji.

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Google Mail

Finally we can check to make sure that the email is well constructed before sending. To send

the email, click on the Send button . If we decide to delete this new email, click

on the Bin button .

Insert emoji

Insert link

Insert Photo

Insert file from Drive

Attach file
Formatting

4. Create signatures

An email signature will automatically be appended to the end of an e-mail message when we
send. Generally, a signature is used to provide the recipient with our name, email address,
contact information, and/or website URL.

To create email signature,

• Click Settings and select Settings

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Google Mail

• Scroll down to the Signature section and create our signature. Optionally we can use
the format bar to add text colors, styles, links, or a picture. In the example below, an
email address and website hyperlink have been added to the signature

Make sure to check “Insert this signature before quoted text in replies and remove
the “-“ line that precedes it.” If we want to insert our signature in all our reply
emails.

• Scroll to the bottom and click Save Changes .

Observe that whenever we create a new email or reply an email, the signature will be
appended to the end of the email.

Creating new email

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Google Mail

Reply existing email

To view the signature in the reply email, click on … button

5. Reply, Reply all and forward email

To reply an email, click on button and select Reply

Observe that the email will only be sent to the originator if we were to choose the Reply
option.

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Google Mail

To reply an email to all recipients, click on button and select Reply to all

Observe that the email will send to all recipients if we were to choose Reply to all option.

To forward an email, click on button and select Forward

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Google Mail

We need to enter the email addresses of the intended recipients either into To, Cc or Bcc list

6. Print email

To print the entire email,

• click into the email

• click and select Print

• the print dialog box will appear. We can choose the appropriate printer destination
and click OK to print the email

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Google Mail

7. Print or save email attachment

To print the email attachment,

• click into the email with attachment(s)

• click the attachment and select Print button

There are two ways to download email attachments. We can download it to our local
computer drive or to the Google Drive. To download the email attachments,

• click into the email

• move over the attachment and select Download (download to our local computer
drive) or Save to Drive (download to our Google Drive).

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Google Mail

8. Find emails

We can use the search box to locate the email based on the search keyword

We can define more search parameters by clicking on button.

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Google Mail

9. Organize emails

We organize our emails using labels. We need to first create the labels and move the emails
out of our inbox to the appropriate labels (we think of labels as categories). To manage the
labels, click on Settings and select Labels

In the Labels setting, we can choose show or hide system labels, categories and any user
defined labels. In this case, we have not created any labels.

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Google Mail

To create a new label, click on the Create new label button

We have to enter the label name and if we want to make this label as a child of a parent, we
can check the Nest label under: and select the parent label. Finally create on Create button
to create the label.

Once the label has been created, we have an option to update the label name and nesting
attribute by clicking on edit link or to delete the label by clicking on remove link

To add colour to the label, click on the next to the label, select Label colour and choose a
predefined colour or select Add custom colour option (select the desired colour and click
Apply button)

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Google Mail

Observe that the selected colour has been tagged to the label.

Now we can organize our inbox by moving the appropriate email to the labels that we have
created. To do so, click into our inbox, select the email, click and drag to the correct label.

Once we have moved the selected emails from our inbox to our label (Work), the emails will
be removed from the inbox and will be placed in the Work label.

Sometimes, after the email from the inbox to the label, the email is still listed in the inbox.

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Google Mail

We will need to click into the email and remove the inbox tag by clicking on the X, next to
the inbox tag.

Observe that the email is no longer available in the inbox

10. Creating mail rules using filters

To create the mail rule, we need to select Settings followed by Filters and Blocked Addresses
tab

We can now click on the Create a new filter link to define our filtering criteria.

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Google Mail

Upon completing the definition of our criteria, click on Create filter with this search > link to
continue

In this window, we select Apply the label, choose Work label that we have created later,
check Also apply filter to 2 matching conversations and click on the Create filter button

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Google Mail

Observe that the rule has been created. For any subsequent email that is sent from this
email address, the email will automatically be tagged and placed in the Work label

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 Google Calendar

Google Calendar
Google Calendar is an online calendar that enables us to quickly schedule meetings, events and
obtain reminders about the upcoming events. Google Calendar is designed for teams and it is easy
for us to share our schedule with others and create multiple calendars that our teams can use.

When we access the calendar, we will be brought to current date. We can navigate between months
using the month control or between weeks using the week control.

We can change the calendar view to day, week (default), month, year, schedule or 4 days.

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 Google Calendar

Google Calendar allows us to add calendars listing of holidays from more than
230 countries. To add public holiday calendars from the web interface, we need
to access the Setting page by clicking on the Gear icon and select Settings.

In the setting page, expand Add calendar subsection and select "Browse
calendars of interest".

When this option has been selected, we will see 3 main categories on the right hand panel namely
Holidays, Sports and Other. Now we can expand the Regional holidays. Upon expanding the Regional
holidays, we can see a list of holidays for countries that Google has data on.

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 Google Calendar

We can scroll down this list to find which country holidays we are interested in. Before we add the
holidays to our calendar, we can preview calendar ( ) and select the checkbox to subscribe.

To return to the calendar interface, simply click on the <- button of the Setting page.

Observe that the selected holidays display in our calendar. We could check and uncheck them to
either include or exclude from our calendar view.

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 Google Calendar

Therefore if you are planning an overseas trip, it is definitely worth checking out if there are any
local public holidays and it can make a big difference to public transport timetables and general
levels of crowding.

Observe that we could check and uncheck the import calendars to display or not to display these
information in the calendar view.

We could change the colour of any calendar so that it can be marked with different colour. To
change the colour of Holidays in United States to red, move over to the calendar, click on and
select the red colour.

Now we can see that the holidays in Singapore are highlighted in green while holidays in US are
highlighted in red.

We could also import our activities into our calendar. I have provided a sample csv file for this
purpose. In the csv file, the minimum columns to fill is shown in the diagram below:

After we have entered the activities and the csv file, we can import this file directly to the calendar
by clicking on the + button next to Add a friend’s calendar and select Import

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 Google Calendar

Click on Select file from your computer (Step 1), change to the correct folder where the csv file is
stored, select the file (Step 2), click on Open button (Step 3) and click on IMPORT (Step 4).

Step 1

Step 4

Step 2

Step 3

Once the import was successful, a message box will display the number of events that have been
imported from the file.

We can click on the <- button to view the calendar.

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 Google Calendar

Observe that the event has added to the calendar view as indicated in the Excel import file.

To delete the event, simply right-click on the event and select Delete.

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 Google Calendar

We can see the event that we have added into the calendar has been removed.

Likewise, we can export the Google calendar by clicking on the Gear icon -> select Settings -> Import
& export -> EXPORT link

We will be prompted to the location where we would like to store the exported calendar file. Note
that the default exported Google calendar is in ics format.

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 Google Calendar

Finally we could either share our calendar with the public users or to select a list of users who can
view our calendar.

To share our calendar publicly with any user, click on the Gear icon -> select Settings -> <Account
Name> -> Access permissions

Click on the checkbox next to Make available to public. A warning message will be displayed and click
on Ok to continue.

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 Google Calendar

Once we have turned on the public access to our calendar, we can control the public users can only
view free/busy status without displaying the event details.

We could obtain our calendar URL by clicking on Integrate calendar and on the right hand side, the
URL will be displayed.

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 Google Calendar

To access to the calendar, simply copy and paste the URL to a new browser. Observe that there is an
event in 19 Jun that is being marked as busy.

Next we can also invite the list of users who we want to give them access. To do so, click on Share
with specific people link, click on ADD PEOPLE link, type in the collaborators’ email addresses and
choose the roles that we want to assign them.

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